LA County rallies protest Trump administration policies at ‘Free America’ walkouts

Hundreds joined more than a dozen protests in Los Angeles County on Tuesday, joining nationwide “Free America Walkouts” to decry what organizers call the Trump administration’s authoritarian policies and violence.

More than 160 people gathered at Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena at 2 p.m. Jan. 20, the time synchronized with other local protests held in Bellflower, Brea, Burbank, Claremont, Long Beach, Lynwood, Orange, San Pedro, Santa Clarita, Santa Monica, Sierra Madre, Torrance and Venice.

Grace Park organized a four-hour walkout for students at Cal State Los Angeles attended by about 30 protesters. The stakes are real, she said, saying everyone should stand up to injustice and cruelty being meted out by the Trump administration to immigrants and communities.

“As college students participating in the walkout, it’s especially important to use our education and intellect to challenge the broken systems that are continuously oppressing us,” Park said.

She said she hopes the students who joined the rally came away “feeling like they have a voice and the power to enact change, and being part of today’s movements was important.”

Students also walked out of classes at John F. Kennedy High School and Stern Math and Science School in Los Angeles, Pacifica High School in Garden Grove and Schurr High School in Montebello.

The walkouts were scheduled on the ninth anniversary of the first Women’s March, a large-scale protest in 2017 decrying the first inauguration of Donald Trump.

Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of Women’s March, said the walkouts raise the pressure on all Americans to resist.

“Authoritarianism runs on our obedience, and we’re withdrawing it,” O’Leary Carmona said. “We walk out to disrupt business as usual, to build mutual aid and public service, and to prove that ordinary people still have the power to bend what looks immovable. We walk out because a Free America is the only America worth calling great.”

Organizers said in the first nine days of the year, Americans have seen “ICE agents fatally shoot a woman in Minneapolis and wound two others in Portland, a military operation in Venezuela carried out without congressional authorization, only a small fraction of the Epstein files released despite the congressional deadline to do so in December, and renewed threats to seize Greenland – alongside Trump’s demands for an unprecedented $1.5 trillion ‘Dream Military’ defense budget.”

Roxanne Hoge, chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, said the protests are “crying wolf about facts not in evidence.”

“Their boring, predictable tantrums are now part of the L.A. landscape, much like the dilapidated RVs and dangerous encampments that their policies result in,” Hoge said. “We are interested in good governance and public safety, and wish our Democrat friends would join us in advocating for both.”

Hoge said she came to the U.S. as a legal immigrant in 1976, during the country’s bicentennial.

“It was America’s 200th birthday, a celebration of our original No Kings protest. It worked,” she said. “The USA is a representative republic where the rule of law prevails. Today, people across the county are working hard, studying in school, taking care of their families, and grateful that the United States of America is a country where people are free to express their opinions on a wide variety of topics.”