October 2020

This longform narrative history in the Los Angeles Review of Books, based on extensive interview and newspaper research, explores the surprising, forgotten history of Los Angeles’ first sanctuary city declaration–in November 1985—as a lens onto the historical crossings of urban politics, U. S. foreign relations, and struggles over the place of migrants and refugees in American society in an era of Cold War intervention and rising racist and nativist mobilization. Activists in the city successfully pressured idealistic council members to shepherd an ambitious sanctuary resolution through to a narrow passage, in a triumph for the sanctuary and solidarity movements nationally. But an unexpected backlash against the resolution, driven by nativist public officials cultivating moral panic, pushed sanctuary’s advocates onto the defensive. The struggle ultimately involved debates about American cities’ relationships to U. S. imperial intervention in the wider world.