Every so often, for good or ill, Los Angeles astonishes itself. Twice in the past half-century, the city that most embodied the post-World War II American dream was wracked by massive racial rioting that shook the city to its core. Twice in the past half-century, L.A. also became the first American mega-city to elevate racial-minority politicians to its top office -- electing as its mayor the African-American Tom Bradley in 1973 and the Latino Antonio Villaraigosa in 2005, in both instances, with heavy white support.
This past Saturday, Los Angeles stunned itself yet again, as more than half-a-million largely Latino, preponderantly immigrant demonstrators jammed the streets of downtown to protest the draconian and xenophobic immigration bill that House Republicans passed late last year. Commentators have noted that this was the city's largest demonstration in recent decades, which is a little like characterizing a storm that drops five feet of snow in the Hollywood Bowl as unusually inclement weather.
In fact, Los Angeles had never seen anything like Saturday's outpouring, which flooded downtown with more than 500,000 totally peaceable demonstrators. L.A. has never been a city for public outpourings of any kind; that's not been the Angeleno way. My hometown is no stranger to demonstrations, of course, but never to one that was even one-fifth the size of Saturday's. San Francisco, center of a metropolitan area less than half the size of L.A.'s, usually hosts larger demonstrations than Los Angeles does.
The very lay-out of L.A. tilts against protest. We have fewer public parks and large public spaces than any comparable American city. In 2000, the city cancelled its planned millennium celebration when officials realized there was no place to hold it. And this absence of public space reflects what has long been L.A.'s civic -- or anti-civic -- ethos. We've been a city of private purposes and public silences, of multiple unplanned catastrophes and precious few planned campaigns.
But somehow, nobody remembered to tell all this to L.A.'s huge immigrant population, and on Saturday, in all ignorance of city's culture of noninvolvement, they redefined Los Angeles. Of course, they've been redefining Los Angeles in less spectacular ways for the past 20 years, as anyone who's looked at a construction job-site or an office-building janitorial crew or the student body of any L.A. public school can attest. But the role that the immigrant population has played in transforming the city's political culture still isn't widely understood.
At Saturday's march, for instance, all 500 marshals were provided by Local 1877 of the Service Employees -- the janitors union. Six years ago, the janitors themselves galvanized L.A. with a successful three-week strike in which they paraded down the city's streets and encountered -- yet another moment of civic astonishment -- motorists who, though delayed by the marches, honked in support and cheered them on. Throughout their strike, the janitors also had the backing of virtually every L.A.-area elected official, and for good reason: They had helped put them in office.
For, in the election-season endeavors of the L.A. labor movement, it's the janitors and the hotel workers -- local unions comprised disproportionately of non-citizen immigrant members -- who walk the most precincts and make the most phone calls. Their civic participation, and that of their fellow immigrant activists in other unions, is one reason why California became so blue a state, with such a heavily Democratic House delegation, in the late ‘90s.
Now, in the wake of Saturday's march, the political clout of these low-wage, can't-vote immigrants has reached all the way into the U.S. Senate. In part, that's because they command the support of immigrants who can vote. In polling of the nation's immigrant population released yesterday (and conducted in nine languages), legal immigrants opposed key provisions of the House bill by overwhelming margins (73 percent opposed arresting undocumented immigrants as felons) and backed paths to legalization similar to those passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday. After all, the legal immigrants are often relatives of the illegal ones.
On the whole, L.A.'s immigrant-labor-Latino alliance is mercifully bereft of nationalist demagogues. More than once, immigrant-dominated districts have voted for non-Latino labor liberals over their Latino opponents. Villaraigosa, who addressed Saturday's rally, speaks more of a common good than of particularistic ones, and enjoys the support of every ethnic group in town.
Which is not to say L.A. has overcome its rifts of class, race and language. The non-Latino city and the English-language media were plainly stunned by the magnitude of Saturday's protest -- though on balance, it's hard to imagine a more healthy surprise. In laid-back Los Angeles, it's the immigrants who are forging a culture of civic activism, and teaching Angelenos how to be engaged Americans.
Harold Meyerson is editor-at-large of The American Prospect.