In Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, local business owners and residents express complex emotions regarding recent protests against ICE. While they share solidarity with the protesters’ anti-immigration raid cause, they also grapple with the damaging impacts on their community, including graffiti and looting. As the protests escalated over several days, one business owner, whose family has historical ties to incarceration during WWII, reflects on their sensitivity to these issues but also the difficulties in supporting a movement overshadowed by violence. Despite understanding the majority of protesters are peaceful, they struggle with the consequences faced by their businesses.
Being Japanese American, we were put in the camps. My mom and dad actually got married in a concentration camp in Wyoming. So we're very sensitive to this cause.
It's hard to keep support of a group when you're being victimized by a small minority of them. Ninety-nine percent of the protesters are law-abiding and they're here to protest.
Collection
[
|
...
]