Reporter’s notebook: Aimless anger on the streets of LA

LOS ANGELES—On a warm afternoon, roughly a dozen or so people scrubbed the outsides of buildings in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles. Their rags, scrubbers, and spray bottles made the profanities and gibberish scrawled on the buildings increasingly illegible in the summer heat.

Anti-government protesters left their mark on the area in the past week, mostly in the form of rage-filled graffiti against President Donald Trump and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The increasing number of ICE raids and arrests in the city sparked destructive demonstrations over a week ago. Last Saturday, Trump ordered 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles to keep the peace over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

On Tuesday, LA Mayor Karen Bass set an emergency curfew, and police began arresting protesters who violated it. In her emergency order, Bass said most protesters acted lawfully, but many others committed crimes such as vandalism, looting, and violence against first responders.

Since then, agitators continued to gather daily downtown, though in dwindling numbers as the days wore on. By Thursday, locals were working throughout the day to repair damage from the demonstrations.

Political or profane?

Victor Leon paints over graffiti in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles. Photo by Josh Schumacher

“This is kind of senseless, you know?” Victor Leon said as he spray-painted over graffiti on a cement post on Thursday. “If you're gonna write a message, don't be so basic. … Anybody could put [the F-word] in front of any word and claim it's a political message, or whatever they want to portray it as. But it’s kind of dumb.”

Leon explained he was painting over the graffiti because scrubbing it just made it look worse. He said he comes through Little Tokyo almost every day to get coffee, to buy food, or to bring his children there. He likes graffiti, and he used to do it when he was younger. But he said this graffiti lacked character and style.

The location also rubbed him the wrong way. “If you’re gonna tag on something, why don’t you target, like, a big corporation?” he said. “They have their insurance to pay for stuff like that. But these mom-and-pop shops, we don’t know if they’re just getting by.”

Just a short walk away, business owners had put up posters admonishing protesters to remember that Little Tokyo is home to the same kinds of immigrants they wanted to show support for. The posters echoed Leon’s message about respecting the mom-and-pop shops just trying to make it through the day. Protesters damaged bigger businesses, too. Up the street, a white truck bearing the name Graffiti Control Systems held power washing equipment that workers used to clean graffiti from much larger office buildings on Los Angeles Street.

A poster on a building in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles Photo by Josh Schumacher

Chants and emotions

Later Thursday afternoon, demonstrators once again gathered outside the Federal Building at 300 N. Los Angeles St.. The members of the group did not spray much graffiti during their hourslong trek around downtown that evening, but their chants repeated the obscenities found in the messages that remained on the sides of the buildings.

They made no demands for the release or return of migrants ICE arrested and threatened with deportation. I asked multiple protesters on the sidewalk in front of the Federal Building variations of the question: “If you could tell Trump one thing right now, what would it be?” The answer was not, “Let these people go!” or anything to do with immigrants they alleged were unjustly detained. One told me she would say, “Do something else with your [obscenity] money and time.” Another said she would say, “One word: resign.” Another largely rejected the idea that Trump would be willing to listen to anyone.

Protester Tim Croghan waved a banner that featured the Mexican and American flags joined together across a diagonal line. He also had white flowers protruding from his backpack. He said the protest mattered to him because he’d had friends who were arrested, just this week, by immigration authorities. They had no criminal background, he said.

“It’s a lot for me just to handle that emotion, so I want to express how I feel,” he said. “This is probably the best way.” He said he came to engage in a peaceful protest, not a violent one.

Mixed messages

As the crowd of dozens and dozens of protesters rambled around downtown, stopping up traffic at intersections, drivers passing by honked their horns—some expressing frustration but most voicing solidarity. Many shook their fists out their car windows and shouted encouragement.

In Little Tokyo, Leon didn’t criticize what the protesters stood for even as he cleaned up the graffiti they left behind. Another volunteer, who would only give his first name, Tim, took a similar view. “It’s like, you wouldn’t like this if someone does this to your own home, right?” he said when I asked him what he would say to the people who painted the graffiti. “I get the message. They want to bring the message across, and I appreciate that. But I think there might have been other outlets to advocate instead of having to graffiti all small businesses or bigger businesses in Little Tokyo.”