June 12th, 2025. Los Angeles. The California sun has not yet begun to rise. It all started in a neighborhood in East L.A., a place accustomed to the low hum of distant freeways. Instead, what they woke to was the percussive shock of flash-bang grenades.
The news called it a crackdown. But ask the neighborhood and theyâll tell you it felt like a military raid. Neighbors woke to armored trucks, the sound of explosions, and a line of unmarked white vans. The National Guard lined the streets in full military gear. The FBI with weapons drawn. Youâd expect this kind of force for a hostage situation. Maybe a cartel kingpin. A fugitive barricaded with weapons and warrants.
Instead, they came for Alejandro Theodoro Orellana. A 29-year-old Marine veteran, East LA native, and community organizer. No gun. No drugs. No gang ties. No history of violence. His alleged crime? The one so serious that the National Guard and the FBI came together to arrest him before the sun ever came up? Distributing face shields during a protest.
His Official Charge? Facilitating Civil Disorder.
This wasnât law enforcement. It was political theater. The kind thatâs been rehearsed for years under the Trump regimeâs direction. The script is simple: donât just crush dissent, instead recast it.
In Trumps America, every protest becomes a riot. Every community organizer is a domestic threat. Every demand for justice is a crime against the state.
The June 2025 protests in Los Angeles handed them the perfect stage. The spark that lit the city on fire had landed in the last week. ICE agents stormed a child's birthday party in East L.A., mistaking balloons and cake for a âgang meetingâ and days later, conducted multiple raids at once on several businesses throughout California.
And when thousands poured into the streets of L.A., furious and unafraid, the regime didnât retreat. They escalated. Which caused the people to escalate. But they liked this because they wanted smoke. They needed chaos. Because chaos lets you rewrite the story. Thatâs why they used Title 10 to invoke the National Guard. Thatâs why they sent the Marines. Because itâs all a show. Theater.
So, with the lights up and cameras rolling, they went looking for two things: a villain and a weapon. They found both in Alejandro Theodoro Orellana.
A Marine veteran. Latino. A known community organizer whoâd spent over 10 years helping immigrants survive a system designed to disappear them. Perfect profile for a scapegoat. His face, his record, his roots in East L.A., it all made for a narrative they could twist into threat.
Their evidence? A pickup truck. A few boxes of PPE. Grainy footage of a person in a mask giving driving a truck, where two unknown people in the back hand people $20 shields to protect their eyes from gas and rubber bullets. Thatâs what they called criminal.
The charge they chose was just as deliberate: "facilitating civil disorder." Formally? 18 U.S.C. 371. Historically used against the Vietnam protestors. The Chicago 7.
And if youâre looking for the ultimate irony in all this, you need to look no further than president Trump. He was indicted under the very same conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. 371, for trying to overturn the 2020 election and Jan 6th. I guess youâre no better than the Latino ârioterâ, huh?
The same charge was also famously given to his cronies Manafort and Gates, who handed internal polling data to a Russian spy during Trumpâs 2016 campaign. He was using the same operatives whoâd botched rigging the Ukrainian election so badly in 2004 that the whole country revolted when they realized. It is merely a coincidence that some of same fraudulent voting patterns in that same Ukrainian rigged election showed up in the U.S. in 2024, right?
Lights, Camera, Action.
According to the FBIâs own words, the California Highway Patrol had eyes on Alejandro Orellana at least 30 minutes before the alleged offense even took place. This wasnât after he handed out face shields. It was before. Before the protest. Before the photographs. Before the supposed âcrimeâ ever occurred. What triggered the surveillance? A group of people loading boxes into a truck. That was it. No weapons. No threats. Just cardboard boxes in a pickup truck. And apparently, in Trumpâs America, thatâs all it takes to launch a multi-agency operation.
Because it wasnât just CHP. It wasnât just the LAPD. It also included the FBI and the National Guard.
Oh, and by the way, in one of the interviews I was watching about this case, Assistant Director Akil Davis of the FBIâs LA field office admitted theyâve been working with ICE since February 2025. Not quietly. Not occasionally. But actively. Coordinating. Sharing intel. Building what looks more like a domestic counterinsurgency than anything resembling public safety.
