WordPress Daily Prompt
What’s one thing that would instantly improve your city?
You and me in it, and ICE out of it.
I walked Duke through the idyllic streets of our neighborhood just south of the Boulevard this morning. Several other neighbors were doing the same. We greeted each other with smiles and nods and salutations. I grabbed a poop bag from one of the makeshift community offerings. My container was empty, and I had forgotten to fill it before taking our four-legged houseguest out to do his business. And business he had! That little anonymous bit of care we do for each other is just one of the ways we are neighborly here.
Just two miles away, though, ICE agents were likely lined up outside exits around municipal buildings in Van Nuys, waiting to scoop up unsuspecting folks as they were released from a weekend stay in jail or finishing up their appointments in our local courthouse. Perhaps they were even running them down on the road. There’s nothing neighborly about that.
Yesterday, for the second Sunday in a row, I was enjoying time with the Sparks faithful. Lisa Leslie was honored with a statue outside of Crypto.com Arena STAPLES Center. Inside the arena, Nneka Ogwumike reached another milestone in her penultimate home game. The Sparks won in impressive fashion, finding their footing too late in the season to make the playoffs, but playing with a joy and generosity toward their retiring legend that has been infectious. I’m mourning the end of our season here in Los Angeles. I’m mourning the end of our time sitting on the floor, too, as the league’s success prices us out of our preferred premium seating. But our friends aren’t going anywhere, and neither are we. This is our community too.
Recently in Louisville, ICE agents detained Aminata Seck, a student-athlete on Kentucky State’s women’s basketball team, at an airport and have held her for a month and a half (Internet Archive). The Senegalese-born student is recovering from an ACL injury that required surgery. That confluence of events is likely what caused her to miss an immigration check-in. Her coach has stepped up, and now a lawyer has stepped in, but the agency shows no compassion and seems intent on doing harm. Pushing back on these transgressions requires a herculean community effort.
As that lawyer, Sadiqa Reynolds, puts it: “It’s just so easy for us to get desensitized.” She continued: “There are so many people being picked up and arrested and taken and gone for days, weeks, months, years, and we can’t forget that their whole family’s completely disrupted.”
Louisville isn’t Los Angeles, but of course what’s happening there is happening here.
These are the kinds of things that ran through my head as I sat with two of my dearest friends last Friday afternoon for a late lunch in Burbank. Our conversation centered on our lamentations and frustrations with how difficult it has become to “hang out,” even when we were clearly hanging out. As were many others in the middle of the day. Our plans weren’t hard to make. They weren’t exactly impromptu, but they also weren’t elaborate or complicated. We all have lots going on, sure, and our digital lives, the ongoing aftermath of pandemic living, and the inertia we find ourselves in as we age all play a part. We aren’t too busy to hang, though. And for the most part, we aren’t living in fear that we’ll be kidnapped by federal agents because we missed an appointment or made a mistake on some paperwork.
We should be choosing the warm embrace, laughter, and comfort of our loved ones IRL. We should be choosing to do what we can to protect our neighbors who are afraid to leave their homes.
We should be in spaces so that ICE can’t be.
We should be together so ICE can’t break us apart.
Los Angeles is for everyone.
Except those bastards.
