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<\/a>Mickey McRae, of Hermosa Beach.\nFrom one to many<\/p>\n
For the first few weeks, Graverson protested alone at the corner of 33rd Street and Sepulveda Boulevard, right by the Manhattan Village mall. He\u2019d wheel his chair out there about three days a week, holding signs he\u2019d made himself. Drawing on his years as a visual artist, he\u2019d scour the internet for interesting images and create what he calls \u201cweird juxtapositions of words and type.\u201d<\/p>\n
One early sign read \u201cDump Trump \/ Orange Lies Matter.\u201d He later changed it to \u201cEpstein Files Matter.\u201d He also hung a small Trump effigy from his wheelchair \u2014 \u201cLike a little voodoo doll,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I don\u2019t stick pins in it,\u201d \u2014 and flew a Pride flag.<\/p>\n
There was something else driving Graverson beyond the Zelenskyy incident. As a self-described \u201cold white guy\u201d in Manhattan Beach, he wanted to make clear to everyone who saw him exactly where he stood.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really didn\u2019t want anybody looking at me and thinking that I might have voted for Trump,\u201d he said. \u201cThe nannies that walk by\u2026 I\u2019m out there with my dog. They\u2019re looking at me, and I don\u2019t want them thinking that I might have voted for this guy. I\u2019m just going to tell people who I am, what I think. I\u2019m not going to be Mr. Anonymous photojournalist anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
After about a month of solo protesting, Graverson admitted it \u201cgot a little boring.\u201d He was getting responses from passing cars \u2014 both supportive horn honks and the occasional middle finger or worse. Some people spit at him from their cars. One passenger shot him with a Nerf water gun.<\/p>\n
Then one day, a woman stopped her car and approached him. She said she wanted to protest with him. The woman was part of a group called the Manhattan Beach Huddle, and she asked if she could bring some friends.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, of course,\u201d Graverson recalled. \u201cAnd it just really snowballed from there.\u201d<\/p>\n The Manhattan Beach Huddle has been operating largely under the radar since 2017, formed in the wake of the Women\u2019s March that occurred in Washington D.C. the day after Trump\u2019s first inauguration. Penny Markey, one of the group\u2019s founding members and its postcard coordinator, explained that after the march, organizers told participants not to go home and think they were done.<\/p>\n \u201cThey said, \u2018Stay with your groups. Create groups in your community and call them huddles, like huddles in football,’\u201d Markey said. \u201cGet together and figure out something to do.\u201d<\/p>\n What the MB Huddle figured out to do was ambitious and sustained. Since 2017, the group has sent out more than 110,000 postcards supporting political candidates and get-out-the-vote efforts, both locally and nationally.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are self-funded,\u201d Markey said. \u201cEvery once in a while we get a grant or donation, but mostly we throw in cash. We make the postcards themselves available, the addresses, the script, and we make stamps available if people want them. We do not turn anybody away from postcarding.\u201d<\/p>\n The group has about 150 members, with 60 people who postcard regularly. When their postcard efforts first started, stamps cost 34 cents. Now they\u2019re 61 cents.\u00a0<\/p>\n Beyond postcarding, the Huddle holds regular meetings, bringing in speakers on various issues \u2014 banned books, environmental concerns, healthcare, whatever interests their members. The goal, Markey said, was to be active rather than just sitting around complaining.<\/p>\n When one of the group\u2019s members saw Brad Graverson sitting alone at 33rd and Sepulveda, she saw an opportunity for the Huddle to do something more visible. The group began joining him on Sundays, and what became known as \u201cBrad\u2019s Corner\u201d grew to a regular gathering of about 30 people every Sunday morning from 10:30 to noon.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a frog, we have a lobster, we have unicorns, we have a T-Rex who joins us,\u201d Markey said, describing the costumes some protesters wear. \u201cWe have music. We all have our signs. We are peaceful. We are nonviolent. We have our share of whistles and bells, and we stand on that corner every Sunday morning, at which point we fold up our tents and we all go home with plans to come back the next week. That is what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n Markey noted that the group is meticulous about leaving no trace behind. \u201cThere is never a scrap of trash on the street when we leave,\u201d she said. \u201cWe don\u2019t leave anything behind, including scraps of paper or candy bar wrappers or anything.\u201d<\/p>\n For Graverson, the weekly gatherings changed his world in unexpected ways.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s opened my life up to a whole different group of people whom I would never talk to,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not a super outgoing, vocal kind of guy. I\u2019m just kind of hanging to myself a lot. But people just walk up and talk, and I\u2019m happy to talk to them.\u201d<\/p>\n The recognition extends beyond Sunday mornings. People now approach Graverson when he\u2019s at the library or on the Manhattan Beach pier.<\/p>\n \u201cThey see my wheelchair and they say, \u2018Are you the guy on the street corner with the flag, with the protesters?’\u201d he said. \u201cEveryone thanks me for what I\u2019m doing. And usually there\u2019s a little discussion about it, and they say, \u2018I want to come out with my daughter next week.