After a weekend of raucous “No Kings” protests across the country — especially throughout Los Angeles — immigrant activists in music have a new benefit show planned for tonight in Echo Park.
Tom Morello, the guitarist of Rage Against the Machine and a longtime leftist and human rights advocate, will headline a sold-out show called “Defend L.A.” set at the Echoplex on Monday in support of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA).
The show will feature like-minded peers including B-Real of Cypress Hill, Pussy Riot, K.Flay and visual artist Shepard Fairey. The Neighborhood Kids, a rising young San Diego hip-hop group whose songs document the on-the-ground reality of communities under threat from immigration raids, will play its most prominent L.A. set to date there. Comedian George Lopez will host.
Morello joined the recent anti-ICE marches in Los Angeles, where protest signs and slogans often echoed his band’s radical-resistance lyrics and imagery. The singer-songwriter wore a guitar emblazoned with anti-ICE messaging onstage at the Boston Calling festival last month.
While downtown L.A., a site of many heated protests, had been placed under a nighttime curfew, Saturday’s “No Kings” marches were broadly peaceful, with only 38 arrests in Los Angeles, mostly for curfew violations. After the marches, the Trump administration recently announced efforts to expand immigration raids in sanctuary cities like Los Angeles.
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