Los Angeles

I’m going to take a quick detour from my normal Papa-oriented writing (though this is still related to him).

If you’re confused who Papa is, Papa is my late father, Rolando Vergel de Dios, who passed away on November 29th, 2024. If you want to know more about the kind of Dad that Papa was to me, you can read about the lessons he taught me here.

Los Angeles is my home. It’s the only home I’ve really known (except for some fleeting memories of Chicago when I was very young). What’s happening here now is something I can’t stay silent about. ICE has stepped up raids in my hometown, snatching high school kids on their way to graduation, snatching parents away from their children, snatching workers out of parking lots at Home Depot. The people of my city are, understandably, pissed. Los Angeles is a wildly diverse, vibrant city of dreamers, hustlers, and creators. That doesn’t mean we’re meek or don’t know how to show out when we feel like we’re being attacked. Protestors admirably showed up at the Federal building to send the message that ICE isn’t welcome here.

I can only speculate about the motivations behind the White House’s next move. There were a couple hundred people who showed up to shout at ICE at the Federal Building downtown. A couple of them got rambunctious and threw some stuff. And then it was over. Apparently, that was enough warrant co-opting the CA National Guard and sending in the Marines, which Governor Newsom, Mayor Bass, and LAPD Chief McDonnell all said was unnecessary. Regardless of the motivation, this is a bright red line. Predictably, things got more tense with this escalation.

That brings me back to Papa. Papa is Filipino. He and my mom met in Manila in the 1970s and moved together to Canada after getting married. The official reason was that my mom’s assignment with the French Trade Commission in Manila was ending and her new assignment was in Calgary. The unofficial reason was that they needed to get away from stifling conditions of martial law in the Philippines. They fled.

If you’re not up-to-date on your Filipino history, I’d encourage you to read up on this period. Ferdinand Marcos was the President of the Philippines and was democratically elected in 1965. In 1972, as he was approaching the end of his second term (which was the term limit in the 1935 constitution), he signed Proclamation No. 1081. The proclamation declared martial law in the Philippines, suspended democratic elections, and consolidated power for himself as the sole dictator of the country. The ensuing years were not a nice time to live in the Philippines. Cronyism, kleptocracy, imprisonment without due process, and extrajudicial killings were the norm.

Papa had stories from this time. As a young man on a night out with his brothers or his friends he said you would always know when Marcos’ cronies would enter an establishment. Generally people would rush for the door to avoid inadvertently catching their ire. He recalled the time that guns that my grandfather had kept from the war were confiscated by the Barangay Self Defense Units, Marcos thugs who went door-to-door ensuring that the wrong people couldn’t defend themselves from the regime. He talked about the checkpoints on the roads during curfew hours that, as a movie producer, he had cleverly figured out how to get permits to allow him to be out after hours for film shoots.

I’m sharing this part of his life because of what is happening here in the US. Papa’s siblings who still live in the Philippines (which is still very much not a stable democracy itself) check in on us regularly with concern. They’re checking on us because they know the signs. They lived it. And they’re telling us that it’s happening.

We’re quickly reaching a point of no return. We already have National Guard deployed and Marines on the way. What they want is for us to back down and be afraid. To obey. We can’t let them do it. Papa came here because this country promised him that what happened in the Philippines couldn’t happen here. He dreamed of life in sunny California. He left behind a whole life he could have lived alongside his siblings because he dreamed of (and achieved!) something better. I can’t let that dream die, not without a fight.

See y’all on the streets.