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“Thank you for coming out this morning,” Sharon Nichols told the megaphone outside the Home Depot in Pasadena at 8am Wednesday.
As of Friday afternoon, no federal agents had raided the store on East Walnut Street. But the Civic Brigade, which monitors the outside and patrols the parking lot in search of ice agents, is not after the recent attacks at three Home Depots, especially despite federal court rulings limiting the sweep.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a columnist for the Los Angeles Times since 2001. He has won over 12 National Journalism Awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
Approximately 20 people gathered near the tent, which serves as the headquarters of the East Pasadena Community Defense Center. In the next 30 minutes another dozen or so arrive and there are some signs.
“Silence is violence.”
“Immigrants don’t party with Epstein.”
Cynthia Lunine, 70, read as “breaking his dark spell,” and had great indications, including the ominous image of President Trump. She said she wasn’t used to political activity, but “You can’t become an activist. If you’re an American, that’s the only option. The issue of immigration is absolutely inhumane, and it’s not Christian and you can’t stand it.”
Anit-Ice activists will march through Home Depot in Pasadena on August 6th.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Certainly, there are local supporters on Trump’s immigration crackdown. Activists said there aren’t many days when Home Depot shoppers shouted blasphemy and Trump cheers.
But the administration’s flames focused on violent criminals led to the great Los Angeles demonstration in June, which continues to drag people into the streets.
Dayena Campbell, 35, is a volunteer for community defense corner operations in other parts of Pasadena, and was later covered in the New York Times in the Colorado Boulevard newspaper, following the high-profile attacks. Campbell, a full-time student working in sales, was cruised through the parking lot at Home Depot on the east side of Pasadena in search of federal agents.
She started about a month ago because she thought this Home Depot needed its own community defense corner. She and her cohort have agents found multiple times in the area, warning day workers. She said about half is scattered, and half is held firmly despite the risks.
When asked about Campbell’s motivation, she said:
“Inhuman and illegal invitations. Lack of due process. Actions taken without anyone taking responsibility. Seeing people’s lives torn apart. Seeing families being destroyed in the blink of an eye.”
From just a handful of 12 volunteers, they appear daily, handing out literature, patrol parking, checking in to daytime workers, and sometimes bringing food. Nichols helps organize meetings, including marching through the parking lot once a week. There, protesters will present a letter asking Home Depot managers to “say no to ice in the parking lot and store.”
Nichols is a live run of LAUSD teachers, and when they ask for support each week, working and retired teachers answer calls.
“I’m screaming at my lungs,” retired teacher Mary Rose O’Leary took part in the chants “Ice from Home Depot” and “Hate, Fear, Fear, Illness and Immigrants are welcome here.”
Sharon Nichols has received support from another protester outside Home Depot in Pasadena.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
“Is immigrants closing this city to what it is… and what the path to legal immigration is closed to anyone who doesn’t have, $5 million or something?” O’Leary added that he is motivated by “the Christian ideal of welcoming strangers.”
Retired teacher Dan Murphy speaks Spanish and checks in with daily workers regularly.
“One guy told me, ‘We’re here to just work.’ Some of the guys were saying, ‘We’re not criminals… we’re just here… to make money and to pass by,'” Murphy said. He calls the attack a “bending of the “violent arm of what a dictatorship brings,” and he focuses on Trump’s Southern California.
“I personally take it. I’m white, but these are my people. I’m doing this now so I don’t hate myself later.”
Nichols focused on her work and raising her family after telling me she was an activist years ago. However, a combination of wildfires, cleanup and reconstruction and raids led to her activist retirement.
“The first people, the second responder who came out after the firefighters – had a day to clean the streets,” Nichols said. “I’ll wear an orange shirt all over town and clean it.”
East Pasadena Home Depot is an “important store.” Because it is a supply centre for the reconstruction of Altadena, “and we’re out there to show love and solidarity for our neighbors,” Nichols said. She said that striking the fear of deportation in workers’ minds is “inhuman and morally wrong for me.”
Nichols responded quickly when people who say it is illegal asked what they think is illegal, so what should they discuss?
“It blocks the complexity of the conversation,” she says, not taking into account the hunger and violence that promotes migration. Her husband said he left El Salvador during a war funded by the US 35 years ago
Pablo Alvarado, co-director of the National Day Laborer organizational network, will speak to anti-ice protesters on August 6th.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
They have families with legal status, undocumented and fear they will leave the house, Nichols said. I said I wrote about Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo as a child that was not documented. In that column, I cited Gordo’s friend, immigration rights leader Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Workers Organization Network.
“Full disclosure,” Nichols said.[Alvarado] It’s my husband. ”
That was news for me.
When the raid began, Nichols told her husband, “I’m resting the summer and having sweets, but I want to help, and I’m going to call my friend.”
On Wednesday, Alvarado appeared in Peptalk after Nichols welcomed the protesters.
“I have lived in this country since 1990…and I love it as much as I love the small village that is where I come from in El Salvador,” said Alvarado. “Some people might say we’re going to get into fascism, authoritarianism. We’re already there.”
He provided details of the attack at Home Depot in Westlake that morning, saying the question was not whether or not the Pasadena store would be raided, but when. The country easily accepts migrant labor, but it does not respect their humanity, Alvarado said.
“When humble people are attacked,” he said, “We’re here to be here.”
Nichols led the demonstrators out of the parking lot to the store, where she read aloud a letter to Home Depot asking her to stand up to the attack.
Outside, it was hot and humid in the morning, so several tanned day workers said they appreciated the support. But they were still terrified and craving work.
The 70-year-old shy Jorge actually asked him to take his phone number.
No matter what job I do, he said, call me.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
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