“Human Shields” Used Again in Santa Barbara
They told us the Milpas parade had to die so that Latino families could live.
That was the official line from Santa Barbara’s Eastside Society this week: after 71 consecutive Decembers of marching bands, bikes wrapped in Christmas lights, and half the town crammed onto one street, the whole tradition is suddenly too dangerous.
The stated culprit?
ICE.
The real one? The same human-shield playbook I wrote about last month.
Fifty miles north, Santa Maria (a city that is 60-plus percent Latino) just ran its Parade of Lights like the calendar still read 2019. A hundred entries, thousands of spectators, zero cancellations, zero tears. Same federal agency, same rumored raids, same breathless activist bulletins.
Completely different result.
Here’s the part the professional compassion industry still refuses to say out loud: when they cancel these events “to protect immigrant families,” they aren’t protecting one demographic. They’re punishing every single person in the ZIP code.
The high-school trumpet player who practiced in the cold for three months. Gone.
The elderly couple who have staked out the same corner since the Nixon administration. Gone.
The dad hoisting his toddler up so she can see the lights. Gone.
The teacher who finally gets to watch her own students instead of grading papers. Gone.
This wasn’t a “Latino parade” that kindly let the rest of us watch. It was a community parade that happened to run through a Latino neighborhood. When the activist class kills it “out of caution,” they don’t shield one group; they rob the entire town.
And they do it on purpose.
A parade that only undocumented families quietly skip doesn’t trend on Blue-sky Twitter or make national headlines.
A parade that an entire city loses because of a phantom raid?
That’s pure, high-octane resistance gold.
That’s the photo of empty sidewalks and sad children you slap under the caption “Trump Even Stole Christmas from Santa Barbara.” That’s the outrage that keeps the donor texts flowing and the base foaming for another four years.
This entire mess is a Democrat creation, a slow-motion train wreck they engineered by treating borders like optional extras during the Biden years, waving in millions without a plan or a prayer for the fallout on schools, hospitals, and working folks’ wallets.
For decades, they shrugged off enforcement under Clinton, Bush, and Obama. Obama deported more people than any president in history, earning his “Deporter in Chief” stripes while blue-state activists barely batted an eye. But now, with Trump turning the screws back to normal, Democrats are the ones leading the charge against law enforcement, demonizing ICE agents as stormtroopers, and literally throwing themselves in front of Border Patrol vehicles in staged protests that make headlines but solve nothing. It’s not about safety; it’s about sabotage, ensuring no one forgets who’s the villain in their endless resistance saga.
Santa Maria just exposed the con. A heavily Latino city looked at the same rumors, the same ICE stats, the same breathless activist bulletins, and decided the entire community – Latino, White, Asian, Black, and everyone else – deserved one night of normalcy more than the Democrat Party deserved another week of viral hate clicks.
Santa Barbara’s blue elite looked at the same data and decided the whole community could shiver in the dark if it kept the Trump-derangement bonfire roaring. That’s human sacrifice in the name of compassion.
The victims aren’t just the undocumented. They’re every kid who won’t wave at Santa this year, every parent who won’t get that once-a-year photo, every neighbor who won’t bump into old friends under strings of holiday lights.
The Grinch doesn’t wear green this year. He wears a pussy hat and a “No Human Is Illegal” shirt while he cancels Christmas for the whole town just to keep you hating the wrong people.
In Santa Maria the lights are still blazing. In Santa Barbara they turned them off on purpose and made sure every single one of us felt the cold.
Merry Christmas, California.
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Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com
Yep, you are so right Justin! As many of you know, especially in Montecito, I own a 1937 Ford Fire Engine. It loves parades! Knowing Milpas was shut down, I decided to organize the Christmas Parade on 12-20 beginning at 5p. I anticipate 25 entries featuring many “mini” cars. The best places to witness this parade will be on Coast Village Rd and Cabrillo. Let’s bring back Christmas in rolling lights!
Having helped organize, coordinate, and pay for that Milpas Christmas parade for a few years in the early 2000s, I lament this decision at a personal, even visceral level. And I am suspicious that "the reason" given for the cancelation is far, far from the truth. But it is a useful narrative hook (hating ICE, its mission and its red-tint champions) on which to hang this failure of leadership. There should be some heads hanging in shame, but there are so few heads (or hearts) available....just wagging blue fingers in abundant supply.