On the ground in LA with TroubleNation

Race2bhuman is standing up for their neighbors

When Los Angeles resident Cindy started her group Race2bhuman a decade ago, she didn’t actually think of it as political. She had recently begun working for KIPP, an education organization that helps kids in downtown and South Central LA. Most of the kids they serve, along with the majority of her coworkers, are people of color and Cindy realized she wanted to make anti-racism a bigger part of her life.

But under Trump, supporting her Black and Brown neighbors swiftly became political. And now, her group is part of our network TroubleNation! Race2bhuman meets once a month to, in Cindy’s words, “process what’s going on, learn in a fun way, and do sh*t.”

With everything going on in Los Angeles in the past week, of course, she and her group showed up to support their immigrant neighbors. She also shared with us what they’ve been seeing on the ground at the protests (spoiler: it’s not a riot).

She says all the protests she’s seen have been peaceful. Despite that, she’s seen LAPD officers and the National Guard absolutely everywhere. She and her group attended a vigil at a park downtown, then walked 6 blocks to the federal building alongside a thousand other protesters, all holding candles. Supporters were on the street handing out water and food, she says, and the only yelling she heard was people chanting the words “peaceful protest.”

People just want these illegal ICE raids to stop. At all of the recent graduation celebrations she’s attended this week through her job at KIPP, Cindy says that immigrant parents have been terrified. It’s difficult enough to build a life in a new country and make sure your kids get a great education, and these raids are tearing the LA community apart.

We’re so grateful to Cindy for her work and her boots-on-the-ground perspective. What we’re hearing in the news media and the Trump administration clearly doesn’t match what’s happening in LA.

“I feel good about our group,” she said. “We’re scared, we’re angry, we’re outraged, we’re all those things. But once we come together, we always leave feeling more empowered.”

That’s exactly what we want for every TroubleNation group across the country.