July 2025 LWV MBA Statement to Area City Councils

Honorable Mayor and Council,

I am speaking this evening on behalf of the League of Women Voters of the Mount Baldy Area, a nonpartisan, grassroots organization working to protect and expand voting rights and ensure everyone is represented in our democracy. We neither support nor oppose candidates or political parties at any level of government but always work on vital issues of concern to members and the public. We empower voters and defend democracy through advocacy, education, and litigation, at the local, state, and national levels.

Local government is a critical part of the constitutional democracy we celebrate every July. A functioning democracy must ensure that we the people can hold our government accountable without fear of violence from the government. The League of Women Voters has supported the right to peacefully protest for over 100 years. Brave women suffragists staged protests demanding something radical at the time – the right to vote. Peaceful protest, like voting, is a constitutional right deeply rooted in American democracy.

In recent weeks, we have seen a California U.S. Senator wrestled to the ground and handcuffed while seeking to question a Cabinet official about federalized National Guard and U.S. Marines in the streets of our county, placed there over the objections of our duly elected California Governor.

Raids in Los Angeles County by masked federal officers have included arrests of community members exercising their First Amendment rights to observe and protest. These tactics seek to terrorize anyone who would stand with their neighbors or participate in democratic discourse. The League of Women Voters condemns the federal use of force in LA County and elsewhere in response to largely peaceful protests.

We ask this city council, the democratically elected leaders and in the all cities in our Mt. Baldy area, to condemn this federal use of force and to affirm their support of all of those cities in California, and America who exercise our constitutional rights, including peaceful protest. Thank you.