|
 |
Today’s edition of Huddled Masses reports on how Trump’s crackdown on immigrants is affecting street vendors—people with families and businesses—and how others in the community are organizing to help them.
If you see value in this kind of journalism, showing how big political stories connect to real people’s hopes and struggles, you can support this newsletter and our other work at The Bulwark by becoming a member. We’ve got a special deal going, where you can join for FREE for thirty days, so you can get a feel for whether membership is right for you. Check it out:
–Adrian
Street Vendors Hit Hard by Trump’s Assault on L.A.
“I want to live the American dream. . . . Just because I’m not a citizen doesn’t mean I don’t deserve a good life.”
|
| |||||||||||||||
 |
AFTER DONALD TRUMP DEPLOYED THE NATIONAL GUARD to Los Angeles last month, we saw images of ambushes outside Home Depot, rubber bullets flying, and tear gas deployed to put down anti-ICE protests.
But an attack on working immigrants is also an attack on the local economy, and while the economic effects of such actions might be less photo-ready than the scenes of violence, ICE’s abduction of street vendors (and intimidation of others) threatened their livelihoods. The consequences are now cascading outward into a community scrambling to help them.
Rudy Espinoza is one of the helpers, and boy, is he helping.
He is the executive director of Inclusive Action for the City, an economic-justice advocacy organization that is also a certified Community Development Financial Institution. That means they lend money to street vendors and small business owners to get them off the ground when they’re just starting out, or to keep them afloat during difficult times. And these are difficult times.
In light of ICE’s actions, the organization started an L.A. Street Vendor Solidarity Fund to get cash assistance to these small business owners.¹ So far, they have raised $159,000 on GoFundMe and $100,000 from philanthropic sources, with the money being distributed to a network of street vendors throughout the county in the form of $500 cash cards.
The L.A. community has stepped up in a major way, too.
BLVD MRKT food hall created a “NO ICE” shirt featuring a cartoon image of an angry L.A. logo stomping on a sad, melting ice cube, with the $7,000 in shirt revenue going to the street vendor fund. Big Bar in Los Feliz created Tropic Cart Crush, a guava Mezcal–infused cocktail with watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple, lime, jicama, agave, and tajin. (Frankly, it looks and sounds delicious.) They are similarly donating a portion of the proceeds to the street vendor fund.
“We’re thirty days into the siege here,” Espinoza told me. “Some of these vendors, if they miss one day of work, they can’t pay their rent.”
While it may seem like the group is raising a lot of money for street vendors, Espinoza is a bit frustrated by the tally so far because their similar fundraising efforts for workers affected by the Southern California wildfires earlier this year raised much more: $2.5 million.
He said the slower uptake likely owes to organizations being “worried about the political nature of what’s happening, and they don’t want to be seen supporting immigrants.”
The immigrants their donations would be supporting are people like a 27-year-old Los Angeles street vendor I’ll call Maribel, who works with her mother. (Some details are being withheld to protect her.)
Maribel is a Mexican-American woman who came to the United States at the age of 6. She was eligible for the deferred action program known as DACA when it was created, but her family didn’t have money to pay for the application, so it doesn’t cover her. In 2005, shortly after her family arrived, her mother began selling used clothes at the local flea markets, known as swap meets. Eventually, she was selling pallets full of returned clothes from stores like Walmart, Target, and Costco. Now, she and Maribel sell toys.
In May, Maribel’s father went to his court date. He never returned. The family learned he had been deported only when he called them from Mexico.
And when masked ICE officers descended on Los Angeles, raiding everything from garment districts to swap meets while grabbing workers—including U.S. citizens—and beating up landscapers, Maribel, her mother, and her U.S. citizen brother nearly became victims, too. The three of them ran and hid until the immediate danger had passed.
I asked her if she’s scared for her future, given the chaos and trauma of the last two months. Her answer stunned me.
“We’re living our normal lives. We’re not afraid,” she said. “Everybody calls us, but my mom tells them not to worry, that when you worry too much, bad things happen.”
But the state of their business is concerning. I asked her about it, and she was frank about their difficult situation.