Lisa, Dolly, Elia

Here at the Orange Juice Blog, we don’t avert our eyes from the horror that confronts us, and as a loyal reader neither do you. Case in point, when America’s angel Dolly Parton died last week, and President Trump realized she was too beloved to talk shit about as he did to so many others when they died, he posted this A.I. image of the two fraternizing, and, nauseous as this may make us, we cannot avert our eyes…

I’m sure all of you will agree that President Trump can Fuck Off and Die, for posting this grotesque and creepy sacrilege. Dolly met with nearly all Presidents since Nixon, but she NEVER met with Donald Trump, and never spoke to him. Twice he tried to give her the Presidential Medal of Freedom and twice she said no. Dolly had the grace to never utter Trump’s name, but clearly she defended everything that he defiles – the LGBTQ, literacy, the environment, science and vaccines, and immigrants.

SPEAKING OF IMMIGRANTS, and Dolly Parton. We just discovered this song of hers, actually written in 1948 by Woody Guthrie about America’s casual use and disposal of immigrants. 5 years before Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback, 77 years before Trump’s ICE pogroms, a plane carrying back 28 no-longer-needed Mexican laborers, along with 4 white folks, crashed in the Los Gatos Canyon outside Coalinga, and in all the news reports only the 4 white folks were named, “along with 28 deportees.” This outraged Guthrie (who also got another pet peeve off his chest in the first line – the way the bosses were also purposely letting food rot to keep prices up while folks went hungry.)

Let’s remember Dolly singing this ode to the perpetually unappreciated migrant laborers:

“The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting, The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps
You’re flying them back to the Mexican border, To pay all their money to wade back again
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, Jesus and María
You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane, All they will call you will be Deportee…“

SPEAKING OF IMMIGRATION, and ICE, we were surprised and proud to see our old young friend Izzy Ramirez on Jacob Soboroff’s morning show the other day. Izzy was one of the top ICE resisters in Anaheim, used to hold meetings at Liz’ Untold Story Bookstore, and then he apparently moved on to Battleground Los Angeles where he writes for the invaluable LA Taco. And now there he was on MSNBC, and Jacob was obviously very familiar with him!

And right after launching an LA-based ICE Watch Newsletter.

August 26, 2026 ICE Watch: Welcome We’re at the height of the raids, and we refuse to look away. Location: front of the MDC, Los Angeles during a protest. Photo by Memo Torres Welcome to L.A. TACO’s ICE WATCH newsletter. We are at the HEIGHT of the raids, and our neighbors and families are suffering. But we’re refusing to look away. We’re launching this newsletter today to document ICE raids and the heinous overreaches of our government for all of you who also refuse to look away. If you’d like to get ICE WATCH in your inbox every week, click here. Throughout this past weekend, ICE agents continued their operations, taking at least 15 people across Southern California. These sightings are based on reports from several rapid-response teams across Southern California, including Grupo Auto Defensa Dena, We Keep Us Safe, Siempre Unidos LA, SELA RRN, Union Del Barrio, the 805 Rapid Response Network, VC Defensa, and various on-the-ground autonomous community patrollers. Here in Los Angeles, ICE was seen in Burbank, Pasadena, Lynwood, Glendale, Van Nuys, La Habra, and Los Angeles. In the Inland Empire, they were seen in Fontana, Riverside, Chino, and Indio in the Coachella Valley. In the 805, ICE continues to be present at county jails, including the San Luis Obispo County Jail and the Santa Barbara County North Jail. Down in San Diego, there was an instance of an ICE arrest that led to an infant being left alone in a hot vehicle. According to patrollers, the infant was inside the vehicle until San Diego Police arrived to take the infant. L.A. TACO reached out for comment to the San Diego Police Department regarding the allegations made surrounding the infant. L.A. TACO also reached out to ICE regarding the ICE sightings in the cities we recorded.  Anti-ICE protest in downtown L.A. honoring those that have died during Trump’s deportation campaign. Photo by Izzy Ramirez Despite traditional and legacy media phasing out its coverage of ICE raids and focusing on individual stories, we ARE at the height of the raids. According to the Associated Press, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “arrested” nearly 50,000 people in the month of July. This is the highest “arrest” total in a single month under the second Trump administration. After Gregory Bovino’s departure as the “commander-at-large” of Border Patrol, Border Czar Tom Homan announced that Trump’s massive deportation plan would continue, saying, “… you ain’t seen shit yet.” So while these ICE arrests continue under a quieter guise, they are also escalating. In spite of the rise, there are still volunteers who are dedicating their time, focus, and resources to helping families who have been affected. We’re often asked how people can help, and truthfully, based on what we witness on the ground, there isn’t one trajectory. Some people will join community watch, some will assist with aftercare, some will fundraise for families, and some people do all three if they have the time.  Location: MDC Los Angeles. Photo by Izzy Ramirez Not all communities have a dedicated watch team who are monitoring ICE activity, and some communities have more than one. Large teams like the Community Self Defense Coalition continue to host trainings to equip inexperienced patrollers to safely and legally watch out for their community, and we’ve seen the birth of local teams who have taken those trainings to their neighborhoods. There are even local teams who focus on providing resources to affected families and guidance on how to navigate the immigration detention system, and these teams regularly attempt to fundraise to help with commissary funds, such as People Defend MOU  (Montclair, Ontario and Upland), Somos Long Beach, and SELA Rapid Response Network. While attention has shifted due to burnout, there are still volunteers who are seeking more support to provide guidance to the victims of this mass deportation campaign. Of all the factors that can be taken by state brutality, some fundamentals remain: resilience, courage, and hope. Memo, Aisha and I will not look away. ~ Izzy Ramirez L.A. TACO is member-supported. If you’re not a member yet, we need your support to keep this work going. Join L.A. TACO Photo by Izzy Ramirez Tales Of The Siege These are stories we hear from people, but don’t have time to dig in. We think you should hear them too.