The FBI calls Alejandro a âriot ringleaderâ because that makes the theater sound necessary. Not a veteran. Not a community activist. Not a union leader. We know that the facts are harder to dress up. So, they already knew who he was. They already knew what he was carrying. So why the flash-bangs? Why the armored vehicles? Why the military?
Because the arrest wasnât about enforcement. It was about optics.
And those soldiers? Standing there under Title 10 orders, pretending to "protect" federal agents while violating the very law meant to keep the military out of domestic policing? They werenât just bending the rules. They were helping stage the scene.
The Opening Act
But the raid wasnât the end of it. It was the start.
Because once they had him in handcuffs, they didnât just book him. They blasted his face across social media, pushed him through every news channel they could, and labeled him a âriot ringleader.â
Suddenly, a community organizer became the centerpiece of a national fear campaign.
And leading that charge was U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, who wasted no time using the arrest as a launchpad. He got on national television and called it step one in a federal operation to uncover the so-called network funding the riots.
According to him, this wasnât just one man handing out face shields. This was a full-blown DHS sting operation. A takedown of a shadowy alliance of agitators, radicals, and whoever they feel like blaming this week.
You can see what theyâre trying to build. Itâs the same narrative Trumpâs been rehearsing since 2016. The idea that protests arenât organic. That theyâre not the product of rage or injustice or years of state violence. No, in Trumpâs America, every protest is paid for. Funded. Controlled by shadowy elites.
Cue the Soros conspiracy. Cue the âoutside agitatorsâ trope weâve heard too many times before. Itâs lazy, itâs racist, and itâs the same old playbook used to delegitimize every movement that ever made the powerful uncomfortable.
And their so-called evidence? A slingshot. A notebook with handwritten notes they say indicates anti-police sentiment. A can of spray paint. A few masks. Thatâs what theyâre holding up as proof of terrorism. Not weapons stockpiles. Not blueprints for a bomb. Just things any activist might carry to a protest where police are gassing the crowd.
They want you to believe theyâve uncovered a network. What they actually uncovered is a man with protective gear and a notebook trying to fix a broken country. And theyâre trying to spin that into a domestic terrorism narrative that can justify military force, sweeping surveillance, and crushing dissent before it even begins.
The Threat of Community
But this narrative isnât just spin. Itâs scaffolding. Theyâre using it to build a reality where dissent is terrorism, where organizing is conspiracy, and where handing out face shields is a federal crime. It justifies military crackdowns in American neighborhoods. It turns neighbors into suspects. It criminalizes mutual aid. And it sends a message to every protester, medic, and street-level organizer: help your community, and weâll come for you next.
Itâs projection, plain and simple. Because if anyoneâs movement is funded by shadowy money and elite interests, itâs the one currently in power. Right-wing politics runs on dark money. From DonorsTrust laundering billionaire cash into white nationalist think tanks, to Turning Point USA pushing corporate propaganda into classrooms, the real ânetworkâ isnât some grassroots resistance.. itâs the billionaires bankrolling state repression. Every GOP accusation is a confession.
Alejandro Orellana isnât a terrorist. Heâs a symbol of what terrifies them: a community that can protect itself. A working-class Latino veteran standing between power and the people it wants to silence. And for that, they made him a headline, a warning, a pawn in a story designed to scare you into staying home.
Donât.
Theyâre trying to rewrite what protest means. What justice looks like. What community is allowed to do for itself. Don't let them finish the story. Write your own. Weâre in this together.
![Alejandro Orellana with fist raised \[center\] after his release.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!r_rF!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbda86e05-fdd8-41a4-be97-098cfd85e393_1280x662.jpeg "Alejandro Orellana with fist raised \[center\] after his release.")
Just as an update, Alejandro was released from detention during the first hearing by the judge, but he has another hearing scheduled to fight this case on 6/27/25. I will continue to follow this case and report on it.
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Thank you for being here.
â Dissent â„
Such insight into the escalation of all of this! Many thanks!đ
I am still waiting for the Soros payments. Phuq drumpf and Krusty!