This wasn't crowd control  it was a deliberate calculated menacing attack  on peaceful Hispanic protestors.
Protesting is  not  a crime
and these people were doing nothing violent or destructive.
( No I am not saying everyone involved remained non violent or non destructive during the  entire fiasco.)
I AM saying those I witnessed in these circumstances were not.
  
  What I saw was exhibitionist intimidation.
It was a clear message from Trump.
Violent ego theater designed to terrify any person thinking of standing up.
It was precise,
humiliating,
,and meant to demoralize .  
We watched it.
We recorded it.
Felt the sick weight of knowing the people doing it could claim letter of the law while committing the spirit of state terror.

A pretty youngish  Hispanic lady is holding a sign  near a barricade. She has  it in both hands  . It's raised up  above her  head The sign talks about her child one of the  at least 1,583  still missing  CHILDREN  
from  Donald J. Trump's
first term in office.
She’s turned away from them, sign raised .
Cameras catch her from the side and back
  watching, the whole thing clear and slow like a  youtube livestream nightmare
shot on bad film.
Behind her, the line of riot gear armored  officers, is losing their fraying patience. .  They don't issue anymore  orders
They don’t shout,
they don’t negotiate.
They aim.

The first canister screams and misses.

She hasn't seen it or was distracted.
The second and 3rd follow  in rapid succession and  it becomes  clear they are  aiming them  directly at her .
She flinches at the  sound but hasn't looked  back to see  the  wall coming at her. ,
keeps her sign up,
trying to get the cameras’ eyes,
trying to show the world what’s happening.
Then they fire again, and again,
each cylinder a blunt instrument launched with the intention to harm.
Finally  as they close the  distance  one projectile  slams directly  into the square middle of  her lower back
with a thunderous, metallic oofing  impact.
She goes down hard
Her fingers slacken on the white  cardboard. The air fills with  her black hair
the crowd starts screaming
burning, with the chemical  cloud of so much  tear gas.
It's broad daylight ,. It was quiet and almost peaceful.

Before she can gather her hands to push herself  up
they assault her
wrap her hair in gloved  fist and yank.
They are  on her  now  in  force screaming
tearing at her simple  clothing
like they are hauling away and enraged animal.
They strike and pummel and shake her .
She gets roughly zip tied finally .
They drag her face down
across the pavement
then the asphalt.
Eyes  blackening and swollen, tears and snot streaming
lips busted and bleeding

skin scraping,
She’s  choking and bleeding with the stench of the gas in her lungs..
No mercy. No pause.
Just deliberate, humiliating force.

Nearby, a young man who was filming with his phone also had  his back to them.
They suddenly surged  forward into him
He lazily keeps  moving away,  half  trying to comply with their order,
He sadistically  becomes their next object lesson.
He steps slowly begrudgingly  where they want,
they shout.  "DISPERSE"
   His  slow shuffle It is not enough.
Their cadence shifts.
A group of  head to toe  armored officers in black   surges forward like a practiced wave.
They grab him by the backpack,
not a gentle steer but an iron twist, spin him like a ragdoll, and slam him
face and neck into the concrete.

He is not resisting.
He is not fighting.
He is trying to obey what they demanded.
Still, they press his face into the ground and
rain down baton blows,
methodical and vicious,
each strike an angry , frustrated  punctuation mark
in a sentence of  punishment.
Other officers join in
more  hold his limbs,
pinning him as if he is a dangerous beast.
The crowd screams. His phone disappears.
The cameras record.

It changes nothing.

They had been standing there, singing  or holding signs, an entirely peaceable assembly. Someone said disperse. Many did not move fast enough,  by the  brutality squads
arbitrary unknowable  clock.
The line stopped, then,  without further warning  just surged with no new...   or  additional
anything

The beaten and brutalized
only offense was
not being able to  disappear  instantly
on command.
That was enough to justify all  this brutality.
of course  there  was so much   more,
but haven't I more  than made  the point  ?

This was  before Donald Trump defied Governor Newsom and sent the Marines in as well.
   The Marines  !

Never before in history has that ever been done !

