An uncivil war doesn't win many friends

The nightly protests against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers staying at the Hilton Hotel in Glendale, Los Angeles are still going on - starting regressively later than the original 7pm sharp but now rumbling into the small hours.

Last Thursday around midnight, a man (it surely could only have been a man) joined the protest with a boombox hooked up to his phone. He blasted a looping mix of what euphemistically could be termed songs - a single-line rap of “F**k Donald Trump” followed intermittently with ‘Baby Shark’, at sonic boom decibel level. 

The thumping beat ricocheted across the tall buildings around the north side of Glendale until the protest dwindled, but not before two fireworks exploded at the top of the high-rise hotel. The boombox man and friends remained, eventually joined in chorus by a two-toned car alarm. Police showed up just before 3.30am. There was a flash of noise - possibly a taser and some yelping. The ‘music’ suddenly stopped.

But they hadn’t taken his phone. And so, for hours after, the neighbourhood was jolted awake by absurdly loud ringtones as someone frantically rang the tasered man’s phone still somehow connected to the bloody boombox. Meanwhile, the car alarm continued in sympathy until its battery ran down or it died from neglect.

Rising a couple hours later, my wife and I were wrecked from lack of sleep and despite our liberal views would have gladly watched each protestor (but particularly the Baby Shark aggressor) deported to Bonniconlon, Belize or Benghazi or anywhere awful. Okay, maybe not Bonniconlon.

If anti-ICE demonstrators want to gain the support of local people - keeping them awake through the night with such Guantanamo Bay noise torture of them, their kids and families before early-morning work and school, is not how to do it. While not operating at the same lazy, self-centred mindset of ‘Just Stop Oil’ advocates who vandalise iconic paintings in European art galleries, such actions are still little more than performative acts of outrage or seeking online notoriety, rather than engaging in the effort of building coalitions of support against state injustice.

Sociologist, Musa al-Gharbi, writes in The Guardian newspaper on June 17 that most people in society “prefer to stick with a suboptimal status quo than to embrace disruption in the service of an uncertain future state”. Thus, most social movements are very unpopular until their success is imminent - often in the face of initial public opinion.

However, he also notes that if the public sees protests as being driven mainly by “animus, resentment or revenge (rather than positive or noble ideals”, they will support state crackdown efforts. Likewise, any initial public support will disseminate if “demonstrators seem pre-committed to violence, destruction and chaos”. There is a thus fine line between balancing public goodwill and inevitable disruption caused by protest. ‘Baby Shark’ mixed with ‘F**k Donald Trump’ on a boombox with fireworks and car alarms at 3am on a weekday leaps across that particular Rubicon.

Later that Friday, the annual carnival set up in the playground of the Catholic Incarnation parish school. Whether it was because of the amusements a block away or the smorgasbord of competing national and international events, the ICE protest dwindled, with fewer demonstrators arriving later in the evening and dispersing by 1pm or so.

Just before 10pm on Saturday, after watching the media coverage of the ‘No Kings’ events held throughout the United States, my wife and I wandered through the carnival amidst the cacophony of teenage girl screeches, emitting from both teenage girls (and boys) being spun at ridiculous speeds through the night air. Without finding any ‘tunnel of goats’ attraction, my wife went home and I paid a visit to the nearby Hilton Hotel to accost someone about their Baby Shark tactics. In contrast to the reported 200,000 who attended 'No Kings' in downtown L.A, I encountered a more Father Ted 'Down with this sort of thing' demonstration than a nascent civil rights movement. Thirty or so protestors waved placards and banged a few saucepans. Passing cars did honk loudly in support as they queued in traffic, but it is hard not to when being eyeballed by masked protestors meters away on the pavement.

As I walked through the group, smiling and offering a polite thumbs-up (instinctive small-farmer Catholic guilt), I noticed a young woman trailing behind me. She was broadcasting on her phone, speaking rapidly and passionately, while I caught a few words: “People here are being lied to like this…guy…”

I abruptly halted and spun round to her. 

“All okay?”

She stopped. Narrowed her eyes. Smiled with purpose.

“This is all lies,” she said, waving her hand back toward the protest. She refused to give her real name.

“Call me La Nica,” she said proudly in a nod to her Nicaraguan roots, though she’d lived all her life in Glendale.

She was electric with conspiracy and conviction.

“These people are not from here,” she loudly insisted. “They’re out-of-town paid actors working with the government, ICE, the police - even the IDF.” 

She claimed they were planted to provoke destruction of property, fire fireworks and discredit the real resistance.

Her eyes gleamed. She talked fast. She was furious that the protestors wouldn’t chant “Free Palestine” or condemn Israel outright. 

“They won’t say ‘F**k Trump’ either,” she added. “That’s how you know they’re fakes. I’m from here all my life, these are strangers - all of them.” 

She told me the police knew her well. 

“They always give me a hard time, but I don’t do anything wrong.” 

Her car, she said, had been towed from the hotel entrance. She’d stormed the lobby demanding to know if ICE agents were inside. She found only tall security men “monitoring everything”.

“They tried to 5150 me”, she said, using California’s legal term for placing someone under psychiatric hold. “They asked if I was drunk or suicidal. That’s their tactic now.” 

She talked like a seasoned protestor, but also someone teetering on the edge of exhaustion... or something else. She didn’t notice a clasp on her pinafore dress had come undone, flapping loose at her shoulder.

“I’m Irish” I offered, gently, “and live nearby. I actually witnessed one of those lunatics playing ‘F**k Donald Trump’ all night and I can’t see the Israeli Defence Forces, much less the deep state, supporting ICE protests.” 

She brightened momentarily. 

“Ireland stood up against genocide,” she said, with unexpected warmth suddenly quenched with suspicion. “But maybe you can’t see it; it’s the tear gas they’re releasing from the hotel windows.” 

I involuntarily coughed. She beamed with affirmation. 

“You see... tear gas”.

I asked her name again. She laughed, recognising the ploy. 

“Still La Nica, Irish guy,” she quipped, then turned back to the protest, chasing after some late arrivals holding placards and high-viz jackets. With a final cry of “Why won’t you condemn genocide?” to the retreating shapes, she was gone, swallowed into the gloom of the night.

As I walked the short distance home I passed by the busy carnival goers, late-night grocery shoppers and busy restaurant diners, while the distant sound of the incessant motorway hung in the air. I thought how my encounter with ‘La Nica’ shaped my view of the few remaining ICE protestors.

Perhaps sociologist Musa al-Gharbi should consider that the worst reaction to social movements from both the general public and the state agencies is not belligerence, but actually obliviousness or apathy.

Even late-night ‘Baby Shark’ may not be enough to change that.