Why the LA Dodgers Stood Up to ICE

The Los Angeles Dodgers have long had a transactional relationship with the city and immigrants from the city. In 1949, the city seized land for the Dodger stadium in Chavez Ravine of a Mexican community which had transformed green space into “a Shangri-La Immigrant”. Families came to the park and said: “Your uncle lived where the third base line ends in marble.”

Then in the 1980s, a young Mexico launcher, Fernando Valenzuela, became an icon of Dodgers. When Fernandomania arrived, Angelenos of Mexican origin filled the rafters of the stadium and the management of the team welcomed the crowd. Today, going to a game is seeing Chicano multigenerational families adorned with Blue Dodgers and eating Dodger dogs. They are the heart and soul of this base of fans and that is why the pressure has increased on the champions of the World Series in this current climate of terror in the face of Latin communities.

The inhabitants of the city were waiting for the owner of the team, Mark Walter, intervene and say something about the ice riots in Los Angeles. And yet, while their fans were thrown into trucks by armed ice agents without unhappy, or at least, this is what these thugs said they were; There is no way to confirm who they were really – the dodgers tried to stay outside.

This is no longer the case. On June 20, Dodgers announced that they would give $ 1 million to families of immigrants “affected by recent events in the region”. The team did not exactly denounce the ice, but the message was clear: he understood that he could not work with the Trump administration and expect his fans to remain silent.

The events that led Dodgers to promise money to their immigrant fans began a few hours before a match between the Dodgers and the Padres of San Diego when a line of black SUVs and white vans tried to enter the stadium parking. The inhabitants of the vehicles were masked and they wore neither badges nor mandates. The photos were flying around social media while people wondered if the Dodgers authorized an armed immigration control point without a mandate inside and outside the stadium. But the safety of the dodgers, on orders from top to top, would not allow them to enter the stadium field. While the extra-legal army which is looking for another place to install, dozens of people presented themselves in the opinion of a tweet to protest and film them. The federals rushed, to fight (and lose) the battle of Lan again – this time in public relations.

Residents congratulated the Dodgers when the team announced on social networks that he had produced who really buys their expensive tickets and sent Trump attack dogs on their way.

Ice and Dhs, on the other hand, have been snippy and defensive since they were shown the door and initially, and ridiculously, just displayed in a touched way, “false. We were never there.” Then they admitted that customs and border patrol were there while photos and videos flooded social networks. Emily Phillips of a quick response network from Echo Park reported that the federals said they needed the stadium to treat prisoners because it was “too dangerous”. This should frighten and offend everyone that a unmalling and frightened group becomes masked and armed and stops people without a mandate.

Let’s be real. It would be a mistake to think that the Dodgers, whose property and (some) played the White House several months ago and kissed the ring, were born again. This was done because of all the people who courageously resisted the LAPD, the National Guard, the Marines and whatever the group of heterogeneous agencies to California – a state which, like Greenland in the spring, clearly wants to seize. And yet, the actions of the federals here are also an escalation. They expect to be able to use a stadium to “treat” those suspected of being undocumented – or even worse, that they can remove people from the crowd from a ball game and throw them in the back of white vans. Given the history of the stages used around the world as mass holding cells, with all kinds of small pieces perfect for “improved interrogations”, it would be particularly traumatic for those linked to countries where sports arenas double as torture rooms. “The fact that these raids continue is what we, Angelenos, should be very concerned.

Rather, we must make sure that the calculation of the property of the Dodgers is not only ticket sales or ratings drop. They need to know that they will be publicly humiliated if they beat the eyelids in the direction of Ice. The owners must get up not only for their profits and not even for their fans, but because they owe it to the ancestors whose houses that the team has destroyed in Chavez Ravine. Minimum repairs should not be held with their community of fans and players in the face of a manufactured crisis. The property of the Dodgers did not want this fight. But it came to them, and the fans force them to choose the right side.