Roughly 400 people took to the intersection of Artesia and Hawthorne Boulevard Saturday morning, joining a nationwide protest against zero-tolerance federal immigration practices that have led to the separation of children from families.
Protestors stood at each corner, and along each median, waving signs, chanting, and cheering when supporters (whether from cars or LA Metro buses) passed by, sounding their horns.
Though detractors were apparent, such as a man who shouted “if they don’t cross the border, families won’t be separated! Respect our laws!” from his car, they were soon ignored.
The protest was organized by Kanji Sahara, an 84-year-old man who was held in a Japanese internment camp in Arkansas at eight years old, alongside his family. The Saharas were among the 110,000 to 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and subsequent Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“They’re separating the babies from the parents, and putting them in a camp. During World War II, I was imprisoned in a concentration camp in southeast Arkansas, and last week, the federal government went to Arkansas for a site to place children about two miles away from where I was imprisoned,” Sahara said. “That’s why I felt we needed this.”
Torrance Mayor Pat Furey was among the elected leaders who came to show their support to the protestors.
“I worked for more than two decades, prosecuting people who inflicted damages to their children, and here we have the government inflicting damages on our children,” Furey said. “It’s only through gatherings like this that the world will understand that it’s not the people of America, it’s the current administration.”
Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi was also in attendance for the action that ran from 11 a.m. to noon, rallying the crowd.
“The one thing we can all agree on that Donald Trump has done is to make it stark-clear that elections matter,” Muratsuchi said. “California is showing the rest of the world how to get things done. We have the world’s fifth largest economy, we’re growing faster and creating more jobs than the rest of the country, and standing up for progressive values.
“California is the great counter-example to what Trump stands for, and we need to continue to lead by example.”
