This weather is weird. The heatwave finally broke by the start of the weekend, but it still didn’t feel like fall. There was a light drizzle Saturday morning, but, by mid-afternoon, it was warm, sticky even, less like L.A. and more like New York was that time I spent most of a weekend chasing canceled flights back home. I’m wearing a baggy denim jacket – Kneecap pinned to one pocket, “Fuck ICE” fixed to the other – less because of the weather and more to cover up the swollen, red bumps on my arms. I got attacked by mosquitoes the other day and no fewer than seven bites have kept me in a state of itchy misery for the past 72 hours. Still, I’m wandering down Hill Street, looking for a protest that may or may not be happening. I could have sworn the couple announcements that flashed by on my Instagram feed said it was at Pershing Square, but that sounds more like a concert happening behind a set of temporary fences.
Off in the distance, a few people wearing keffiyehs round the corner of 6th Street. I pick up my pace and follow their route, landing in the midst of a crowd marching onto Broadway, chanting slogans of the “Free Palestine” variety. Today is an international day of protests in support of Palestine marking one year since a “ceasefire” was announced and Israel continued attacks on Gaza. There is a good amount of people gathered in downtown Los Angeles with everyone from seniors to small children in the mix, although the bulk of the group looks and sounds like college students. Some people hold printed signs from groups like the anti-war A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition. Others carry homemade ones. Still more hoist Palestinian flags into the air. One flag reads “Saoirse don Phalaistín,” which is probably the only thing I’ve learned via Instagram in recent memory. It’s Irish for “Freedom for Palestine.”
Did many people even know that there was a march happening today? I just happened to see a couple posts earlier in the week and made note of that because it had been a good while since I had seen news of any kind of protest on social media. In fact, most of the activist type of posts I used to see have disappeared from my feed. Maybe they’re all getting buried by clip upon clip of talking heads reciting Chat GPT scripts? Idk.
I think about censorship a lot. The previous night, I watched The Secret Agent, the Brazilian movie that came out last year, and went to sleep with The Hairy Leg on my mind. In the movie, it seems like a surreal aside, but The Hairy Leg was a coded way to report on police violence in Brazil during the military dictatorship. I wonder if tactics like that would work here. I guess you could say that emojis function in a similar way on social media, but, I think that’s more to throw off the troll bots than to beat censors.
It’s pretty unlikely that journalists in the U.S. would write anything that requires audiences to read between lines. That’s not so much a comment on the “literacy crisis” as it is a possible reason why our reading comprehension skills are in decline. Today, an audience won’t even see a story unless it is so on-the-nose that it attracts enough bot comments and morons-with-opinions to convince the algorithm that the post is relevant to the people who actually chose to follow you. That’s the censorship we don’t talk about, either because people think they still have one simple hack to game the platforms or because they’ve somehow convinced themselves that the U.S. isn’t a Big Tech oligarchy.
I snap a few photos, trying to avoid getting people’s faces in the shots. I guess that’s a form of self-censorship, but I don’t know what the decorum for photos is anymore. Technically, if you’re in a public place, like standing in the middle of a Los Angeles street, photos are cool. Plus, if you’re really concerned about turning up in a protest pic, you would wear a mask. That should be common knowledge at this point. But, surveillance tech has become as insidious as this October’s mosquitos and, if people have tried to cancel Ms. Rachel, what does that mean for the rest of us who dare to say that killing 74,000+ (and counting) people because they’re Palestinian is wrong and, perhaps, our own country should not be funding a genocide? So, what’s the responsible thing to do? I don’t know. I don’t even know if responsibility is something people care about anymore.
There are press photographers on the sidelines, occasionally jumping into the crowd for a shot, but that doesn’t mean the stories will be published. There’s a good chance this protest won’t get any coverage. It’s a peaceful event. The most action came via a couple brohards in front of Grand Central Market, who heckled protesters from behind a cup of beer. There was nothing to fulfill the “angry leftists run amok in lawless downtown Los Angeles” angle that gets clicks. I stick around for an hour or so and then walk home. Everything is, visibly, very normal.
I’ve seen The Secret Agent twice now, once in the theater and once since the Criterion Blu-Ray hit my local video store. What struck me during the second watch was how superficially normal everything appeared. The movie takes place in 1970s Brazil and a lot of the action is related to the dictatorship of the time. Still, there were people partying during Carnaval, listening to Donna Summer on the radio and watching The Omen in a movie theater. It’s the little absurdities, like the Hairy Leg story or the fake police station, that let you know that something is off. As the story unfolds, you find out about the corruption, violence and general government-sanctioned thuggery that’s hidden under the layer of everyday life. That’s a bit jarring when you grow up in the U.S. and automatically associate authoritarianism with World War II movies. Here, we’ve been indoctrinated to think that if we aren’t face-to-face with, literally, Hitler, any claims that we’re living under fascism or a dictatorship are overly dramatic. Godwin’s Law and all that.
Everything is normal and everything is weird in L.A. this year. I swear the Metro schedules are getting more erratic. A 20+ minute wait for the A Line on Sunday afternoon would be unacceptable in any functional city and, yet, this is the 2026 L.A. normal. I decide to hop on the E, which isn’t delayed, and walk home from Little Tokyo. Ciclavia is happening, so the streets surrounding the Metro station are packed with families, all happy to be riding their bikes. That’s the vibe people seem to want in Los Angeles right now, getting people together for community fun that’s optimized for Instagram. Show the world a thriving, joyful and family-friendly Los Angeles. Meanwhile, the Metro runs when it feels like it, half the downtown streetlamps are out and ICE is still kidnapping Angelenos.
Today, there are just two protestors in front of the detention center on Alameda. One reads the names of people killed by ICE. The other holds a sign that says, “No Gestapo.” Standing on the sidewalk is another sign with a photo of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was killed by an ICE agent in Houston last July.
A few blocks away, there’s an exhibition, UAC: The Never Again Now, happening at Museum of Social Justice, a small space in the basement of La Plaza United Methodist Church on Olvera Street. It’s a multidisciplinary project about children impacted by family separation and detention. I’ve seen the exhibition before, but stop by again because there’s a lot of information in it. This time, I’m stuck on the smaller details, like the word Sisyphean next to a mass of people rolling piles of money uphill in one of Oscar Magallanes’ artworks, and the quote in another piece that notes, “U.N. experts alarmed by child rights violations in US immigration procedures.”
On another wall, there are large reproductions of letters from incarcerated kids. More than once, I read “I want to go home,” in the scratchy printing of an elementary school kid. A short sentence with a lot to take in. It hits me hard. I think it would for anyone who isn’t a complete asshole. But, even here in L.A., I’m not sure how many of those people are left. That’s the other thing that happens when everything is normal and everything is weird. You just don’t know who is on which side right now. And, really, everyone has picked a side.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Follow on Instagram or sign up for the weekly, Beatique newsletter for updates on new stories and gigs.
Listen to the Beatique Mix for October, 2026, featuring music from Hercules & Love Affair, The Strokes, ADULT., Tinashe, Gorillaz and more.
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