\u2019 And I say, \u2018Sure, come on down.\u2019 And it\u2019s good, because it\u2019s every Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n The protests have even opened doors for difficult conversations. \u201cSome good friends who voted for Trump\u2026 they know what I\u2019m doing.\u201d Graverson said. \u201cThis is opening the door for some conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n On the morning of January 7, Ren\u00e9e Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, was fatally shot in Minneapolis by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross. Good and her partner had just dropped their six-year-old son off at the elementary school he attended in their neighborhood. ICE protests were occurring just down the street. Good pulled her vehicle out in the middle of the street, blocking the ICE vehicles. When ICE agents got out of their vehicles and approached, Good attempted to drive slowly away. Ross fired three shots, killing her \u2014 one through the windshield, then two through the open driver\u2019s side window. In video footage, he could be heard calling Good a \u201cf***ing b***h\u201d immediately after killing her. He then drove away from the scene. The Trump Administration has been adamant that Ross was acting in self-defense \u2014 that Good had \u201cweaponized\u201d her vehicle \u2014 though most analyses of the various footage taken of the shooting undermines that claim.\u00a0<\/p>\n The shooting galvanized protests across the country. Indivisible, a national progressive organization with which the Manhattan Beach Huddle is affiliated, put out a call.<\/p>\n \u201cThe response that came through from MoveOn and Indivisible and many of these partnering coalitions said, \u2018Okay, you\u2019ve got to get people out on the street,’\u201d Markey said.<\/p>\n She and fellow Huddle member Joanne Hadley posted information about their Sunday protest on Indivisible and MoveOn websites. The response was immediate and overwhelming.<\/p>\n \u201cI personally received over 100 RSVPs in the two days before the event,\u201d Marky said. \u201cI was starting to get really nervous.\u201d<\/p>\n On Sunday, January 11, 177 people showed up at Brad\u2019s Corner \u2014 nearly six times the usual crowd. For the first time, the protest stretched all the way up Sepulveda from 33rd Street to Rosecrans Avenue, a goal the group had never quite reached before.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was pretty wild,\u201d Graverson said. \u201cI was very impressed, although a little worried.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The concern is that violence against the protesters is not, at this juncture, out of the realm of possibility. But so far, the response to the protests, in the wake of Minneapolis, have been overwhelmingly positive.\u00a0<\/p>\n The horn honking the Sunday immediately after the shooting was continuous.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the minute we crossed the street to the spot where we picket, the horns started, and they went straight through completely until we left at noon,\u201d Markey said.<\/p>\n Graverson has been tracking the responses he gets from passing cars, trying to gauge what percentage honk in support versus what percentage flip him off. The latter, he said, is now \u201cvery rare\u2026 rarer than it was before.\u201d<\/p>\n The shift in demographics has been notable. In the early months, support came mostly from women honking and waving. Then more men started showing up and honking. More recently, even people in pickup trucks \u2014 \u201ctalking about demographics, who drives pickup trucks, mostly younger guys,\u201d Markey noted \u2014 have been showing support.<\/p>\n What occurred in Minneapolis has become a flashpoint, but ICE\u2019s presence has also been felt acutely in Southern California. ICE has conducted raids at car washes in Manhattan Beach \u2014\u00a0 reportedly three raids of the Red Carpet car wash on Sepulveda \u2014\u00a0 as well as in Redondo Beach. Home Depot locations, where day laborers congregate, have been targeted. The fear is palpable throughout the South Bay\u2019s immigrant community.<\/p>\n Manhattan Beach City Councilperson Nina Tarnay, who as a child was herself an immigrant, one of the Vietnamese refugees known as \u201cboat people\u201d who were forced to flee during and immediately after the Vietnam War when the Communist regime took over, sees the impact within her affluent beach community.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you look across our city, who\u2019s working in our homes, who\u2019s working in our yards, who\u2019s building our homes, it\u2019s all immigrant labor,\u201d Tarnay said. \u201cI grew up as one of those. My mom was a manicurist \u2014 the service industry, that\u2019s what immigrants do, right? Provide the labor that drives this economy, that drives this country. As Americans, we were more than happy to take advantage of that cheap labor. But when people start stoking up racism, fear of others \u2014\u00a0 then you\u2019re not even seeing those people anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are such a privileged community that benefits so greatly from the labor of immigrants, from our childcare, to our gardening, to restaurant services, to construction\u2014none of that would get done without the labor of immigrants. Beyond the raids on immigrants, I\u2019m worried about our Constitutional rights. Like all attorneys, I took Constitutional Law and understand the importance of abiding by our laws. The Constitution is not optional or situational. It is the shared safeguard that protects all of our rights. The deprivation of due process of anyone on U.S. soil should worry us all, because once the government decides only some people\u2019s rights matter, none of our rights are secure.