On My Block
A Black Lives Matter protest took me down memory lane.
Photographs taken by the author at a Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles, CA.
Los Angeles, CA. I grew up around the corner from Pan Pacific Park — the same street corner I just saw on the news with a barricade of policemen.
The news was covering the late-night result of the Black Lives Matter action earlier in the day, one I had marched with just hours before. The protest started at the park, where I first played AYSO soccer as a four- or five-year-old member of the Blue Angels. The pit was designed for flood runoff, next to where my great aunt said the city used to have drive-in movies. I remember when The Big Help from Nickelodeon came to install a new playset in that pit. I have stood at that intersection hundreds, if not thousands, of times.
At that corner, the one I just saw on the news with a barricade of policemen, is a great imposing statue of a seated Haym Salomon. Haym Salomon was a Polish-Jewish immigrant who helped finance the patriots in the American Revolutionary War. The statue has no plaque explaining who he is. You have to look it up yourself.
My neighborhood is orthodox Jewish. My parents have lived on this street since the late 1980s. I grew up on this street. My sister and I used to play with another pair of sisters who lived down the street until they could no longer play with us because they were getting ready to get married.
It’s strange seeing your street corner on TV amidst protests and police violence. I saw on TV the same crosswalk that I had waited at before opening my first bank account across the street when I was 18. The just-offscreen 7-Eleven is where I hid in the low space of my mom’s front seat when she ran in late one night for milk and a drunk man was going up to people’s car windows. I ran to that 7-Eleven for eggnog at Christmas. Bought Zebra Stripe gum there as a kid.
I had heard about the Black Lives Matter march from a White friend from law school, Madison. She asked if I wanted to go and gave me the address. 7600 Beverly Blvd. I knew before I typed it into Google Maps that it was my park. The park that used to be a gritty lot fenced in with barbed wire where I learned to ride my bike. In the mid-2000s, they extended the park to encompass my block, too. Soon after, the underground construction of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust went in, noticeable for the six granite pillars in front. One pillar per million Jewish lives lost.
The Sunday before, the New York Times published a fraction of the 100,000 lives lost in the U.S. to the coronavirus pandemic. I have been waiting for a print publication to publish a front page of the thousands of Black lives lost to police killings. The Washington Post has scratched the surface with a page that tracks people killed by police with guns. But so far in the mainstream, I have seen only an Instagram square that some Latinx friends shared with a lit candle in front of the names we have been saying. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. Eric Garner. Sandra Bland.
I told my friend I was nervous about going to the march, because my Black dad is over 70 and coronavirus is still a very real threat, and because I had seen what the protests could be like on live streams from Oakland protests. I had no problem going to the Women’s March in 2017. Or even 2018 and 2019. By 2020, though, I was disillusioned by the distractions of in-fighting in the movement and did not go.
It’s strange seeing your street corner on TV amidst protests and police violence.
But why was I more afraid to go to a Black Lives Matter march than to a women’s march? Why had I only attended one rally in five years of living in Washington, D.C., a historically Black city that gentrification had reshaped from “chocolate” to “chocolate chip”? I had donated to multiple local relief organizations that said Black Lives Matter. I had written to a news organization about their tone deaf coverage of George Floyd and the protests. I had been revising cover letters and resumes all week to show my commitment to diversity and social justice. I needed to actually show up.
On Saturday morning, I looked up what to wear to the march, wanting to keep myself safe and protected. I consulted a friend who had observed for the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) the night before. It was okay to wear just a shirt and not a sweatshirt.
I had some time before heading to the park, so just before noon, I ran next door to give a babka to our next door neighbors. I left it on the front porch, not wanting to touch the doorbell or crowd the doorway. Our neighbor, an old woman who used to show me the dolls she had collected from around the world, heard me and came outside to ask what it was. “It’s babka!” I called. In grade school, for a project on World War II, I had interviewed her husband on their front patio. He had been hidden as a child during the Holocaust.
“Jessica?” she asked. I had forgotten I was wearing my face mask and a baseball cap. She didn’t recognize me as I lay the loaf on their doormat. Black people had been killed for less.
