Before June, when the ICE raids first began in Los Angeles, Daniel Sosa had not been active in the immigrants\u2019 rights movement. A cannabis dispensary owner, he\u2019d previously directed his political energy to fights around legalization and the implementation of California\u2019s onerous rules around weed dispensaries.<\/p>\n
On June 6, however, the first day of major, aggressive ICE raids<\/a> all over Los Angeles County, something changed in him.<\/p>\n \u201cICE really started snatching people off the streets in L.A.,\u201d Sosa told me Thursday. \u201cThese are just people that are in my community, and people that I know.\u201d<\/p>\n That evening, Sosa joined hundreds of protesters at the downtown Metropolitan Detention Center, the federal prison that sits on Alameda Street next to the Roybal federal building. It has been \u2014 and still is<\/a> \u2014 the site of round-the-clock anti-ICE protests. Some protesters were graffiting the building, a few threw water bottles and, according to news reports, some chucked rocks and broken concrete at law enforcement vehicles.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t engage in that stuff,\u201d Sosa told me. But he was still caught in the turmoil. A flash-bang stun grenade that exploded close to his ear that night sent him to urgent care the next morning, where he was diagnosed with an inflamed cochlea and given prednisone.<\/p>\n That next evening, undaunted, he returned to the protests. After dark, once again, things got ugly.<\/p>\n \u201cDescribe what happened to you,\u201d encouraged a KCAL News reporter on the scene, holding a microphone to Sosa, 42, who wore dark glasses and a beanie pulled down over his ears.<\/p>\n \u201cI tasted a little tear gas,\u201d Sosa said.<\/a> \u201cTasted like fascism.\u201d <\/p>\n A few days later, Stephen Colbert aired the clip,<\/a> which has been viewed millions of times, and pronounced Sosa \u201cthe most L.A. guy ever.\u201d <\/p>\n What\u2019s happening in cities like L.A., Chicago and, of course, Minneapolis, does feel like something out of a dystopian novel about the crumbling of the American experiment. Unidentified masked men carry weapons of war<\/a> in residential neighborhoods. Their hair-trigger tempers and violent responses to being \u201cdisrespected\u201d have resulted in the shooting deaths of Renee Good, a mother and poet, and Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, and now widespread calls to abolish ICE. <\/a> <\/p>\n \u201cState terror has arrived,\u201d columnist M. Gessen warned<\/a> in the New York Times last week. Gessen, a Russian dissident, has written extensively about authoritarian regimes.<\/p>\n The trampling of the Constitution and the disregard for due process has indeed made a mockery of America\u2019s view of itself as a democracy where the rule of law reigns supreme.<\/p>\n Soon enough, Americans will be able to make their displeasure known at the ballot box (if given the chance<\/a>). But until then, we must exercise our rights to free speech and assembly. What alternative is there but to take to the streets?<\/p>\n Obviously most people \u2014 even those with strong feelings about President Trump\u2019s immigration crackdowns, the appalling tactics of ICE agents and the Justice department\u2019s overzealous prosecutions of protesters armed with sandwiches<\/a> \u2014 will not get off their couches. They don\u2019t need to.<\/p>\n In a 2017 Washington Post essay <\/a>about the extraordinary nationwide turnout at the \u201cWomen\u2019s Marches\u201d that were inspired by Trump\u2019s misogyny, political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Jeremy Pressman explained why the turnout of an estimated 1.3% of the American population \u2014 a seemingly paltry number \u2014 was so meaningful.<\/p>\n \u201cMarching requires a much higher level of commitment than voting,\u201d they wrote. \u201cIt takes more time, is not anonymous, often involves financial costs and could put the marcher in harm\u2019s way or at risk of arrest or retaliation.\u201d<\/p>\n Chenoweth is well known for popularizing the \u201c3.5% rule,\u201d<\/a> which posits that almost \u201cno government has withstood a challenge of 3.5% of their population mobilized against it during a peak event.\u201d<\/p>\n The rule applies to campaigns aimed at overthrowing an unpopular government or achieving territorial independence, but many \u2014 including organizers of the ongoing No Kings marches \u2014 have adopted it as an aspirational figure. About 342 million live in this country today; nearly 12 million people would have to turn out to test the rule. <\/p>\n In any case, sociologist Zeynep Tufekci wrote in the New York Times<\/a> in 2017 that mass protests should be looked upon as \u201ca first, potential step.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA large protest today is less like the March on Washington in 1963 and more like Rosa Parks\u2019s refusal to move to the back of the bus,\u201d Tufekci wrote. \u201cWhat used to be an endpoint is now an initial spark. More than ever before, the significance of a protest depends on what happens afterward.\u201d<\/p>\n So, something is starting to change. Nearly two-thirds of Americans<\/a> believe the ICE raids are doing more harm than good. Nearly half support abolishing ICE. And on Friday, the Department of Justice announced it had opened a civil rights investigation<\/a> into Pretti\u2019s killing. <\/p>\n And in response to last week\u2019s events, Trump has pulled his Nazi cosplaying<\/a> border chief Greg Bovino<\/a> out of Minneapolis. Democrats are urging that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem be impeached. Some Republicans are urging Trump<\/a> to fire her. Some are even demanding<\/a> that Trump\u2019s virulently anti-immigrant advisor Stephen Miller, who falsely suggested that Pretti intended to massacre federal agents,<\/a> has to go. <\/p>\n In the meantime, Sosa has returned dozens of times to the Metropolitan Detention Center and does not plan to stop. On Oct. 10, he was there with a custom banner that read \u201cF\u2014 ICE.\u201d<\/p>\n As Sosa tells it, he was holding his sign when officers chased a protester into the crowd, then ripped his sign out of his hands. Sosa went to his car, retrieved an identical banner and returned. \u201cIt was my way of saying, \u2018You are going to violate my 1st Amendment right to speak? You are going to unreasonably seize my property without due process? You can\u2019t stop me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He was arrested, held for about an hour and a half in a cell and now faces two federal criminal Class C misdemeanor charges: obstruction and failure to comply with a lawful order. The maximum penalty per count is 30 days in prison. He\u2019s also been arrested six times by Los Angeles police at the protests, but never charged with a crime.<\/p>\n At Sosa\u2019s arraignment, he was offered a deal: Plead guilty to one of the charges, pay a $35 fine, receive a year of probation and stay 100 feet away from the detention center. He refused.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important \u2014 really important \u2014 to exercise our right to speak and to assemble,\u201d Sosa said. \u201cIt\u2019s so fundamental to what America is. We can\u2019t just take it for granted because it\u2019s written on an old piece of paper. We have to exercise our rights if we want to keep them.\u201d His trial is scheduled to begin April 2. He plans to represent himself.<\/p>\n