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Eagle Rock attorney Don Justin Jones walked around Los Angeles State Historical Park on Saturday morning wearing a T-shirt with a crossed-out photo of former California Gov. Pete Wilson and an umbrella that stated “Chale Trump” (“No Way Trump”). “I’m here to remember what we started,” he said, as people streamed into a tent-ringed field to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the campaign against Proposition 187. The 1994 California ballot initiative sought to deny illegal immigrants social services but instead set off a political earthquake that helped to turn California deep blue. The measure’s backers, Jones said, suffered from “a delusion to think it was a revolution. Now, it’s an evolution.” We are California: 25 Years Beyond 187, the coalition behind the rally, expected far more than the several hundred revelers who showed up Saturday. But the event nevertheless energized attendees, nearly all who said they were there because the United States is now going through the same xenophobia that California weathered a quarter-century ago… “Even though it was a very dark time [in 1994],” said Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles), “real good came out of it.” “California is leading the resistance,” said Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. His nonprofit filed a lawsuit that eventually led to Proposition 187 being declared unconstitutional by a federal court in 1997. “We have an opportunity to take that work that began 25 years ago and replicate it and take it around the country.”

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