My friend and another woman I was friendly with from law school, Lydia, arrived. We greeted each other, made air hugs and joked about wishing to meet under other circumstances. We were happy to see each other after so long in quarantine. I introduced them to my mom, and we all left.
As we walked behind the gymnasium where celebrities play on community basketball teams, I remembered the day before, when I had heard a man shouting in pain. From my window, I could see over the fence into the park where a homeless man was making his way down the curved path to somewhere else. During quarantine, it wasn’t uncommon to hear more shouting and noises from outside than usual. Or maybe we could just hear them better without the traffic.
We came to an open field, near where we took my nephew to the new playground to swing. The green was so filled with people, I couldn’t see the jungle gym. My mom left us to try to get closer to hear the speakers better before heading back home. We had been listening to the earlier remarks and tests of the sound system from our bedrooms earlier, the sound carrying over the wall. She kept listening, too, after she got home.
I stood with Madison and Lydia in the crowd, listening to speaker after speaker. At the beginning, we could not hear very well due to the helicopters perpetually hovering, so I looked around. Everyone was in a mask. Everyone was standing rapt.
A man in camouflage pants, a bucket hat, a white muscle tee, and a go pro strapped to the center of his chest wove through people quickly. “Undercover cop,” Madison said. The woman in front of us, holding a protest sign on the back side of a Target box turned to say, “Did you get that vibe, too?” We laughed together.
Two people walked around offering masks for those who had none. More than one woman walked through the crowd burning sage. I thought about how this must be the best smelling protest there ever was. Across the crowd, I saw the feathers from an Indigenous headdress I had watched being unloaded in front of my parents’ house earlier swaying with its wearer.
After about an hour of comments, a few people left. As they left, they offered unopened water bottles to strangers on their way out. I wrote the National Lawyers Guild jail fund hotline on my arm in Sharpie, copied from Madison’s. I loaned Lydia my Sharpie to write it on her own. We used hand sanitizer after sharing the pen. Madison and Lydia let people take photos of their arms. Madison wrote the number on her sign, “JUSTICE FOR GEORGE FLOYD! ABOLITION NOW! Jail Hotline → NLG → 310-313-3700.” Kendrick Sampson, one of our speakers, made us recite the phone number over and over before we moved.
We chanted the names of men and women killed by police. Say his name. Say her name. They called the names of some people protesters knew, and some people who did not make the news. The leaders asked us to say the name of the person you were thinking of. I said the name of my cousin’s father.
Patrisse Cullors reminded us: “We are not marching for Black deaths. We are marching for Black lives.” And the march began.
We walked through the park. Over the baseball diamond, some young people had climbed the fence and were perched atop the diamond’s backstop. One flew a massive black flag that read Black Lives Matter. They waved it around smoothly.
“We are not marching for Black deaths. We are marching for Black lives.” And the march began.
Pan Pacific Park is hilly, and we went down before we climbed up. Some people who live in the park sat at the concrete picnic tables with their shopping cart or on their phone as we processed past them. It was a typically beautiful Los Angeles day with the Hollywood Hills to the north and the park’s trees cooling us as we walked. It seemed like we were protesting in a forest. I wondered what a photo of this would look like, us shouting at unlistening trees.
We came back up to where there used to be a community swimming pool, next to the library where I got my first library card and the rec center where my dad went for yoga after his stroke. The parking lot funneled us out onto the street, to the left of the tree where every morning the summer before, I watched a woman who seemed to be my age roll up her sleeping mat from the sidewalk, stretch, and move to sit in the front seat of her car, which grew dustier by the day. When I came home from school at Thanksgiving, the car was gone.
We turned right onto my street. Cars were stopped and honking. People’s fists hung out almost every window in solidarity. Some had signs. Parking in LA is a beast, and my neighborhood is tough on a normal Saturday. These protesters held their signs up through windows and sunroofs as they leaned on their horns, not minding they were in a standstill or that there was no chance at parking.
Some people kept their windows up and did not say much. Everyone is trying to go somewhere.
