The Sacredness of Protest

OpEd by Mike de la Rocha

Like millions before him, my father immigrated to the United States from Chihuahua, México when he was just seven years old. The son of a bracero farmworker, he grew up attending public schools in Boyle Heights and ultimately became the first in his family to graduate college. Actively involved in the civil rights movement, my father later became a university professor for over forty years who dedicated his life to advocating for the betterment of all our communities.

Throughout this time, my father instilled in me the importance of becoming civically involved and the power of grassroots organizing. As a child, I would attend countless rallies, fundraisers, and marches with my father and learned early on the sacredness of protest. And in those moments,I too fell in love with community organizing and saw firsthand the ways that movement building could lead to concrete policy and societal change.

Protest has always been more than a political act. It is a spiritual one. It is a collective expression of grief and hope, of refusal and reimagining. Protected under the First Amendment, protest is one of the most powerful tools we have to demand change and affirm our dignity. It has forced America to confront its greatest contradictions and inspired generations to come together to build something better.

But today, once again, tens of thousands of peaceful protestors in Los Angeles are being met with an excessive militarized response, criminalized by the very government meant to serve them. ICE raids, curfews, armed deployments of the National Guard and the Marines—these are not acts of protection; they are acts of intimidation. They are purposely designed to divide, dehumanize, and destabilize all of us.

This is not new. We’ve seen this before. And just like before, the people are rising.

At a recent Interfaith Vigil, I stood shoulder to shoulder with thousands of Angelenos—faith leaders, immigrants, young people, elders—all demanding justice. Father Greg Boyle, Valarie Kaur, Bishop Taylor, Rabbi Sharon Brous, and others reminded us of a simple truth: all families are sacred. We heard firsthand accounts of loved ones being kidnapped and detained, of fear spreading throughout neighborhoods, of federal policies ripping families apart.

What the federal government is doing is not about public safety, it’s about power and control.And in this situation, no one is safe. This excessive use of force that we are witnessing will not stop in Los Angeles. Trump and the federal administration continue to break the law and repeatedly ignore the Constitution. They are manufacturing fear, then exploiting it. And their ongoing attacks on the most vulnerable have made the situation in Los Angeles worse.

Los Angeles is a city born from protest. From the 1965 Watts uprising to the 1992 protests to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, we know how to confront injustice.We know how to organize, how to heal, and how to build something more beautiful in its place. For generations, we have been at the forefront of the civil rights and immigrant rights movements, and today’s protests arepart of that long legacy of social activism.

We will not let our communities be torn apart. We will not let lies define our city. We will not be silent in the face of fear. Protest is sacred because it reminds us of who we are. Because it brings us back to each other. Because it is how we are writing the next chapter of justice in Los Angeles and across the country.