"We are out here fighting this!"
Reflections on addressing the LA City Council, the deaths of Renee Good and Keith Porter, and seeing in metaphor
Last night, we marched, and the world came alive with metaphor.
Hundreds of people gathered in Mariachi Plaza, part of LA’s historic Boyle Heights neighborhood in East LA. We gathered in memory of Renee Good, murdered by ICE in Minnesota. We gathered in memory of Keith Porter, murdered by an off-duty ICE agent in Northridge, CA on New Year’s Eve.
We marched to the Metro Detention Center in Downtown Los Angeles, where people have protested for months on end, watching white vans with no license plates come and go, bringing people in shackles into a crowded basement full of cages.
At one point, we walked across a narrow bridge stretched over the LA River, which is really a sea of concrete.
All around us, an industrial wasteland.
Behind us was the vigil for our murdered neighbors.
Ahead of us was the detention center, not visible yet but nestled somewhere in the city skyline.
The bridge itself was windy and cold, and it was dark, because people have started stealing copper wiring in order to survive.
To help each other find our way across this bridge toward a confrontation, people lit flashlights, pointing them at the ground to show the path.
In that moment it felt like the world around me was metaphor.
In that moment I felt a terrible clarity. We’re not “at a tipping point.”
We have tipped.
This is collapse.
I don’t like taking photos at night; I’m not good at it. I’m usually shooting on a 75-300mm lens, and that’s pretty bad in low light. It bums me out that I can’t see as well, and that I can’t capture on camera what I feel in the dark.
But last night, that didn’t seem to matter. I let myself feel it all, to understand what I was seeing, to absorb what it’s like to be alive right now, here, in this city, trying.
I just wrote the other day that I don’t like photos about protest signs, because it feels like taking a shortcut to an emotion that doesn’t come from the image itself.
But last night, that didn’t seem to matter, either.
Whatever it takes.
Whatever will move people.
Because I’m tired of being the only one seeing in metaphor. The signs are everywhere, and I know I sound like a crazy person, but I’m not sure how else to tell people what this moment is like.
“From Palestine to Los Angeles, we are out here fighting this!” we chanted on the bridge.
Let no one say we didn’t know.
Let no one say we didn’t try.
Last night I saw a truck nearly run a woman over and go racing toward the crowd. It turned in time, but I thought I was about to witness people die.
Last night I watched a fight break out among the crowd of protesters. One group burned a flag; the other told them to stop doing that; everyone started yelling at each other; someone got cracked in the face with a skateboard; someone got punched; people got tackled; the crowd moved like an amoeba, rolling and growing, shrinking and jogging, pulsing, until…
They rolled right past the TV cameras.
Six minutes later, LA Mayor Karen Bass tweeted:
The issue took care of itself; the crowd took care of each other; people licked their wounds and went their separate ways.
And the Mayor of Los Angeles chided everyone for it, repeating the tired warning to not “give them an excuse to escalate.”
As though they needed an excuse to shoot Renee Good in the face.
JD Vance says that ICE has “absolute immunity” to shoot civilians in the face.
They do not need an excuse.
And every news article I could find about last night’s march was centered on the fight.
I had a bit of an existential meltdown this morning when I woke up.
One of the first things I saw was a text from my friend Sue, who was once my tenth grade English teacher and the administrator of my high school newspaper. She said that, inspired by my photos, she’d gone to an early-morning protest against ICE in Atlanta, and that the ICE agents refused to look them in the eye.
I found myself telling her about the bridge over the LA River, and about the way the lights don’t work anymore to show the path to the Detention Center. I told her about the odd sense that I was seeing in metaphor, and about how even saying that made me feel crazy.
“You are not insane,” she said. “I promise.”
She probably told me the same thing twenty years ago, and it probably meant just as much to me then.
Today was the first LA City Council meeting of 2026, and they kicked off the year with a metaphor.
After 2025 — a year spent dealing with the worst natural disaster in the city’s history, and then an invasion by armed men sent by the government to terrorize Angelenos — City Council kicked off 2026 by turning their backs on the public and pledging allegiance to the federal government.
Okay, sure, they probably have to start the first meeting of the year like that because of something in the bylaws.
But, again: I can’t turn it off.
So instead maybe I can make people see it the way I do.
It was a contentious, busy meeting. Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez kicked things off by noting the deaths of Renee Good and Keith Porter, and she said she wanted to reassure the public that the council’s inaction was worthwhile, and that this year, they were ready. “The gloves are off,” she said.
While she spoke, one man in the gallery behind me confronted another, who wore a swastika on his hoodie.
Guess which one the LAPD kicked out for causing a disturbance, and which one they laughed with after doing it?
I’d planned to speak about something else, but instead I wrote something new from my seat, with the man in the swastika hoodie behind me, with Keith Porter’s mother crying out for justice in front of me.
Here’s how it went.
After I spoke, the council voted on two motions. One increased penalties for anyone who impersonates law enforcement, and the other — which I’m confused by and need to research more — suggests ways that the city can work with protesters to prevent escalation.
Councilmember Rodriguez stood in support of both motions, and she appeared to do exactly what I asked her to during public comment. “If you can’t do anything to reign in ICE or the LAPD, you need to tell us why,” I’d said. “Go public. Do something unprecedented.”
Without naming names, she said that the council has been prevented from acting by certain committee leaders who refuse to bring certain things to the floor for a vote. Committee leaders and council leadership, she said, are complicit in the violence happening on our streets, and she said the public is absolutely correct to be frustrated with the council’s inaction… which, again, she said was the result of certain members refusing to let them debate what they can do on the floor.
I don’t understand all of the context, and I’m going to need a lot more from everyone involved, but I’m glad Councilmember Rodriguez appeared to be listening today, and I’m glad she seemed to be making the rest of the council visibly uncomfortable.
Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson looked like he was straight-up not having a good time being back at work.
I don’t know where this is all going.
I don’t know what it’s going to look like.
But I’m logging out for the day, and I’m hoping we can all figure out how to cross that dark, windy bridge together and see what waits for us on the other side.
Thank you for writing this. It has given me insight into what is happening in the US. I live in Aotearoa New Zealand.