We turned onto 3rd Street, marching past Haym Salomon. It was the route I used to walk in the dark hours of the morning to get to early shifts at Barnes and Noble in the summer of 2007. This corner of Pan Pacific is currently under construction. We did not wait for the lights to change. Traffic stopped on its own.
People offered water and snacks from their cars. It seemed like everyone had come out in support. I wondered how many were looking for parking, and how many were just caught in traffic but ready to make noise for us. The parking lot of the Chase bank was full. Was it a busy day at the bank? Or taken spaces?
Towering over this part of 3rd Street is the backside of Park La Brea, the largest housing development west of the Mississippi. Its nondescript towers and multi-family cottages were built in the 1940s for returning GIs. The Palazzo — more luxurious housing — went up in the same complex around the same time that The Grove was installed across the street in 2002. The Grove, an outdoor shopping mall designed by John Caruso, is the second highest grossing mall per square foot. It has a trolley running through and it lights up stupidly lovely saccharine Christmas decorations each year.
When The Grove and the Palazzo went in, the storefronts of the neighborhood changed — but the residents didn’t. When my high school teacher called it “that Gucci lifestyle” in 2006, I knew what part he meant, the tourists and television settings. But it wasn’t mine. At some point, my neighborhood went from not really having a name to being Fairfax and to having a Snapchat filter that named it after a shopping mall.
As we marched between the towers and The Grove, Park La Brea residents held up signs through their fences, while Palazzo residents took photos from their balconies.
We had been chanting since we started walking. “Prosecute killer cops. Defund the police. Say his name. What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now! Say her name. When we fight, we win.”
We kept going. My eyes welled many times that day, the same way they had at the women’s march. The way they always do when people say I matter.
Outside of the Ross where I picked up last minute supplies for my sister’s baby sprinkle last year, a pregnant woman waited for the 17 bus holding a sign that read, “ALL LIVES DON’T MATTER UNTIL BLACK LIVES DO.” I have been saying it exactly as she wrote it ever since, though I have known this way before now.
We kept going. My eyes welled many times that day, the same way they had at the women’s march. The way they always do when people say I matter.
We eventually came to the corner of 3rd and Fairfax, home to the Original Farmers Market, where I got hot chocolate and a donut from Bob’s every Saturday morning for years as a child. The slogan of the Farmers Market, which has stood at that corner since 1934, is “Meet us at 3rd and Fairfax.”
The crowd swelled. The chants continued. Madison, Lydia, and I started asking each other what was going to happen next. Madison, who sometimes observes for NLG, looked around for cops. We saw none. The chanting continued. A man’s mask was wet with sweat at the edges where it met his cheek. One woman’s sign up ahead read, “I want to see my son grow up.” A little girl stood behind her, with braids and barrettes, her sign resting on her toes. I looked around at fellow Angelenos and thought how beautiful the crowd was, some of these people could be famous. Some of them were. But their being in the streets and shouting that Black lives matter was most beautiful of all.
Madison, Lydia, and I made our way closer to the center of the crowd to stand on the curb across from the Paper Source, where I buy the best birthday cards. It is across the street from the Writers Guild of America, where I applied for — and was rejected from — a job within two days the spring before I started law school. On the fourth corner, the CVS parking lot where my sister ran into a pole one day after school when the CVS was still a Sav-On, next to the now-gone Payless where we bought new shoes for school every year.
I wondered what people would write about today, a peaceful protest with people standing and shouting atop a bright orange LA Metro bus. Some marchers had climbed to the top of all four streetlights; one rested with a leg dangling like the DreamWorks logo, another ramrod straight with his right fist in the air like Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics. From this corner, we could hear a speaker making closing remarks. Things were winding down. Lydia and Madison had to get back. I was getting thirsty.
Across the street, the fancy Grove sign in turquoise script, on its usually pristine cream wall now covered in graffiti, looked out of place. The postal service truck caught turning left onto The Grove Drive had been sprayed to read “ACAB” in red. Its driver, a Black woman, waved at us as we walked by around her. Inside her truck, she had a single unbloomed white iris laid next to her on a box of mail.
