The Socialist Movements Behind the LA Riots
While the Israel/Iran war seems to have taken all the wind out of the LA Riots, it’s important to know which groups were participating and likely funding the unrest.
Tensions were high Friday, June 6th, when David Huerta, President of the SEIU in LA, tried to block a van from entering the ICE facility and got himself arrested. But it was Assembly member Juan Jose Solanche who triggered the riots to start in earnest on Saturday, June 7th. Mr. Solanche saw a bunch of ICE trucks headed to what the world would eventually learn was an ICE office in an office park. But Mr. Solanche saw the Home Depot across the street from the office park and assumed that ICE was preparing to raid the Home Depot. He took to Instagram and started making phone calls to various Rapid Response Networks, whose whole goal is to try to prevent ICE from doing their jobs.
Because of Solanche’s assumption (and we all know what happens when you assume), a crowd gathered, which forced ICE to send officers out to protect the building, which triggered the crowd to get angry, which forced ICE to tear gas the crowd, which just caused everything to go up in flames for days.
On Monday, June 9th, a black truck was spotted dropping off some fairly expensive face masks for the rioters. The following Thursday, the FBI picked up the driver, Alejandro Theodoro Orellana, on the charge of “conspiracy to commit civil disorder.”
Alejandro “Alex” Orellana is a marine veteran who has been heavily involved with various socialist, Chicano groups around the LA area for years. He recently wrote an article for Fight Back! News claiming to be part of the Centro CSO’s Community Self Defense Coalition that supposedly chased ICE out of their neighborhood.