  The mostly Mexican Hispanics and other immigrants  had  been told  that  I.C.E.  had  come   into   schools  and  beat up  innocent teachers at  their  jobs
  for being brown,
beat them in front of the kids
the screaming confused  students
and then  dragged them out in zip ties.
They were also told  that agents were  going  to Home  Depot s  and tackling employees in the  parking lot and dragging them away too.
No one knew  what to believe other  than ICE was  there     and  their  neighbors  and  employees  were  being  disappeared again .
Like back in  2017 , 2018,  and 2019
when their children were separated from them,  never  to be seen or heard from   ever  again. Not even till this day  in 2025
At least 1583  kids  in cages  with nothing but  foil  blankets for comfort
JUST      ...    GONE  !

Kedi Gözü Ay

Kefenimden karanfil çalan siyah
Ay gebe senden
Kedi gözü ay
Kafese tıkalı ruhu gecede yaşlı ruh gebe
Geceden kalma siyah
Çürük karanfil çalan siyah
Ay gebe senden
Kedi gözü ay.
(Serenay Özkan, Viata)

In a state of confusion,
Staring at the sky.
Seeking seclusion,
Never knew why.
It's all  illusion,
It's all lies.

Music isn't the same anymore.
The purity and grit are gone.
It's mechanical and cold.
I remember the days of
records and record players.
The crack and pop, the
sizzling booming bass that
rumbled in my soul.

I think of a song, let's say
something by Zeppelin.
I close my eyes and smell
the ****, see the
blacklight poster on
the brick basement walls.
I lift up the needle and
ramble on.

¿Dónde está la memoria de los días
que fueron tuyos en la tierra, y tejieron
dicha y dolor y fueron para ti el universo?

El río numerable de los años
los ha perdido; eres una palabra en un índice.

Dieron a otros gloria interminable los dioses,
inscripciones y exergos y monumentos y puntuales historiadores;
de ti sólo sabemos, oscuro amigo,
que oíste al ruiseñor, una tarde.

Entre los asfodelos de la sombra, tu vana sombra
pensará que los dioses han sido avaros.

Pero los días son una red de triviales miserias,
¿y habrá suerte mejor que ser la ceniza,
de que está hecho el olvido?

Sobre otros arrojaron los dioses
la inexorable luz de la gloria, que mira las entrañas y enumera
las grietas,
de la gloria, que acaba por ajar la rosa que venera;
contigo fueron más piadosos, hermano.

En el éxtasis de un atardecer que no será una noche,
oyes la voz del ruiseñor de Teócrito.

What if this is my deathbed?

Surrounded by collected parchment

From old to new

Smell of burnt tobacco and aged paper

Toxins in the air you breath into

“Yesterday” by the Beatles playing in the background

A woman talking to about her husbands affair with the store owner

Reading poetry on the old wooden floor

I saw love wearing shoes in the rain,
but it dripped backwards and was fire.
She handed me a hand full of worms
and told me it was my heart.

I tried to kiss her shadow as it faded
the shadow starred at me first.
It began as we argued with the moon
about whether silence could bleed.

A staircase appeared,
spiraling into my throat.
Every word trembling,
I climbed until I reached halfway
and there she was,
sitting at a table of clocks,
feeding time to the dead
Pigeons.

She said:
“Every orchard is an eye.
Every fruit, a dream.”
Then she gave me a mask
made of feathers and mirrors,
and whispered:
“Now love will see through you.”

The sea tried to listen,
tried to feel,
tried to touch,
but it had no ears,
it had no hands,
just a mouth wide open lips,
so it swallowed itself instead.
While looking on in disbelief
I drowned on dry land,
laughing,
Laughing at all that was once before
because now her perfume
tasted like absence,
and every word a song,
that I knew the melody,
but had forgotten to sing
She just smiled
as she would walk on bye.

Love is not love
this is madness
it is a map that eats itself,
a candle flickering that refuses to die,
a bizarre adventure,
a journey for the travelers of the lost,
A begin with no ending,
only doors
that open into other doors,
and every memory another oil painting nailed to the walls of the mind.

I wrote a word and let it go,
A seed it was, I did not know;
It fell to earth in secret ground,
And there a living tree was found.

I gave a word to one long dead,
It rose to life and gave them bread;
I whispered low, the branches grew,
And clothed the land in morning dew.

I read a word that made them glow,
I took a word and watched it grow;
It bore a fruit I could not see,
Yet filled the world with mystery.

I spoke a word I can’t take back,
It darkened sky and turned it black;
The fruit was sweet, the poison whole,
It sowed a storm that stole a soul.