No dude, the city is not siding with the looters. Most of us realize that the couple of hundred dipshits were mostly fucksticks looking to go viral or just getting off on playing anarchist.
But I live literally 4-miles from the epicenter of these protests. To say the whole city is covered in graffiti, is just retarded. Also, we are not in the middle of a rebellion, in case anyone here is dumb enough to buy that line of shit.
What the locals actually think is the following:
-The first protests in Paramount (about 16-miles south of Los Angeles) were about a couple dozen of legit protestors. I had to drive by them on my way back from Long Beach. Nothing much, and couldn't really see shit even though it was right by the interstate.
-Trump announces he's nationalizing the guard that same night. Then you get a fuckton of people marching on downtown in response to that. In the first night, these were a mix of honest protestors and shitbirds just looking for thrills. I have a bunch of friends in the LAPD (lots of former Marines there) and they laugh and tell me two things: 1) the people that catch looting are the young, but destined for a career of shitbaggery, who already have a bunch of priors; 2) the dipshits who actually try to spit or swing on cops are always priveliged gender studies majors who shit their pants when they realize their going to jail.
-After day 1 or two, the remaining "protestors" were more of you douche bags looking to go viral or just be asshats. Everyone agress it's time to shoo them away. As of tonight, that looks to have happened.
-Ultimately, both sides of the media overhyped this. Trump didn't help, and served only as a needless inflamatory dickhead. The nationalized guard just stood around the detention center in downtown, and didn't participate in dealing with the protestors in any meaningful way. The marines haven't done anything that I've heard of, and are likely just staged somewhere to avoid any incidents.
That's my two cents as a local, for what it's worth. Trump needs a distraction. He's failing to deliver on any promises he made to his base. He hasn't gotten any trade deals done after promising "90 in 90 days" ; he just straight gave up on Ukraine after promising to solve that on day 1; and now he blocking the release of the Epstein files that his own cabinet is implicating him in.
So trump does what he always does when he looks like a loser: he picks a culture war fight and begs his base to look over there. And the responses in this thread from his supporters, prove it.