Traci Park Condemns “Anarchists” Rather Than The Trump Administration for LA Turmoil

In the midst of the full might of the Trump regime’s brutal racial terror campaign that has been viciously unleashed on Los Angeles, Traci Park instead chose to praise the LAPD. The recipient of over a million dollars from the LA Police Protective League during her 2022 campaign, Park took to Instagram this week to praise the LAPD for their work in escalating tensions, shooting journalists, and trampling protesters over the last several days of clashes. She instead chose to focus on property destruction and graffiti, as though that is the greatest source of injustice we’ve experienced over the last week. In a moment where the Trump administration has egregiously violated the Constitution and even the pretense of due process, Traci Park seemingly can’t bring herself to condemn what is being done to the city she is elected to represent. Other electeds throughout the city, county, and state have been unwavering in naming that this violence and chaos are a result of the Trump administration’s actions, but Traci Park has yet to make any statement of similar clarity.

Let’s review what has happened in Traci Park’s own district over the last several days. On Sunday afternoon, as the protests in Downtown LA were gripping the world’s attention, ICE agents were conducting brutal raids throughout the Westside. A car wash on Venice Boulevard was raided, and several workers were taken away. This action was so brazen and so shocking that a press conference was held condemning the raid; several local elected officials were present, but Traci declined to attend. Fruit vendors along Venice and Sepulveda were similarly snatched, as well as day laborers from Home Depot. As the week went on, videos of arrests in Westchester went viral, including one of roofers working on a residential street. These were all violent seizures directed at anyone who was brown and working jobs where they were likely to not have legal documentation—in other words, ICE was conducting seizures in full tactical gear under blatant racial discrimination, rather than any form of due process or judicial oversight. Furthermore, it’s important to remember that these raids were happening under the shadow of Trump ordering the National Guard to Los Angeles, overriding Gavin Newsom for the first time. In the following days, Pete Hegseth, the alcoholic, scandal-ridden head of the Department of Defense, ordered the deployment of 500 Marines against the people of Los Angeles. Somehow, Traci Park cannot find it in her heart to condemn this authoritarianism and violence, even as it pounds on the doorsteps of her constituents. Los Angeles is 47% Latino; to not understand the horrors and pain that the Trump administration is inflicting on our city is a dereliction of duty in this moment.

As a reminder, Bill Simon of the Heritage Foundation was Traci Park’s advisor during her initial campaign in 2022. She is close allies with Joel Pollack of Breitbart, appearing on a podcast he co-hosts as recently as less than a month ago. After the horrific LA fires earlier this year, Traci went out of her way to thank Trump for supporting the police, rather than confronting him for threatening to withhold resources from wildfire victims. It should really come as no surprise that she is incapable of condemning the Trump administration, given that her entire political career has been based on courting the far right.

Los Angeles has a long history of mass rebellions against the excesses of state violence. From the Watts Rebellion to the 1992 Rodney King riots to the 2020 BLM uprisings, part of our culture as a city has been to rebel against racial injustice. These moments are scary and, yes, in some instances have led to the tragic loss of life, but they are also an expression of agony when the traditional avenues of politics and justice have failed. We are living through one such failure now. The failure of elected officials like Traci Park to intervene and name the obvious fascism of the Trump administration has led us to this point. People are rebelling because all of the legal processes and checks that were supposed to stop madmen like Trump have failed. If Traci Park had any moral backbone—if she weren’t so deeply embedded with the right—she would be able to condemn this.