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WHY LOS ANGELES MUST RESIST  
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Max Benavidez
September 10, 2025
The Stansbury Forum
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_ The city that raised me—this dazzling, sprawling place of freedom
and invention—is under siege _

Police officers and members of the National Guard are deployed
outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles,
[Frederic J Brown/AFP].

 

I was born in Los Angeles. My mother was born here. Her father and
grandfather were born here. Four generations of my family have called
this city home. We are Los Angeles.

And now I see soldiers on our streets. ICE vans in our neighborhoods.
Federal agents in unmarked cars are seizing citizens and activists in
broad daylight. Marines and the National Guard deployed not to
protect, but to control. The city that raised me—this dazzling,
sprawling place of freedom and invention—is under siege.

Los Angeles has always been more than a city. It is the great
experiment of America itself: the most diverse county in the nation,
home to immigrants from every corner of the world, more than 200
languages spoken on its streets, one of the largest LGBTQ+ communities
in the country. Its economy is vast, its cultural power unmatched. It
is a place where reinvention has always been possible—where anyone,
no matter their past, can become someone new.

“WHEN WHOLE NEIGHBORHOODS LIVE IN FEAR OF MASKED AGENTS—IT IS NO
LONGER POLICING. IT IS THE MACHINERY OF AUTHORITARIANISM GRINDING INTO
PLACE.”

That freedom is now being choked. When citizens are “disappeared”
into unmarked vans, when a nurse monitoring ICE raids is dragged away
without rights read, when a teenager is seized walking his dog, when
whole neighborhoods live in fear of masked agents—it is no longer
policing. It is the machinery of authoritarianism grinding into place.

The poet and prophet James Baldwin warned us long ago:

_“NOT EVERYTHING THAT IS FACED CAN BE CHANGED, BUT NOTHING CAN BE
CHANGED UNTIL IT IS FACED.”_

What we are facing now in Los Angeles is not simply a crisis of law
enforcement. It is a crisis of democracy. Because if the most diverse
city in America, the living embodiment of freedom and reinvention, can
be occupied and silenced, then no city in this country is safe.

Brian Wilson once described the “California ethos”: a place where
no one is in your business, where everyone is free to follow their own
choices. Joan Didion wrote that Los Angeles is _“A PLACE THAT
BELONGS FOREVER TO WHOEVER CLAIMS IT HARDEST, REMEMBERS IT MOST
OBSESSIVELY, LOVES IT SO RADICALLY THAT HE REMAKES IT IN HIS
IMAGE.”_

For generations, my family has claimed Los Angeles in that way. We
have loved it radically. But today, the image being remade is not
freedom—it is fear.

Ice-T put it plainly: _“LOS ANGELES IS A MICROCOSM OF THE UNITED
STATES. IF L.A. FALLS, THE COUNTRY FALLS.”_ 

That is the truth we must face. The occupation of Los Angeles is not a
local story. It is the rehearsal of a national tragedy.

But this city has a history of resistance. From Zoot Suiters who
refused to be erased, to Chicano students who walked out demanding
education, to the countless organizers who built solidarity across
languages, colors, and neighborhoods—Los Angeles has never accepted
silence. We cannot start now.

Los Angeles must resist. Not only for itself, but for America. For all
that this country claims to stand for—freedom, equality, and the
right to be. If democracy is to survive, it must be defended where it
is most under attack. And today, that place is here.

_Max Benavidez, PhD, is the author of several books, including Gronk,
the definitive study of the Los Angeles artist, and was the first art
critic to bring the avant-garde Chicano collective Asco into the
mainstream. He has been an art critic and essayist for The Los Angeles
Times and a longtime contributor to The Huffington Post and Bomb
magazine in New York City._

* National Guard
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* Los Angeles
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* resistance
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* Trump Administration
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