Two good articles about LA under Trump, two unconventional restaurant reviewers, a book about a park
Five things I liked looking at this week.
Sahra Sulaiman’s writeup on the new sanctuary city ordinance for Streetsblog
Sahra wants you to leave all of her articles understanding the subject as well as she does. In this one she walks us through what the sanctuary city ordinance does and doesn’t do, and what the Trump administration might do in response. (I worked in Councilmember Raman’s office when she and Councilmember Hernandez submitted the motion to develop it a year ago).
One thing I found interesting in Sahra’s article: a particular rhetorical tic of Tom Homan, who was Trump’s ICE Director for part of his last term and “border czar” for his next one, and who in between has been spending most of his time going on TV as his job.
Whenever anyone mentions cities implementing sanctuary policies, Tom Homan always threatens to send more resources to those cities. “If I gotta send twice as many officers to L.A. because we're not getting any assistance, then that's what we're going to do,” he says in response to someone asking him about the LA ordinance.
This is a little peek into Homan’s personal vision for deportation raids: as a punishment for disobedient fiefdoms, not a reward for loyal ones. If he thought his agents were actually offering a public service, wouldn’t he threaten to send fewer of them if cities didn’t comply? That’s what Trump does! In 2018, Trump threatened to pull ICE out of California entirely: “We’re getting no help from the state of California. Frankly, if I pulled our people from California, you would have a crime nest like you’ve never seen in California. All I’d have to do is say ‘ICE, Border Patrol, leave California alone,’” he said. Reminiscent of Trump’s beloved mobster schtick that Matt Pearce wrote about on his great Substack yesterday. “Nice state you got there, be a shame if…” etc.
So LA is either going to get double the agents, no agents, or something in between. Which will it be? What actually happened in Trump’s first term?
Well: there were a few high-profile raids on LA businesses and neighborhoods, but overall many, many fewer deportations than during the Obama administration. ICE made about 8,000 arrests in the LA area in 2018 compared to about 25,000 in 2013.
The difference was, in fact, probably a result of sanctuary-type policies. ICE achieves most of its deportations by getting local law enforcement to hold people in its jails until federal agents can scoop them up, and some jurisdictions stopped respecting the detainers. Meanwhile, blue cities in red states like Atlanta and Dallas did see their ICE arrests go up significantly in the first months of 2017. The whole picture was a bit more consistent with Trump’s “champagne for my real friends” than the Homan “real pain for my sham friends” approach.
But none of it necessarily tells us anything about the next four years. If we’re forced to make predictions just by reading the vibes (which is also all anyone in power is doing), it does feel like the second term is more about inflicting pain than doling out perks.
A revenge-driven immigration policy in LA could mean targeted operations on restaurants George Clooney has invested in, but it could also mean sending the 40th Infantry Division to conduct mass raids on entire neighborhoods. Both may sound like a joke but are completely plausible. The 40th has been deployed in LA before — during the LA Riots, which also saw, as Sahra points out, the largest immigrant detention in LA history.
Alissa Walker on whether Trump will fund or defund LA transit projects for Torched
Alissa — most enjoyable living writer about LA, already putting out the city’s best local coverage in her new newsletter/media outlet — is asking some of the same types of questions as Sahra:
As the boss of the single most powerful money-sending entity in world history, Trump has a lot of power over funding for some of LA’s large-scale infrastructure projects that were intended to serve the 2028 Olympics. Will he expand on those projects to take credit for the Games? Or kill them? Or get distracted and do nothing?
Alissa consults a lot of well-informed people and looks back at Trump’s last term to point toward an answer. But then, as you can always rely on her to do, she lays out a path that LA can walk all on its own.
Steph Cha is a distinguished novelist who grew up in LA and has written at least one great book about it: Your House Will Pay, which I read earlier this year and liked a lot. Then I found on her website that she has written thousands and thousands of Yelp reviews. Mostly restaurants but not exclusively. Yes, she has “Elite” status, along with 27,700 “helpful” reactions and 818 “You’re cool” compliments.
Steph posts a new review at least every two or three days, and now I check in on them about once a week. She has a complicated relationship with Yelp and seems to be actively embarrassed that she posts on it so much, but her reviews are very breezy and funny in what is traditionally a punishing literary format to read. This sounds weird but it’s nice following a family of four you’ve never met having a good time around the city.
Brian E Morton is a Youtube guy/possible social experiment who films himself going on little food and history tours while giving himself “challenges” like getting around without a car or a phone. And buddy, is this guy having some fun bopping around town!
The joy of having a whole day to sit on buses and eat historic food runs through these videos from the front-facing narration to the editing to the production value, which is getting more involved with every video. He gives almost everything he eats a five out of five. He seems to get pleasure from everything he sees, tastes, and hears, including himself. The whole Brian E Morton package is such a distinct character that I almost worry I’m being made fun of for liking him.
His restaurant choices are often bewildering: during the “foods invented in LA using only public transportation” challenge he goes all the way to the doomed Santa Monica Place Mall to get a smoothie from a food court chain I’d never heard of, then gives it a five out of five despite admitting it is terrible. But in the spirit of his own reviews I love them despite their imperfections. This one is a ground floor opportunity: he only started putting videos up about a month ago.
There’s been a lot of writing and talking about MacArthur Park this year:
Steve Lopez wrote eight columns about the park in two months, the first one inspired by a threat from the owner of Langer’s Deli to shut down his restaurant and effectively implement a pastrami trade sanction if City Hall didn’t somehow get rid of the large and growing population of people who are homeless and using drugs around the park.
In the final days of his losing re-election campaign, Councilmember Kevin de Leon traveled outside his own district to go to the park, where he held a press conference and shot a campaign video. Over shots of shopping carts, people fighting, and a small fire, de Leon says that the conditions at the park are “the agenda of the Socialists of America.” (Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who he didn’t mention by name, represents the park and was supported by the Democratic Socialists of America - Los Angeles, as was de Leon’s opponent Ysabel Jurado.) The Langer’s owner is also in the video.
You can feel it on the wind: we are going to be hearing about MacArthur Park even more next year. Council District 1 is now up for election, and given the role the park played in a neighboring race, it’s safe to anticipate that it will be a centerpiece of many campaigns for its home district. One not-subtle signal: one of the participants in de Leon’s campaign video was Raul Claros, a former Affordable Housing Commission member who I’ve been hearing for months is going to run against Hernandez. The park is probably going to figure in the mayoral election as well.
I think The Rent Collectors is probably the best book you can read to get prepared. The story mainly revolves around one murder, but it’s about gangs and immigration and street commerce and the prison system and so much more. An extraordinary amount of research perfectly arranged into a very intense, gripping narrative. I am permanently in search of books like this and wish I were still reading it.
Appreciated these recs! I just finished reading The Rent Collectors because of this post and really enjoyed it.
Thanks for the Recs Hayes!