I started following and subscribed to LA Taco when Trump's new ICE regime started attacking the City, right in the streets of my old neighborhood. They had the cojones to report where the formerly dependable major sources betrayed us and did their best to let democracy die in darkness. It's a great independent source with integrity and they often have a light touch with other kinds of cultural stories worth following as well. They don't do a ton of stories a week so it's just quality stuff about what matters and what we love. Because of this, I'm in the middle of setting up an automated bot account to follow their RSS feeds here in the fediverse @LaTaco_bot@mastodon.social . But, first, I wanted to share this from their newsletter. They're behind a paywall and I won't violate that again but think this is worth sharing. The part in bold got me choked up. SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO? I only follow professional baseball during the month of October. Not because I’m a fan of the sport. I follow baseball in October to prepare myself to cover the celebrations that will invariably break out if the Dodgers were to win another World Series. I have a sordid history with covering World Series celebrations. Six years ago, after the Dodgers won their seventh title, a group of LAPD officers rushed me into an intersection and took me to the ground, leaving me with cuts, bruises, and broken equipment, while I was reporting for L.A TACO. Four months after the attack, I unexpectedly received a letter from the City Attorney’s Office notifying me that I was being charged with “failure to disperse.” The L.A. Times found that out of the hundreds of revelers who took to the streets that night, I was the only person who the LAPD pursued charges against. Ever since then, I’ve quietly rooted against the Dodgers. Not because I don’t like to see my city erupt into celebration. But because I know how aggressively the police respond to those celebrations at this point. I feel a similar reluctance when it comes to covering protests as well. Ever since I was detained by an LAPD motorcycle cop on May Day, I’ve remained on the sidelines. My absence is partly due to the fact that there just hasn’t been much to cover. But also, after being shot with pepperballs twice in eight months, inhaling immeasurable amounts of “tear gas,” and narrowly avoiding arrest on numerous occasions—all in less than a year—I felt like I reached a breaking point on May 1. Since then, my nerves have calmed. I began going on long, weekly bike rides. And after months of only being able to handle decaf coffee, I’ve reached a point where I can finally handle caffeine again. Taking a step back from covering protests made me realize how stressed out and sleep-deprived I was for 11 months. I’m not sure how long my hiatus from covering protests will last, though. Tensions between the Trump Administration and “sanctuary cities” have grown as we’ve approached the mid-term elections. And in some ways, L.A. feels like it’s on the brink of another major uprising. Today, thousands of people are expected to take to the streets of Downtown for another “No Kings Day” protest. I find myself in a similar position that I was in, earlier in the week, when I was monitoring the Dodgers vs. Brewers series. Secretly hoping there’s nothing to cover. —Lexis-Olivier Ray, the Head of Investigations for L.A. TACO https://lataco.com/ #LosAngeles #News #USPolitics #California