LA isn't burning. ICE has terrorized many into an ominous silence.
The threat of ICE raids on commencement ceremonies was credible enough that our Los Angeles school district devised plans to protect students from being kidnapped as they received their diplomas.
Apparently, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi and President Donald Trump, 'California is burning.' Here in Los Angeles, however, we know too well the smell of a serious conflagration ‒ and also the stench of political gas when politicians try to justify corrupt assertions of authoritarian power.
We are protesting now not because we are lawless, but because what is happening is a racially selective application of immigration laws that should have been reformed years ago. We are protesting because we still believe in decency, human dignity and respect for hard work and family.
Some protesting among us have succumbed to anger, while others have opportunistically caused mayhem the way some revelers do when the Lakers or the Dodgers win a championship.
Meanwhile the president and his ministers of cruelty, hysteria and lies are opportunistically causing far more mayhem, disrupting businesses and communities and devastating families and insulting our brave troops by gratuitously deploying them to our streets, pitting them against American civilians, trying to use the selfless members of our military as an authoritarian flex.
Rogue opportunists don't represent all LA protesters
California is not burning. LA is not burning. Some cars and other objects have been set ablaze by a few individuals who are willing to go to jail for their outrage, nihilism, pyromania or whatever. Their conduct doesn't represent me or most of the rest of us.
They certainly do not represent my students now living with terror and dread, watching masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in armored vehicles occupying the parking lots of their supermarkets, scrolling the rumors that scream across social media about the next ICE raid at another Home Depot or factory or a school graduation.
The threat of ICE raids on this spring's commencement ceremonies was credible enough that our Los Angeles school district officials devised plans to protect parents, grandparents, and other friends and family members and the students themselves from being kidnapped as they receive their diplomas.
My students didn't talk much about it during their last days of the school year. They were trying to be happy about the impending summer vacation.
They are exhausted. They spent more than a year of their childhood isolated from peers by the COVID-19 pandemic, many of them trapped in chaotic circumstances, watching the parents who are now treated as expendable when they were essential workers compelled to risk their health and their family's health to keep things going for the rest of us.
Some watched those parents get sick and in some cases die or infect grandparents or aunts and uncles who died. My students saw those sacrifices of their parents rewarded with vicious slights and condemnations, heard them called criminals for their very presence in this country.
Those adults now must wonder if it is safe to go to work anymore, if there is any other way to provide food and shelter.
This summer, end-of-the-school-year silence was ominous
We can only guess what is happening to many of our students and their families, though. Not only because of their silent stoicism but because, actually, most stopped attending classes ‒ more of them than usual, even for the last week of school.
I don't know what that means but I can imagine. One girl told me almost no one showed up recently at her usually crowded church.
With fear and apprehension come small doses of relief. When a graduation goes unmolested by federal agents. When a kid reaches out by email to say they and their family are all right ‒ and asked that I round their grade up to a B. The end of a school year usually brings a silence that is a break from the constant cacophony. This year, that end-of-the-day at the end-of-the-school-year silence was ominous.
This year, that silence reminds me of the cruelties. Not just the ICE raids and not just the threats to people who wish to exercise their First Amendment rights, but also the threats to Pell Grants and other forms of student financial aid that could derail the hopes and dreams of my students and undermine the hard work that my colleagues and I commit ourselves to every day.
As a parent myself, I know how difficult it is to go through adolescence with a child. It can be frustrating and terrifying, and the feelings of powerlessness can overwhelm. I cannot imagine what it is like to experience that and wonder if you're going to suddenly be seized by armed men and not know if you will ever see your child again.
So when I see the silent stoicism of my students, I don't know what to make of it. Is it fatalism or denial disguised as optimism or something else that I don't understand?
Whatever it is, my colleagues and I will continue to indulge it and keep things as optimistic as the kids want it, understanding that there could be some we won't ever see again and others returning to school without parents at home.
We will try to prepare ourselves to pick up the pieces left by the brutality that is being unleashed on some of the most vulnerable people in our city.
Larry Strauss, a high school English teacher in South Los Angeles since 1992, is the author of 'Students First and Other Lies: Straight Talk From a Veteran Teacher' and "A Lasting Impact in the Classroom and Beyond," a book for new and struggling teachers.
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