For decades, I could count on my native Orange County to act against immigrants, legal and not, as regularly as the swallows returned to Capistrano. I know the result of O. Though Proposition passed, it famously made my generation of California Latinos vote Democratic for decades and permanently kneecapped the O.
Bob Dornan , as she became the first O. Latino elected to Congress. Costa Mesa? Trump, despite his noxious rhetoric over three presidential campaigns, never won the county.
What changed? Demographics, for one. Fourteen years later, U. Nearly a third of residents are foreign-born, with immigrants living all across the county and occupying all rungs of the social ladder.
Those changing demographics also led to the political purpling of the county. Few O. Even O. When I was a sophomore at Anaheim High, thousands of high school students walked out of class to protest Proposition In La Palma Park Stadium in Anaheim, a month before the Bay of Pigs invasion, 7, students and parents skipped school or work and gathered to learn about communist plans to take over the United States.
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Over the last 15 years, activists who grew up here — and not just Latinos — have organized rallies, staged sit-ins and formed nonprofits or community-based groups that coalesced into a multifront network standing up for people without papers. They campaigned to kick ICE out of local jails, aided various lawsuits seeking to change local policies and even helped pro-immigrant candidates populate school boards and city councils.