\u201d<\/p>\n Markey knows the fear rippling across the immigrant community intimately through people in her own life. Her housekeeper of many years takes the bus from East LA every Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s scared to death, and I\u2019m scared to death for her,\u201d Markey said. \u201cShe\u2019s a member of our family. She has her papers, whatever she needs. But that doesn\u2019t keep a brown woman on the bus from getting harassed, or from getting picked up.\u201d<\/p>\n Her gardener, who lives in Inglewood and is also a legal immigrant, tells her he can\u2019t find workers anymore. \u201cNobody is willing to come out and work for him anymore from the Hispanic community,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd we talk about it, and he says it is scary to walk down the street if you\u2019re a brown person or a black person in Inglewood.\u201d<\/p>\n Markey\u2019s response was deeply personal. \u201cYou know what I did one day? I apologized,\u201d she said. \u201cI apologized for our country that would do that to them. These are members of my family. I know them well. And my heart breaks.\u201d<\/p>\n The protests aren\u2019t limited to Manhattan Beach. In Torrance, at Hawthorne and Sepulveda, a protest that didn\u2019t exist before Minneapolis drew 1,000 people over two days. Similar gatherings have emerged in El Segundo, Westchester, and Culver City.<\/p>\n For Markey, the urgency is both political and personal. She\u2019s Jewish, and her grandparents came to America while their parents and other family members \u201cdisappeared in Europe at World War Two.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things I have always had as a question in my mind, in my head, in my heart, is: How long do you stay? What do you do if you\u2019re in a situation like they were in Europe?\u201d she said. \u201cAnd here we are. We can\u2019t let it happen to us. We have to stand up for what we believe in.\u201d<\/p>\n For Brad Graverson, the protest has become more than just a weekly act of resistance. It\u2019s become a source of unexpected joy and purpose at a time when both seemed to be slipping away.<\/p>\n \u201cThis has really been an uplifting thing for me,\u201d he said. \u201cSomething I look forward to every week.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s an element of creative expression to it as well. Making the signs, choosing the images, finding the right words \u2014 it has filled a void left by his inability to do the photography work he loved.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a little bit of theater of the absurd, making signs and stuff,\u201d he said. \u201cI scour the internet for interesting images and weird juxtapositions of words and type. That\u2019s the creative outlet part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Tarnay praised what Graverson has done to raise not only awareness, but action, in the community.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBrad is a complete hero,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cBecause it\u2019s all about visibility. The fact that the protest grew so big last weekend \u2014 it takes a lot for people to show up, right? And to see that he\u2019s really brought visibility to the South Bay, I\u2019m just so in awe of that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cBrad reminds us that one person\u2019s courage can awaken an entire community,\u201d Tarnay said. \u201cHe\u2019s shown us what it is to be civic minded. He\u2019s not only fighting for his rights but the rights of others.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Tarnay emphasized she was not speaking as an elected official, but as an attorney who values the rule of law and a parent concerned for the future of the country. \u201cI\u2019m just a mom who cares about the Constitution, and my kids\u2019 future,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Graverson likewise said his urge to protest is about the country his own daughter will live in long after he is gone.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t just a one-item protest,\u201d he said. \u201cThis involves our entire country and the future of our country, and the future of my kid. My god. I just can\u2019t see a world that has Donald Trump leading us into chaos.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Graverson acknowledges there\u2019s a risk in being so public.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of risk here, because my name is right there\u2026 it\u2019s going to be right there in your story, and it\u2019s right there on the internet, and it\u2019s out there in social media,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019re going to come after me. But Manhattan Beach is kind of an isolated little soft spot in Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n What concerns him more is the broader climate of fear and the behavior of ICE agents.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know who\u2019s training these ICE agents,\u201d Graverson said. \u201cThey\u2019re just going way beyond the law, stuff that no police officer would ever do. Pulling innocent people from their cars? No investigations, no crime scene, no nothing. Just pull them off, and shoot them, or whatever? It\u2019s scary. And it should be scary for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>Brad Graverson\u2019s Trump effigy, which hangs from his wheelchair. Courtesy of Brad Graverson<\/p>\n<\/a>Brad\u2019s Corner attracts an assortment of activists. Courtesy of Brad Graverson<\/p>\n<\/a>Melanie Mosher, of El Segundo.
\nMinneapolis changes everything<\/p>\n<\/a>Brad\u2019s Corner ICE Protest on Sepulveda Boulevard in Manhattan Beach. Photo by Kevin Cody
\n\u201cWhile I still have a voice\u201d<\/p>\n