I went to the protest today. It was pretty good. MoveOn organized it along with some local progressive groups. This being LA, there wasn't *too* much patriotic "this is not what America is about."

Unfortunately, child separation, detention, imprisonment, and superexploitation of labor are very much what this country has been about, and continues to be. We need to change that, to align everyone more the the idea of Human Rights, and not try and pretend that the country is always normally open to immigrants.

These myths about this country - or any country - are perpetuated by politicians, schools, and the media, in the goal of creating unity. In the connected media age, these myths don't stand up to scrutiny, because they are not true.

It doesn't mean we have to be cynical, and try to perpetuate the horrors of the past, so we can have a similar future. That's what Trump wants. We can be idealistic. Many peoples' realities are far more complex and even more diverse than our collective national mythology. We can find something in there.

At the protest, I saw a lot of #abolishICE signs. Some of the speakers chastized one of the other speakers, Mayor Eric Garcetti, for collaborating with ICE. That was a surprise, that it was allowed. They made good points.

LA just accepted 425k to work with DHS.