The most recent Los Angeles riots reflect, among other things, the response of immigrant activists to President Trump’s crackdown, and the latest resurgence of organized left-wing activism, which had been relatively quiet in the early months of the new administration. A less widely remarked factor, however, is the emerging and complex nature of class in contemporary America.
Historically, particularly in the Marxist canon, the belief was that the proletariat would demand change and overthrow the bourgeoisie. This is a very different story from what is happening in Los Angeles. The unrest here is not primarily a movement of organized working people, but the outgrowth of a heavily racialized politics pushed to the extreme by a small, but militant radical core. This structure has long characterized LA’s disorders. In the city’s past riots, notably the 1965 Watts conflagration and the Rodney King outbreak in 1992, the predominant color of protest was black. This year, it is brown, reflecting the salience of immigration and the fact that Latinos now represent roughly half the area’s population.
LA County, whose population approaches 10 million, is the epicenter of a nationwide demographic shift. Home to over three million immigrants, an estimated one million of whom are undocumented, hailing overwhelmingly from Mexico and Central America. This part of the county’s population is increasingly marginalized, poor, and economically disillusioned.
The economic situation reflects a collapse of opportunity. Once a middle-class haven with a broad industrial base, Los Angeles now suffers the highest poverty rates in the state and among the worst among the country’s big cities.The city, once a manufacturing powerhouse, has lost industrial jobs over the past decade at a higher rate than ALmost ANY major metro areas. Latinos represent the vast majority of the labor force for California’s declining construction and manufacturing industries. In past decades, these industries have provided newcomers with opportunities to gain skills, buy a home, and even start their own business. Now, recent immigrants confront a landscape of failing schools and dilapidated parks. Things are particularly bleak for Latinos; Los Angeles ranks at number 105 out of 107 on the 2020 Latino Upward Mobility Index.
This all comes at a time when Los Angeles, as a recent Chapman University study reveals, severely underperforms the nation in terms of producing high wage jobs. Even Hollywood entertainment, one of the state’s high-end industries, has lost jobs due to technological changes and incentives offered by other states and countries, depriving young Angelenos as well as migrants of high-wage opportunities.
The increasingly multiracial middle class, families, and the upwardly mobile flee the city, leaving Los Angeles divided between the economic underclass, highly paid professionals, and what Harold Meyerson calls the “new middle class” of public employees. In this economic configuration, LA Latino incomes and home ownership rates (adjusted for cost of living) are among the lowest in the nation.
Given the bleak economic situation, many who can leave the city do so, either to suburbs like Downey or Paramount, where the initial Home Depot protests took place, to the heavily Latino Inland Empire, or to other, more affordable and better governed, states. Overall, Los Angeles county, despite its almost uniform adoption of sanctuary status, has seen its foreign born population drop in the last decade. Both Los Angeles County and the city are losing population. The state’s Department of Finance predicts that the population of Los Angeles County will fall by more than a million people by 2060.
As others leave in search of economic opportunity, many of the poorest are left behind, repeating a pattern that played out in the Rust Belt. Progressive politicians like to talk about how they prioritize such people, but in reality, their policies, notably the climate agenda, have created what attorney Jennifer Hernandez aptly calls “the green Jim Crow.” Hernandez describes how regulations, notably related to climate change, have had the effect, as was the case with Jim Crow laws in the South, of keeping the working class (which in LA is heavily Hispanic) down.
This leaves a population confined to the low-wage economy, including those whom ICE has been arresting in the past two days. To be sure, some unions, notably Service Employees International Union, have embraced and helped direct the demonstrations. SEIU organizes workers at the low end of the labor market, and, in contrast to historic labor attitudes, embraces the undocumented, even as some suggest they lower the wages for native workers.
Instead, SEIU pushes for higher wages for lower-skilled workers, which has already cost an estimated 36,000 thousand jobs in fast food. New legislation mandating $30 an hour pay for hotel workers may push the hospitality industry to further automation.
While they may lament these developments, the radical fringe nonetheless sees unemployment and mass destitution as fresh fodder for a class war. Many activists come from comfortable backgrounds, and are funded by both taxpayers and non-profits. These committed ideologues often sport keffiyehs or masks and count on friendly media presenting law enforcement as the primary perpetrators of violence.
“But most immigrants do not want to destroy capitalism; they want to thrive under it.”
But most immigrants do not want to destroy capitalism; they want to thrive under it. Latinos are generally more optimistic about the future than non-Latino whites. Critically, Latinos still believe in and cherish the American Dream. When asked about the most important factors to succeed in the United States, 94 percent said “a strong work ethic and working hard.”
Fighting “the man” is not their priority. Indeed, Latinos also boast some of the highest rates of voluntary enlistment and military service. They represent the fastest growing population in the military, making up about 16 percent of all active-duty military. The number of Latino police increased 82 percent from 1997 to 2020.
Ultimately these protests are largely performative; they lack mass support but are instead dominated by relatively small numbers of activists. Many undocumented Latinos may passively detest the Trump orders, but as of yet they do not seem prominent in the current unrest. Performative rioting may make great television, but it ignores the root economic causes of distress. Burning Waymos, ravaged buildings, and Palestinian flags are unlikely to attract more jobs to the region.
Where does all this lead? Not to the racialized civil war dreamt up by the left—and embraced by some right wing radicals. Instead, we will see a new kind of geographic division. As places like Los Angeles become effectively ungovernable, the racially diverse middle and working class will continue to flee the city for more conservative and law enforcement-oriented areas, both inside and outside the state.
In this shift, Trump and his billionaire backers are the likely winners. Most Americans oppose illegal immigration and are hostile to the demonstrations. The antics of the left, ostensibly in service to the struggling poor (but also the worst criminal elements) simply reinforce MAGA’s vision and diminish the chances of a reasonable, humane, and secure immigration system.
What we see in Los Angeles is an uprising in the name of a lumpen proletariat with no or insecure employment and a powerful criminal element. The law-abiding majority will mow the lawns, raise the kids, and wash the dishes of the progressive overclass. They may be allowed to protest and work for low wages , but they will find little help in their effort to ascend beyond bare necessities. This is not what the promise of California, or America, should be, whether for newcomers or longtime citizens.