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… Just to give you an idea of what LA Taco and Izzy are doing. But, may we take a SCHADENFREUDE break now?

MILO DEPORTED!

You know how they say “Heh. So-and-so voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party, and then they were shocked and outraged that Leopards Came and Ate THEIR Face!” This is more like, “Milo Yiannoupolos made a living going anywhere they’d allow a flamboyant manchild to preach the importance of Leopards Eating Faces, to flashily demand the government to sic more Leopards onto more People’s Faces so they could eat ’em, to revel in the beastly ghastly carnage of Leopards-Face-Eating while urging more of it, and then when the Leopards looked over and ate Milo’s Face, cried out, “Wha… who, me?”

In other words this creepazoid spent the entire decade calling for more and more indiscriminate, brutal, lawless, immigrant arrests and deportations, and then – forgetting that he’s an immigrant from Britain himself on an expired visa which he neglected to take care of because “Psh, I’m Milo!” – found himself snatched up with all the good people and flung back across “The Pond.” And good riddance.

We first became aware of this grifting provocateur locally when the College Republicans of UCI – dirty tricksters with no moral compass but I repeat myself – hosted him knowing that it would trigger campus leftists liberals moderates nearly everybody to give a pedestal to a guy who trashes Islam and women, calls transgender a mental illness, claims that he “became gay to irritate his parents,” likens Black Lives Matter to the KKK, and finally got fired from even Breitbart for excusing sex between adults and 13-year-olds. FREE SPEECH! whined the College Republicans, and “Give Milo a Safe Space!” More recently it appears he’s been doing publicity for Kanye West (oddly appropriate) but apparently had a falling out with Trump’s pet succubus Laura Loomer, who seems to have the awesome power to sic ICE on MAGAts who get on her bad side.

NOW, back in exile in Britain, Milo whines to Piers Morgan about how terrifying and humiliating his experience was, and how ICE (gasp!) is REALLY NOT GOING AFTER THE WORST OF THE WORST! One small problem I perceive: There is NOT ONE SINGLE VIOLIN SMALL ENOUGH – not even in some theoretical microscopic civilization – for us to express our sorrow for poor Milo.

But on the plus side, the contrast between how Milo dolled himself up to spew hate in public, versus how he actually looked when the hate machine showed up at his door, was useful to us regular folks in simply illustrating a common, contemporary human problem: This image below was entitled, all over social media, “SHOPPING CART WHEELS BE LIKE…”

SPEAKING OF IMMIGRATION and SHOPPING CARTS, just north of Vons we are having our monthly…

Anaheim Democrats Club General Meeting!

Big meeting with appropriately powerful food. We’ll probably discuss whatever we know about yesterday’s sale of the Angels, and at the end we’ll take some votes – who do we endorse for the School Boards? Incumbents, challengers, or a little of both? Do we endorse Prop 4 which makes public financing of elections legal? (Dave Sonneborn will introduce that at the end.) And do we endorse Elia for Council? Or just let Natalie run roughshod over us? An embarrassment of riches, our three main speakers:

Lisa Ramirez, immigration attorney and ICE fighter. She did run for Congress in the primary but this is not about that. Lisa is perhaps best known for defending Narciso Barranco, the Tustin gardener with the weed-whacker beat up and arrested last year in Santa Ana by ICE and labelled/libelled a “terrorist” by the government – Lisa got him freed, returned home, and all charges dropped, but the vengeful government is coming after him again! And that’s only the tip of the iceberg of all the horrors Lisa has to share that our elected government is visiting on our dear immigrant neighbors. Don’t miss this, she’ll probably go first.

Elia Renteria-Garcia, Council candidate for district 3. There should be 4 Anaheim Councilmembers (including the Mayor) up for re-election this year, but nobody ran against Carlos or that other Natalie from the Hills (really helped her to get a Hall Pass allowing her to uselessly oppose the fire-hazardous Pringle development up there.) And Mayor Ashleigh is being challenged by two guys nobody knows (although I’m sure I’ll hear from them soon.) But District 3’s Natalie Rubalcava is uniquely upsetting, to most people – and does have all the big money behind her. Elia does NOT have any big money behind her, but we know her at the Club and we like her a lot. Come see why! (BTW Natalie R is always invited, and she IS nominally a Democrat, but she has never deigned to visit our humble gathering. Not since we endorsed Al Jabbar over her four years ago.)

Dr. Jeff Cole was a trustee for the Anaheim Elementary School District. Four years ago he was beat by Juan Alvarez (who was actually our Club President a long long time ago.) In the June primary he tried to run against the backwards Dr. Stefan Bean for County Superintendent of Education, and he could have won and would have been night and day better, but all kinds of legal machinations and threats were employed by the Charter School Cabal to keep him out, and deny any choice to the County’s voters, so Bean got to win by default. Now Jeff is back running for AESD again, and has major critique and concern about how the Board and District have been run in his absence.

I’ll have a story up about that soon, but even better you could come and hear it all yourself. (Juan has been invited to give his side of things, we’ll see if he comes.) Jeff is in a loose slate of Anaheim Education Reformers who want serious Structural Change in both our main Districts – Jeff Cole and Mark Lopez in AESD, Germaine Neumann and Roberto Garcia in AUHSD. ALL the incumbents are invited but they seem intimidated by us or hostile to us. I’ve said enough, see you TOMORROW NIGHT (Thursday.)

This is your early September Open Thread.

And how do you like this weather? Big improvement eh?

You’re not even still reading are you.