Once again, downtown Los Angeles is being destroyed by violent leftist mobs — with the encouragement and permission of city and state elected officials, who are more concerned with upholding their “sanctuary state” status and protecting illegal aliens than serving California’s citizens.
As a native Angeleno and fifth-generation Californian, I’m sick of living in constant fight-or-flight mode, knowing that if anything happens to me or my family, I won’t be supported by law enforcement or the state government. I’m sick of paying the highest income taxes in the country and having the highest cost of living just so my tax dollars can go to fund the groups behind this anarchist chaos.
But still, I fight — because this is America, and we don’t give up territory to the enemy.
It all makes me so angry, and so sad at the same time.
I’m not at all opposed to immigrants coming to our state — legally — to make a better life for their families. Dreamers (not DREAMers) have been coming here since the Gold Rush days to try their luck and make their own way, unconstrained by rigid East Coast sensibilities. And for the most part, government has stayed out of the way.
California is the place where both of my Midwest-born grandfathers settled after they met and married California girls during World War II. They were both the first in their families to be born in the U.S., and neither had much in the way of schooling. But in California, both prospered financially, building their own businesses. My paternal grandmother grew up in a migrant farmworker family; now, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren have university degrees and accomplished careers.
That’s how it’s supposed to be—but that’s not how it is any longer in California. Since our sanctuary state law passed in 2016 (championed by a legislator who is now on the Los Angeles City Council), the focus of California’s officials has been on bleeding the citizenry dry and spending our money on ensuring that illegal aliens can have drivers licenses, free college tuition, free healthcare, free housing, small business grants, and more.
As part of that effort, the state has sent tens of millions of dollars to non-profit “immigrants rights” organizations that actively subvert our country’s immigration laws and train legions of loyal anti-American socialist foot soldiers and Democrat ballot harvesters. (Read more about one such organization, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights-Los Angeles, and its funding here.)
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that when the state budget puts those items first instead of infrastructure and public safety, suddenly there aren’t enough spaces in state colleges and universities for citizens, housing costs soar, jobs are harder to come by, and crime spikes.
The ongoing riots in Los Angeles prove that California’s leaders have gotten away with thumbing their nose at the law for so long that they’ve become emboldened and don’t feel that they have to comply with silly little things like the Constitution or their oaths of office. They’re true believers willing to sacrifice our state, its people, and natural resources at the altar of progressive socialism.
That sounds hyperbolic, sure. But look at the evidence.
This isn’t the first time Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, et al, have looked the other way and given the rioters wink-and-nod approval and declined to call in the National Guard when it was clearly needed. In 2020, for example, riots first broke out in Los Angeles on May 27, and it wasn’t until May 30 that Newsom announced he was going to activate the California National Guard.
So, when the current riots and chaos started, sane Californians knew that Newsom would resist activating the Guard until he was forced to. In fact, it’s clear from Newsom’s continued rhetoric that he still wouldn’t have called up the Guard if it had been left up to him.
At least in 2020, LA County had a sheriff who acted to quell things in his jurisdiction. We have no such luck this year, and the LA County sheriff and LAPD’s chief of police are not invested at all in restoring order.
While they dawdle, Californians suffer. Mom and pop businesses downtown are being looted, and small businesses throughout the area are losing business as tourists don’t want to chance being here. A good number of these businesses are owned by legal immigrants, who are furious.
One woman, whom I’ll refer to as Carol (she could be harassed if her real name were used), said, “My father and mother, both born in Mexico, always taught us to be proud Americans. I have no allegiance to Mexico. My allegiance is to the United States. I am not Mexican. I am American. And the red, white, and blue is the only flag I’ll ever proudly wave.”
Of her business, she said, “We are so crushed. Sitting at our office — trying to make sense of what our next move is. No tourism, phones are dead. No bookings.”
It’s anecdotal, but within my circle of close friends here in Los Angeles, roughly half of them were either born in a foreign country or were born here to legal immigrant parents. Not a single one believes that illegal aliens should have a pathway to citizenship or that they shouldn’t be deported even if they didn’t commit additional crimes.
California must change course. We are desperate to be liberated from our anarcho-tyrannical state government and return to a time when criminals are locked up, illegal aliens are deported, and people who work hard and follow the law are rewarded.
Jennifer Van Laar, RedState’s Managing Editor, is an unapologetic California conservative, sports fanatic, mom of three boys, and Gramie to two perfect little girls.