We walked up Fairfax to Beverly. We would make a big square of our route to avoid going back through the throngs of people. The streets we approached were mostly empty. When we got to Fairfax and Beverly, a truck covered in protests of a judge someone had suggested I apply to clerk for was the most notable thing. Police were diverting traffic. I looked at the boarded up Regal Cinema, where I had seen countless movies (Moulin Rouge!, Josie and the Pussycats for the second time) for $2, until it went out of business years ago. Thanks to its jutting marquee, its dusty sidewalk usually hosted men or women as they slept.
We turned right at Beverly, edging along CBS Studios. Across the street, an ABC News van sat in the lot of the Bagel Broker, best bagels in Los Angeles, who last week texted me to get a free cream cheese with purchase of a dozen bagels. A special occasion breakfast for any traveler who has stayed with my parents. I told Madison and Lydia about seeing James Corden leaving the CBS lot with Zac Efron for carpool karaoke and how you can tell he is driving through my neighborhood. Later, on Twitter, I learned the police had parked their squad cars in the CBS lot and used it as a staging area during the protests.
As we continued east, a new wave of protesters headed west, back towards Beverly and Fairfax. To our right, protestors had laid their signs down to eat at Erewhon, the original fussy organic grocer, where I buy novelty-flavored sparkling waters and where an elementary school classmate’s dad had been the manager for years. I watched Michael, who owns the restaurant where my family has celebrated many birthdays, pace back and forth between his restaurant, open for carry out, and the new storefront he had recently opened after years of delayed construction. The protestors streamed past, chanting and holding up signs. It was quiet compared to the din from earlier. At the corner, we waited for the crosswalk to give us permission.
A block later, past the post office, a second wave of protesters came. One of the newer hip restaurants across the street had boarded up their windows. I thought it was overzealous. We passed the blocked-off and empty parking lot of the park where the protest had started. I thought it strange to have blocked that convenience from the protesters. People had abandoned cars in red zones with their hazards on in front of fire hydrants, eager to join the movement. We crossed the field, Madison picked up a water bottle from the pop-up food station for her drive home. She, who has attended many more demonstrations than either Lydia or me, told us how an empty water bottle being thrown at the police often changes the tenor, acts as the match that ignites.
After they left, I went inside. I sat with my parents watching the live footage of what was happening just a 15-minute walk from our home. I saw Kendrick Sampson on MSNBC standing on 3rd Street at the front of a throng, bracing themselves and holding back. I texted friends who watch Insecure that Kendrick was on TV and he was a compelling speaker at the rally. That we could do worse. One responded, “I told you he’s a babe.”
And then. The reporter says the police are shooting rubber bullets at the floor because someone has thrown a water bottle. Madison was right. A man with a megaphone stands above the entry to a shop telling the police to back up. Minutes later, almost immediately it seems, it seems like I looked away and when I look back a police SUV is on fire. Suddenly, it looks like everything is on fire.
Minutes later, almost immediately it seems, it seems like I looked away and when I look back a police SUV is on fire. Suddenly, it looks like everything is on fire.
I go to my childhood bedroom. Sit in its bright pink walls, on the duvet I picked out at Bed, Bath & Beyond in 2006 to move to college. I lie down on my bed with a blanket over me, trying to watch an episode of Little Fires Everywhere. My windows are open, as they almost always are in Los Angeles. The thrum of helicopters is coming inside. It is the third episode, where Lexi, a White girl, steals a story from Pearl, a Black girl, to get into college because she cannot think outside of herself. “When it happens to one of us, it’s like it happens to all of us,” she says, before buying Pearl a dress like it’s hush money. I keep hearing sirens. I cannot tell if they are in the show or outside my window. I put my phone down, turn it off; I cannot focus. The sirens continue.
My cousin in South Los Angeles, near where the 1992 riots were, asks if I am okay. I say yes, I left the protests 20 minutes before things turned. We talk about looting and vandalism. She tells me the Grove is on fire. I have worked at the Grove twice. The second time at Banana Republic, where the manager told me I would never finish anything in my life when I told her I was quitting after three days.
