Reyna: MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark

I’ve been wondering when the moment will come when ICE will go far enough to persuade more people outside Los Angeles that it must be reined in. 

Maybe it will look something like the military invasion of the city’s MacArthur Park the other day, when soldiers and federal agents on horseback and in armored vehicles swept in for no obvious purpose other than to sow terror. 

“It’s the way a city looks before a coup,” Mayor Karen Bass, who rushed to the park, said later.

Can New Yorkers envision such a scene in Central Park? