Los Angeles— Another gnarly arrest around the corner from the MDC. Quite a few chemical munitions deployed
LA-based independent multimedia journalist. Union member. Covering labor, media, and movements at wordsaboutwork.blog | Work featured all over || Send tips, inquiries to melbuer@proton.me Support my work: https://linktr.ee/mel_buer
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Los Angeles— Another gnarly arrest around the corner from the MDC. Quite a few chemical munitions deployed
Los Angeles— One arrest outside the MDC. Situation still volatile
Los Angeles— Earlier, a firework goes off outside the MDC fence
Los Angeles— A non structural portion of the fence was knocked down, stand off outside the MDC fence continues
Waterb bottles flying, mace flying, volatile situation will post when able @acatwithnews.bsky.social is going live on youtube rn
Los Angeles— Additional reinforcements have arrived inside the fence Pepperballs flying with regularity
More pepperballs fired into the crowd, some folks falling back to be attended to by medics (not pictured)
Lots of folks here, they got the gate open, DHS moved to close it twice now Pepperballs and mace deployed Lol the one day I decided not to bring PPE
Fireworks going off outside the fence, music, loud chants and banging on the fence Im working multiple cameras today so updates may be sparse
I’m outside the MDC here in Los Angeles, where a protest march has just converged outside the gate. Once again a lively atmosphere here
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Its been a weekend of hot outings so i’m extra hydrated today lol
I actually managed not to get heat stroke today, in a first for me lol
Yeah!!!! Lfg
Full photo essay on the newsletter this week, but here’s a few good’uns☺️
Very few things give me unbridled joy like this—solidarity just seeping into the pavement
Good i love it
Got flagged down by a union brother, lifelong ILWU member who showed me his first union card, and we got super weepy together sharing the moment Did I cry? Yes. Will I cry again today? Yes, probably
Ours is the cause of labor🔥🫡✊
😭😭😭😩😩😩🫠🫠🫠🫠
Many of these micro-movements rarely make the evening news, but they have become the core of mobilization efforts.
In honor of the day, it is only right and good that you punk your boss Them’s the rules
Star Trek celebrates Labor Day
Happy Labor Day 🙂
You can't scare me, I'm stickin' to the union till the day I die.
Happy Labor Day, folks. From your friendly neighborhood union journalist. ;]
Let's give a shout out to the men & women who labor in the fields to put food on our tables. #WeFeedYou #LaborDay. Mandemosle un saludo a los hombres y mujeres que trabajan en el campo para poner comida en nuestras mesas. Thank you Ignacio Gomez for letting us use this art
Brothers, cousins, sons: the human stories behind four of the war’s fallen journalists
Thousands of people detained by ICE are actually held in local, publicly operated jails These facilities–run by elected sheriffs–are making money off of the incarceration of people who are mostly accused of no more serious offense than crossing the border without permission
Gonna link back to this but just start a Ghost blog or something at this point, its never been easier. aftermath.site/website-musk...
Offer*
Wordpress hosting is honestly solid, seriously. And supports podcasting
Wordpress hosting isn’t a terrible option, and they off social media integration so you can post your writings to social media fairly seamlessly
There’s a number of options, I have so far found some success hosting my newsletter on my own website
Not sure of your specifics, but I hosted my newsletter on my own site on Wordpress. It honestly wasn’t too painful moving posts/subscribers, and their team helped with the paid subs issues
CA DoJ wrote in Newsom vs Trump briefs that federal troops' arrival brought out more protests. Also, the protests after Paramount were limited to like a 5 or 6 block area in downtown LA, maybe .2 sq miles in a city that's 500 sq miles. The protesters were largely focused on federal troops and ICE.
Get the hell off Substack before you literally can’t anymore without blowing up your business
Loving @mattdpearce.com’s newest post on collaboration in a f’d up attention economy: “God knows what the algorithm wants from you on any given day. What you need is a scene.” Also Matt get yer butt off Substack ffs
Spent the afternoon at the 55th anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium in Los Angeles. Plenty to write about the march and rally, but here are a few photos from today.
Check out what was going on with workers in America in the run-up to Labor Day while I struggle to change my payment info and resubscribe to @melbuer.bsky.social's blog! I'm gonna figure it out 'cause I just loOove the weekly email which you can get for FREE!
Hell yeah!! ❤️❤️🔥🔥
Correction: LAPD is not blocking the entire street but staging on one end of the block and driving forward
DHS has pushed us completely off the sidewalk and across Alameda, and LAPD is blocking off the entire street
Vans have been coming in and out irregularly, and the feds are blasting warnings about damaging federal property Two minute dispersal warning has been called
Out here at the MDC in Los Angeles where a couple dozen protesters are outside the fence. DHS has already maced half a dozen people and just sent pepperballs at those assembled
Greetings! I’m here at Metro Detention Centee, the site of a 24/7 protest in Los Angeles. Just got here, a dispersal order is being announced via loudspeaker by DHS.
Spent the afternoon at the 55th anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium in Los Angeles. Plenty to write about the march and rally, but here are a few photos from today.
Obviously❤️
Hundreds strike at GE Aerospace, SpaceX wins against the NLRB, major protests planned for Labor Day, and more headlines you missed.
Manhattan Beach pier
Please god, soon
Really pretty depressing that I had to scroll back over two months to find something even remotely peaceful to share
Oh ho ho!! What is this!!!
"We're handling more passengers than ever before." @flyingwithsara.bsky.social ara joins @twoguysonaplane.bsky.social to talk about what it's like being a Flight Attendant in 2025 and what passengers should know about our jobs #LaborDay
BREAKING: California lawmakers have reached an agreement with Uber and Lyft that will open the door for app drivers to form unions and organize for increased pay and better benefits. www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
BREAKING: Social Security Administration chief data officer and whistle-blower Charles Borges has resigned after bombshell report that SSA put highly-sensitive data at risk. He sent out an email to colleagues moments ago. Here is the text of his email shared with me:
Our bill to increase the wages of incarcerated firefighters in California is officially on the Senate floor.
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NEW: In Chicago, a Teamsters local is striking in part to protect against federal immigration authorities. “It brings a lot of fear to our workplace." If they win, they’ll be the first Teamsters local in the country to adopt this language. @sarahlazare.bsky.social in @prospect.org:
Hundreds strike at GE Aerospace, SpaceX wins against the NLRB, major protests planned for Labor Day, and more headlines you missed.
Reading up on the Chicano Moratorium of 1970 to prepare for the context of a 55th anniversary this weekend. Several great books, but this passage stuck out. Written by Hunter S Thompson after Ruben Salazar was killed by LASD deputies there 55 years ago today. From “Strange Rumblings in Aztlan”:
Journalist Rubén Salazar, killed 55 years ago today: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAxL...
YEAHHHHHHHHHHH
Said it many times, people nationally do not understand that SF and LA are not progressive wastelands, they are conservative wastelands draped in nominally progressive social attitudes. Killing new housing of all sorts for decades anywhere and any way they can.
What if your town’s culture vanished overnight? Libraries are capturing online pages that showcase community life, preserving the web we built Learn more in our blog ➡️ blog.archive.org/2025/08/27/p...
Newspapers disappear. Communities’ stories shouldn’t. Community Webs librarians are archiving grassroots news to preserve the web we built. Learn more ⤵️ blog.archive.org/2025/08/27/p... 🧵
BREAKING: Big moment as CDC staff stage a mass walkout. They have lined the street outside its HQ to greet and salute the four top officials who have resigned in protest at RFK Jr’s attack on the agency’s science base. (🎥 AP)
CDC employees standing up and walking out in light of the mass shootings, firings, and *waves hands in the air* everything else. #USAnotRFK Lets gooooo
Good to see this
I was previously using OtterAI for transcriptions, and then they updated their TOS Honestly I don’t mind transcribing by hand, it keeps my WPM high :P
to that end** My god, lmao. The typos, they're ruinous. See? Human writing ;]
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Getting back into the swing of things after needing to attend to some personal matters this month. I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a human journalist (yes, really), and to the end I've added some info to my About and Subscription pages that I hope helps folks see where I stand:
![A pledge to you, my readers, about AI As the world continues to be swallowed whole by the menace of AI chatbots, I felt it was important to write a bit about what, if any, AI may be used in service of this publication. While I may use AI to help generate transcriptions of the interviews I conduct with my sources (TapeACall transcribes recordings, for example), those generated transcripts are combed through multiple times before I select quotes for publication. I often listen to recorded interviews multiple times before and after they are transcribed, and you can be sure that the quotes included in any original written piece on this website have been thoroughly vetted against the recording. However, given the recent news that OpenAI may be using chat transcripts to train their LLMs, there’s a likely chance that other companies will do the same–therefore, it’s highly likely that I’ll be going back to transcribing audio by hand in order to preserve source confidentiality. That’s it. That’s all I use any type of “AI” technology for. I do not use AI for research, for writing, for image generation, video generation, or any other item that I publish on my newsletter. I refuse to use it. This newsletter is written by my own hand, using my own brain, and my own training as a journalist, literary scholar, and researcher. AI technology is untested, dangerous, and produces subpar work with such regularity that it’s functionally useless. It has also contributed heavily to the decimation of newsrooms across this country, and any newsroom leader who thinks it’s the future of journalism is a rube. This is my pledge to you: if you read this newsletter, you can rest assured that is it written entirely by me. That’s a Mel Buer guarantee. ;]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:36qxymynrrlueovhitpmrfbu/bafkreidbc647mawgro2yxwnztwda5r2g3mynoypidegculncyvslkctkqu@jpeg "Click to view full size")
Sure seems like a mood is in the air this week
At a time where federal worker unions are under attack by the Trump administration, 600 workers at Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks have unionized
🚨Border Patrol arrested two firefighters who were actively fighting a wildfire at the time. When the other members of the crew asked for a chance to say goodbye, a Border Patrol agent told the crew member “you need to get the f*ck out of here. I’m going to make you leave.”
Trauma-informed journalism means you doubledown on informed consent, let the source choose the interview location, understand how reliving these events can retraumatize the source—and how sustained coverage affects children more heavily Hard to consider these things in the chaos of the aftermath
Do you see how many cameras are around this kid? This is irresponsible, period.
Trauma-informed journalism means you doubledown on informed consent, let the source choose the interview location, understand how reliving these events can retraumatize the source—and how sustained coverage affects children more heavily Hard to consider these things in the chaos of the aftermath
Imagery of children being led out after a lockdown and looking for parents You see one hugging his mom and immediately crowd around trying to get mom to say yes to an interview Have they even had a chance to process this together? No, they likely haven’t even gotten home yet
Lemme paint a picture here: there are usual dozens of cameras crowding around the perimeter of a shooting location, chasing after anyone who looks like they might have seen something; it’s chaos, frankly
Look man, yell at me in the comments all you want, but if you want to interview children who witnessed a mass shooting, the best time is probably not directly after such an event, before the family has any meaningful time to process what the hell just happened “It’s important!” Yeah? You can wait
Right, because that’s definitely worked before
Once again reminding my fellow journalists that you don’t…you don’t have to do this Trauma-informed reporting, for the love of god Where the fuck is this child’s parents
I spent so much of my life in those pews Made lifelong friendships sitting in them To see that safety shattered by such senseless violence, once again, is just too much
It just…it just doesn’t have to be like this Just a bottomless river of grief, day in and day out
Would be real nice to be able to point toward God and get a promise of divine vengeance on days like this
Man I used to sit near the windows and look up at the stained glass and feel some relief from the chaos of school days I cannot fucking imagine what it would be like to look out and see bullets flying in I’m really really not good today
Man I used to sit near the windows and look up at the stained glass and feel some relief from the chaos of school days I cannot fucking imagine what it would be like to look out and see bullets flying in I’m really really not good today
Shot them during mass…DURING MASS. Just sprayed bullets through the windows at the children sitting in the pews I grew up sitting in a church just like this, walking with friends to mass every Wednesday…it’s supposed to be a safe space. It was a safe space for me Struggling hard this morning
Marisa im fucking losing it
A camera. A Hamas camera. Are you kidding
Hundreds of my international colleagues killed. Bombed, shot, starved, stalked and murdered. It’s…it’s hard to process the grief, the outrage.
Every loss is felt deeply, and this is no exception. Mariam Dagga was an exceptional visual journalist; her photos were something else. She was my age—I try to imagine what it was like for her to send her son to safety and remain behind…it’s difficult. Unimaginable brutality. Idk what else to say
UPDATE: Lisa Cook says she's not going anywhere and Trump's bid to fire her is baseless. www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
First of my weekly shorts and ephemera: www.patreon.com/posts/owlets...
“The bikes, as one onlooker noted, are reminders of the people who go in — but who aren't lucky enough to come out. ‘It's like a tombstone,’ said Joe Williams, who volunteers outside the courthouse connecting immigrants with legal support in their uphill battle against the Trump administration”
Ugh thank you✊🔥