I feel dumb and fake for leaving the protest before it was dangerous. I feel like a coward still, today.
My parents go out. I walk around the house with the lights out. Unmoored, as if I were in a daze. Spiritless, I keep thinking to myself. My eyes are glass. The windows are open. I can smell smoke. Is this the scent of a city on fire? The smell of 1992 in South Los Angeles?
On Twitter, people say it is right that the protests were in West Hollywood and not in Black and brown neighborhoods. I sit in front of the television, the illuminated scenes of my neighborhood, of Washington, D.C., of New York as the only source of light. Around the corner from my house, a White arm takes a hammer to the glass door of a restaurant that has been empty for months, but that had hosted many a brunch for my family. I know because I see it on TV.
My older sister drops in on Alexa. I hear her disembodied voice from atop the painted flea market hutch in the kitchen. “Hellooo?” I think it is someone in front of the house or in the back of the house until I recognize her voice, which sounds like mine. I walk down the hall and lean over to look her in the face, hands on my knees. She tells me to come over to her house. I cannot because curfew is soon, at 8pm. She and I have never had one before.
In the kitchen, where I watch, I cannot hear the helicopters as well. I think of when my friend’s fiancé referred to them as “ghettobirds,” and I did not like it, but I did not say anything and I did not know why. I cannot put my finger on why I said nothing or why I did not like it. I try to walk away from the kitchen. I sit in my room and a friend from high school texts me, asking if the protests are near my house. I tell her, “Yes. It was the park by my house.”
I sit in my room and a friend from high school texts me, asking if the protests are near my house. I tell her, “Yes. It was the park by my house.”
I am playing games with everyone who texts, everyone I text. I am not overreacting. I am not being dramatic. I walk through the house chanting in my head, “Don’t cry Jess don’t cry Jess don’t cry.” I make a joke every few texts. I try to keep it light. Do not worry about me. I am fine. I don’t cry.
“Explosions happen, big booms I don’t know what,” I text her. “Omg, I’m sorry,” she says. I can think of nothing to say back.
A friend who was tear gassed while observing for NLG in Oakland the night before texts me. He had told me to bring goggles to the action. I followed directions. We are both trying to process. He cried himself to sleep the night before. He keeps getting teary eyed today, but there is no more gas. We are both hopeless and exhausted.
“This is the power the police wields over black bodies and communities,” he says. “It can’t go on like this.”
My parents come home before the curfew. Mom and I go outside, stand on our front walk and look to the corner. Four police officers are spaced from sidewalk to sidewalk across my street. The street whose name I saw on the news tonight. Beyond them, in the middle of the intersection, a dumpster on fire. An actual dumpster on fire. A phrase we used as a joke in 2016, the year five Black men were killed in the month of July alone, the year Donald Trump was elected president. Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Joseph Mann, Abdirahman Abdi, Paul O'Neal. We lost Prince and Muhammad Ali that year. “2016 was a dumpster fire of a year.” I had never seen a dumpster fire until now.
Cars zip down our street, flying over speed bumps towards the cops before pulling a U-turn and zooming back the other direction. In the intersection, an SUV full of military men passes through. The car is so full, the men hang off of it, their bodies the dangling legs of an armed centipede. We go inside our house.
My parents’ friends call. We talk about our neighborhood, their old one. They moved away to Hancock Park a few years ago. We talk about my birthday tomorrow and cocktails. We drink wine. My mouth is dry, so I drink water, too.
At 9, a friend calls from New York to sing me Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday” on EST. I take the call in my room. I am grateful for the relief. She and I learned to grieve together years before. At 10, I ask a friend in Minneapolis if she is okay. She is safe.
My parents go to bed, but I stay up a bit longer. I go to my bed and feel the chopping of the air above me, around me, giving me a migraine. I close the windows to find some quiet. I still hear the sirens.
I hear the first helicopter over our house the next morning at 5:29 AM. Our curfew lasted until 5:30. I am awake.
Most Recent
Editor’s Pick
