THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER16, 2020 17
1
L.A.POSTCARD
BYE,JACKIE
“
I
t’s the last time, can you believe it?”
“This is our last one. What are they
going to do on Wednesdays without us?”
Helen Jones—a Black woman, whose
son, John Horton, died in the custody of
the L.A. County Sheriff ’s Department,
in 2009—and Baba Akili, a veteran or-
ganizer and Black Lives Matter leader,
stood outside the Hall of Justice, in down-
town Los Angeles. They have been there
every Wednesday for three years, protest-
ing, along with other activists and fam-
ilies of people killed by the police at gro-
cery stores; in malls; on bicycles; while
in the midst of mental-health crises. To
the protesters, the building is the Hall of
Injustice: the headquarters of the sheriff ’s
Matter movement. Urged on by fel-
low-activists who wanted to see more
Black women in the Senate, she ran in
2016, when Roy Blunt, the Republican
incumbent, was up for reëlection; she
came in a distant second in the primary.
In 2018, she set her sights on Lacy Clay,
losing again. But this year, buoyed by the
surge of B.L.M. activism, and despite
being slowed by a nasty case of what was
likely Covid-19, which sent her to the
hospital twice, Bush broke through.
She said she’s not concerned about
the way that many Republicans have
treated Congress’s young progressive
women of color as punching bags—Oc-
asio-Cortez, for instance, who cam-
paigned for Bush during the 2018 pri-
mary. “I have been dealing with anger
from the right wing, from extremists,
from white supremacists, since 2014, and
I’ve learned the best ways for me to deal
with it,” Bush said. One of those ways
is to shrug it off and laugh, as she did
when Mark McCloskey called her a
“Marxist revolutionary” at the Repub-
lican Convention. “If they couldn’t scare
me in the scariest time, which was Fer-
guson before everybody started to get
used to protests, when all of that was
new, am I bothered by what they’ll try
to do to me now? Not at all.”
—Bruce Handy
department, which is responsible for many
of those deaths, and the office of District
Attorney Jackie Lacey, who has been cau-
tious about charging law-enforcement
officers. The day after the election, the
street was the site of celebration. Lacey
had been voted out.
“Day One, she’s been in bed with law
enforcement,” Jones said. “We thought,
She’s a woman. She’s a mother. She’s a
Black woman. She understands our plight.
Who knows better than her? It was ex-
actly the opposite.” Lacey, who opposed
numerous pieces of criminal-justice-
reform legislation and sent twenty-two
people of color to death row, reportedly
raised seven million dollars, mostly from
police and deputy unions. Her opponent,
George Gascón, who is Cuban-Ameri-
can and a former L.A.P.D. officer—he
also served as police chief in San Fran-
cisco and, later, as the city’s D.A.—ran
on a platform of decarceration and de-
creasing police funding. He outraised
Lacey nearly two to one.
Dr. Melina Abdullah, a co-founder
of Black Lives Matter L.A., arrived, in
a B.L.M. T-shirt and beaded cowrie-shell
earrings. What looked like military planes
passed overhead; L.A.P.D. and sheriff ’s-
department helicopters buzzed back and
forth; the streets were blocked by parked
police S.U.V.s, lights flashing. Abdullah
looked serene. “We have been demanding
for years that Jackie Lacey be account-
able to the constituency that elected her,
especially Black folks,” she said. “She
continues to run and duck and hide and
refuses to meet with us.” Right before
the primary, Abdullah led a bus full of
protesters to Lacey’s house. “We headed
out to the deep valley, where she lives,
and set up chairs on the public sidewalk
in front of her house. We prayed, we
poured libations, we did a land acknowl-
edgment, and then we walked to her
front door and invited her to join us.”
When the door opened, Abdullah said,
it was Lacey’s husband, a retired inves-
tigative auditor for the District Attorney’s
office, pointing a gun at her chest. “He
says, ‘I will shoot you, I don’t care who
you are.’ He had his finger on the trigger.”
(In August, the state attorney general’s
office filed assault charges against Lacey ’s
husband, to which he pleaded not guilty,
and Abdullah recently filed a civil claim.)
Los Angeles is the most populous
county in the country; the city of L.A.
is among the world’s largest jailers. A
progressive district attorney would be a
triumph for the criminal-justice-reform
movement. The crowd was giddy with
victory. “Bye,” one protester had written,
in eyeliner, underneath one eye. “Byeee
Jackie” read a banner stretched between
two protesters. On the flatbed stage
of the organizers’ truck, “Fuck Donald
Trump” played from a set of speakers.
Next to the speakers was a suitcase with
a sign on it saying “Pack Your Shit Up
Bitch.” A security announcement: Avoid
“undisciplined factions that have come
to disrupt.” And be aware of undercover
cops in the crowd.
Akili pointed out a parked police van.
“I have never seen them that close,” he
said. He is seventy-two, was wearing a
“#byeJackie2020” T-shirt, and had a glit-
ter tattoo of a black-and-gold fist on
his arm. He recalled, as a child, hearing
his parents talk about the murder of
Emmett Till. He was happy about Gas-
cón’s win, but wary. “We have no illu-
sions,” he said. “He is in an institution
that is set up, designed, and implemented
to punish, and in America if you set up
an institution like that it will always
punish Black people more and more se-
verely.” He went on, “There’s been at
least nine murders, mostly by the sheriffs,
since George Floyd. Control the threat
and suppress the danger, that’s what
they’re trained to do. We are seen as a
threat and a danger. The difference now
is at least whoever occupies that office
knows that we are going to be expect-
ing some accountability.”
On the other side of the Hall of Jus-
tice, the sheriff ’s department had amassed
a huge concentration of trucks and dep-
uties in riot gear. They said they were
there to protect the building. A legal
observer in a neon-green hat and a face
mask approached with a notebook, ask-
ing questions. “I can’t hear you!” one dep-
uty shouted three times, until he went
away. More legal observers gathered on
a street corner, watching as people joined
the event. Two beefy men with buzz cuts
approached purposefully. “Here come
some more undercovers,” one of the ob-
servers said. “You can tell by the body
language, build, their whole demeanor.”
A reporter tried to follow them, but, con-
spicuous as they had seemed a moment
before, they disappeared into the crowd.
—Dana Goodyear
