Southern California communities have been coming together in a series of Reclaim Our Streets events to uplift immigrant communities and protest ICE raids. Last week saw events in Boyle Heights and South Los Angeles. Around 250-300 people attended yesterday's event, which took place at Seoul International Park in Koreatown.
Koreatown is the most population-dense community in the city of Los Angeles. It is home to a diverse mix of immigrant communities, not only from Korea, but from many parts of Central America - El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca - and from Bangladesh, the Philippines, and many other parts of the world.
Koreatown's diversity is reflected in the organizations hosting the event: Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA), AAPI Equity Alliance, Alliance for Community Transit (ACT-LA), California Calls, Clean Carwash Worker Center, Korean Resource Center, K.W. Lee Center for Leadership, L.A. Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), L.A. Tenants Union, Pilipino Workers Center, Thai CDC, Trabajadores Unidos Workers United, and others.
Two speakers related their distressing experiences of family members kidnapped by ICE during the Ambiance Apparel workplace sweep in the downtown Fashion District on June 6, the first day of ICE's intensified actions across Southern California. At Ambiance, ICE kidnapped 45 workers, among them 15 members of Koreatown's Zapotec community. The brother of a victim spoke of inhumane conditions, including how abductees were moved around, sleeping in vans with no access to restrooms or showers. A detainee's daughter spoke of workers being woken up and forced to sign documents they did not understand.
Several leaders spoke of the common struggles experienced by many immigrants, and the importance of communities coming together to support and protect one another.
Speakers did not mince their words when calling out the unacceptable violence and cruelty of current ICE terror.
Aquilina Soriano Versoza, Executive Director of the Pilipino Workers Center, put it this way:
This is not just about... people and families... impacted in our communities. This is an attack on Los Angeles. This is an attack on California. On all of us. The idea that we can be a diverse and strong community - where we are a majority of people of color, here in Los Angeles, where we thrive."
The event wasn't all speeches. Neighbors came together to share food, to listen to music, to make art, to share information. Community members gathered to share a peaceful time together in a park, in the midst of violent dehumanizing times.
