In this newsletter:

• Feature: Remembering LA’s million immigrant march
  
• Opera, philosophy, and open desert at Bombay Beach Biennale
  
• Dodgers take their first step toward a three-peat
  
• City gets ready to dump Cesar Chavez’s name from … everything 
  
• Your sales tax dollars pay rent for those facing eviction
• The weekly musician’s showcase that declines to exploit anyone
  

 When 1 million immigrants marched in LA …
a political lifetime ago 
by Megan Jamerson

It’s hard to overstate how important the spring of 2006 felt to many Latinos living in Los Angeles. On March 25th, over 1 million people (yes, 1 million!) marched for immigrant rights in Downtown Los Angeles. Activists like David Huerta, now president of the SEIU United Service Workers West, felt maybe this was their moment.

“I was very optimistic,” he recalled recently, “that we would win the citizenship that we so desperately needed in that moment in time.”

In 2006, marchers wore white to symbolize peace.

What a difference 20 years can make. That’s why I wanted to take a trip back in time to understand how that historic moment connects with where we are politically today under President Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

In 2006, between March and May, close to 400 demonstrations with over 5 million participants took to the streets of the nation in response to a harsh anti-immigration bill in Congress known as the Sensenbrenner Bill. The bill would have made it a felony to be undocumented, or even to assist anyone who was undocumented, even teachers, or doctors, or clergy. The march in Los Angeles was an inflection point in the movement against it.

Organizers used Spanish-language TV and radio stations to spread the word, and urged everyone to wear white to symbolize peace. Aerial shots of March 25th, 2006, show the streets packed with people headed toward City Hall. It was like the color white was “painted over the streets,” says Victor Narro, now director at the UCLA Labor Center and one of the organizers of the march.

On the ground, it felt like a community celebration, says Chris Zepeda-Millán, an associate professor at UCLA and author of a book about the movement. He remembers DJs taking over street corners, and mariachi bands playing for Latino families who danced and cheered their way down South Broadway toward City Hall.

“People were out there demonstrating their pride and their dignity, and refusing to be silenced while they were being demonized by Washington,” says Zepeda-Millán.

Activists involved in the planning of the march told me it was a moment filled with hope that immigration reform was possible. President George W. Bush was open to it, and back then bipartisan support existed.

But then, the backlash. A small faction in the party that supported the Sensenbrenner bill grew over time and evolved into the Tea Party. Then in 2016 it became the dominant perspective after Trump came down that escalator, announced his run for the presidency, and made derogatory comments about Mexican immigrants.

Roberto Suro, professor emeritus at USC, who at the time was the founding director of the Pew Research Center, says looking back on the 2006 march, “you can see it was the beginning of what became a very powerful political trajectory, in which the radical conservative, nativist element of the Republican Party saw immigration as a way to take down its rivals.”

Today, immigrant rights activists tell me, they are evoking the memory of 2006 as they mobilize allies against President Trump’s mass deportation campaign. A broad coalition is growing behind making International Workers Day a mass demonstration in Los Angeles this May.

“You can’t ignore the fact that immigrants are too terrified to come out and protest right now,” says Zepeda-Millán. “It's really up to American citizens to step up and fight this, who are not vulnerable to deportation.”That’s more or less what happened in Minneapolis in January. Citizens there, not just immigrants, took to the streets in January to defend their immigrant neighbors. And that made a difference; the Trump Administration withdrew their mass deportation campaign from the city. While the politics of today are a world apart from 20 years ago, some tactics immigrant rights supporters are using have not changed.

In The Neighborhood

• It’s like Burning Man. But high-brow. And even more desert-y. And less commercial. Also, it's secret: there are no tickets, but thousands of people are planning to go — soon, but I can’t say when — to an abandoned resort town on the Salton Sea, to consume art and other substances (you know what I mean: opera, obviously), and commune with nature and each other. KCRW contributor David Weinberg has this preview of the 10th Bombay Beach Biennale. Like a lot of David’s stories, expect to hear from artists and visionaries. Co-founder Tao Ruspoli tells him the Salton Sea “is both gorgeous and ugly, and you have death and life embodied. If someone's an artist or a philosopher, you want to dive into those contradictions.” 
  
  
• As the Boys in Blue head back onto the field at Dodgers Stadium — yeah, no, I’m not calling it “Uniqlo Field at Dodger Stadium” and neither are you — Doug McKain of Dodgers Nation bullishly predicts 100 wins and a World Series three-peat. “They’re going to say that this year’s going to stand on its own, and that they’re not focused on three titles because they can only win one this season,” he tells All Things Considered host Steve Chiotakis. “But the truth is that if the Dodgers win the World Series this year, that cements this group as one of the greatest teams in Big League history, one of the greatest runs in sports history.” Go Dodgers! 
  
  
• LA City Council took the first step toward erasing the city’s Cesar Chavez memorials this week when Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez introduced a motion to look at the cost and start a community engagement process. The big surprise? She wants Angelenos to look beyond Cesar Chavez. “There are other problematic people,” Hernandez told Morning Edition host Danielle Chiriguayo. “There’s a lot of work still to be done to remove people that should not be having their names on assets or even statues.” Check out the interview to hear the councilmember name names. 
  
  
• Maybe you remember Measure A, in which those of us in LA County voted to tax ourselves to help people living on the street or facing homelessness. Now that ½-cent sales tax is quietly adding up to a $1 billion annual revenue stream, and those dollars are headed out the door. KCRW contributor Kerstin Zilm talked to one woman who got the kind of targeted help the revenue provides: months of her rent paid while she got her income together. When she found out the County would pay rent on her Hollywood apartment for eight months, Del Harrison told KCRW, “I just sat there in shock with my mouth wide open.”
  
  
• Did you know “you can pull up to a place like Mercado la Paloma, get some really good food that’s not overpriced, and then you come enjoy a free show that is no filler, all quality, all good energy”? That’s how music producer David Tam described The Rehearsal to Press Play’s Madeleine Brand. “No egos. There’s no coolest person in the room.” Tam and others created the Friday night pay-what-you-can musician showcase to give a platform to artists trying to break through, which doesn’t require them to pay for stage time. The mix on this interview features plenty of those artists; you’ll be planning your next night out before it’s over (audio begins at 22:03)
  

Local Meme of the Week

KCRW's Local Letterbox

• 5 Things to Do This Week – Stand Up for KCRW! Don’t miss a killer comic lineup that benefits your favorite station. Then bring your appetite to the biggest vegan food fair.

• Art Insider with Carolina Miranda – The late artist Steven Arnold once converted a dilapidated Victorian house into a fantastical studio. Those who weren’t around to appreciate it in the '80s can see a re-created version in a private home in Santa Monica.

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