Opinion | Activism rooted in love: lessons I’ve learned from the Santa Ana community

For me, attending an event — especially one where I have to talk to people I don't know — is anxiety-inducing. And after the fact, it’s exhausting. So, when I braced myself for attending Santa Ana’s Oct. 5 city council meeting, I could not wait to get in, get out and  then lay in my bed for hours to recover. 

Aarushi Bhaskaran, Politics Editor

But something happened at that meeting. The community had come out to support a bill on rent control that was on the agenda. There was a table for snacks, people of all ages, chants, signs in Spanish and English — your typical event stuff — but there was also something else: warmth. As I sat on one of the plastic chairs they’d put out, alone, awkward and wishing I had a friend, I began to feel something.

I began to feel as if I were welcome to this space. A journalist and an outsider to the community, true, but welcome nonetheless. A guest in the beautiful space this community had made its own. 

Everyone I spoke to was kind and friendly. What really put me at ease, though, was silently watching them interact with one another. So familiar and close, brought together in this moment by a just cause they all believed in. I started writing in the notebook I’d brought for interviews, musing on my own amazement at this simple event, unable to pinpoint why it hit me so hard. 

“Is this what a community feels like,” I wrote fervently. “I wish I could be part of something like this — a community.” 

Someone I know once told me she conceives activism as an act of love — not one rooted in anger, hatred or vengeance. Love. When I was at that rent control rally, what I felt, beyond all my stress and anxiety at being in an unfamiliar situation alone, was that love. 

When a couple of weeks later I interviewed a local city councilman and was invited to cover an event honoring his cousin who was recently murdered by police, I felt honored. It was a legitimate invitation to engage with this community who had so intrigued me before. I got a backstage pass, and the event organizers expressed several times how happy they were that I could make it and that I was covering it. They checked in with me several times to see if I needed anything, and the city councilman even came over to give me a fist-bump and a hug. 

Everyone seemed to know each other. There was hugging and catching up everywhere around me. I felt like somewhat of an intruder in their space, as though I was viewing something sacred that was supposed to be all theirs. 

Speakers came on stage and spoke about Brandon Lopez, the man who had been killed, and there was such strength in their words. The director of the American Indian Movement in Orange County, Nellie Turtleheart LeGaspe, spoke directly about the community, and everything I’d suspected about the love in their hearts at the city council meeting was explicitly spelled out in her speech. 

Addressing first the grieving parents, she vowed to be a source of support they could lean on at any time. She then turned to the audience and urged them to remember to be there for the parents after the event and in the long-run, emphasizing the entire room is “their family.”

As I walked backstage, I saw Lopez’ mother. If I felt like an outsider before, it was nothing compared to that moment as she saw my glint of recognition, and I began to choke out, “I’m so sorry for your loss.” What else could I say? What else did I have the right to say? But she gave me a hug and thanked me sincerely for coming. 

I think I understand what a celebration of life through grief can mean now. Because between the speeches, the live music performances, the food trucks, the art vendors and the different activist groups all there to support this family, I could see joy. When the DJ began to play Lopez’ favorite songs, I saw his grieving parents dance. They were smiling. In spite of everything, they were smiling. 

This is what the community brought them. Unimaginable as their grief as parents could be to me, someone who’s lived so little life, the upliftment from their community was even more unimaginable for me.

I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe it’s because human kindness has always felt like an individual act. Maybe it’s because I’ve always seen the side of activism that lends itself only to anger. But this beautiful tapestry of a community showed me there is a way in which to channel those negative emotions to create something beautiful — something that can never be taken away or colonized. Something that belongs solely to the people who showed up that day, and who continue to show up to stand for what’s right. To stand for love.