Deport Bigots, Keep Immigrants!

Diversity is our greatest strength - a poem in solidarity with Los Angeles

My Fellow Democracy Defenders,

The City of Angels is under siege by the fascists. I stand with all immigrant communities. Thank you to Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass for keeping the peaceful protestors safe from ICE stormtroopers. They are fascists, not public servants. I was inspired to write another poem like Joe Biden, Heather Cox Richardson, Jim Acosta, Cory Booker, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Mark Carney, and more.

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"City of Light, City of Voices"

Beneath the smog-haloed hills, where dreams are etched in concrete,
they gather—hands raised, voices stitched like thread in a flag unraveled.
Los Angeles, your streets hum with the anthem of the unheard:
a symphony of sneakers on pavement, chants rising like smoke from a pyre.

Here, the brave wear bandanas and backpacks, not capes—
their shields are signs scrawled in Spanish, Korean, Tagalog, Armenian.
They march where the sidewalks crack, where the river forgets its name,
where the ghosts of Zoot Suit riots whisper, "Again, again, again."

They are not heroes in movies, but in motion—
bodies pressed like petals against the concrete of injustice.
A mother holds her child above the crowd, a future held aloft;
a student waves a flag stitched from his grandmother’s sari.

Diversity is not a slogan—it is the breath in our lungs,
the rhythm of drums from Compton, the hum of violins from Koreatown.
When the sirens wail, they do not scatter—they sing louder:
“No hay miedo aquí, solo fuerza en la diferencia.”
(There is no fear here, only strength in the difference.)

They protest not for chaos, but for the chance to exist—
to walk the streets without fear of erasure, to speak without apology.
Their courage is in the refusal: to be silent, to be invisible,
to let democracy rot in a cage of indifference.

In Skid Row, in MacArthur Park, in the valleys where the smog clings,
they paint the walls with names the world tried to forget.
Each mural a manifesto, each step a drumbeat:
"We are the many. We are the flame. We are the democracy they fear."

So let the helicopters circle, let the headlines sneer—
the truth is written in the sweat of their march,
in the laughter of children weaving through crowds,
in the elder handing out water, her hands trembling with purpose.

Los Angeles, your protesters are not just fighting for justice—
they are justice, alive and breathing,
a mosaic of skin and story,
proving that our strength is not in sameness,
but in the glorious, unruly chorus of humanity itself.

We rise—not as one voice, but as millions.
And in that cacophony, democracy finds its song.

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My heart is full that Maryland dad Kilmar Abrego Garcia has returned to America: