Los Angeles Is Not Burning: Dispatch from L.A.
“Are things really that bad?” a friend in the media texted me on Wednesday, regarding what the public is being told and shown about the protests in Los Angeles, where I am currently reporting. “I want to murder the media,” they continued.
The concept of “the fog of war” can accurately be applied to the protest movement. Opposing factions will, for obvious reasons, obfuscate the positions and tactics of protestors, while politically sympathetic media gleefully amplify those obfuscations. Weapons of mass destruction, the Russia collusion, “Biden is fine.” We’ve been conditioned to expect news outlets to lie, or at least mush around the truth to serve a specific agenda.
I’m mostly indifferent to messaging that is little more than P.R. Do I care that Kylie Jenner admitted her boobs aren’t real? I don’t, and I probably wouldn’t know the difference. But there are a few things I do know about, and one of them is protesting. Since 2019, I have spent more than 100 days and nights with protesters on the streets of Portland, New York, and Chicago, writing about my experiences dozens of times throughout.
Thus, just like my friend, I am irked by the exaggerations, omissions, and comparisons I see being spread about the situation on the ground in Los Angeles. Do I have all the answers? Yes! No. But I can clarify a few easily disprovable claims and provide some needed nuance, as someone who is on the ground and who also lived in Los Angeles for 18 years.
Los Angeles is not on lockdown. On Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass imposed a curfew—from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.—to “stop the vandalism and looting” seen on several previous nights. The curfew area covers only one square mile of downtown. The city of Los Angeles is more than 500 square miles. Most of L.A. looks exactly as it always does, and life goes on as it always has.
Angelenos are not living in terror. Law enforcement is selectively inspiring terror, as on Tuesday night, when they shot a young woman trying to walk to her home, ostensibly within the curfew zone. The majority of sounds coming from downtown in the hours before the curfew were from law enforcement: helicopters, sirens, flash-bang grenades. Still, by 9:15 p.m., the curfew zone was mostly quiet, with local TV stations playing the Dodgers and Angels games.
The protesters are not being bussed in or paid by George Soros. This is the lazy man’s explanation for every protest he doesn’t like. Does Soros support some things you or I might find counterproductive to the health of a community? Sure. But the notion that there are t
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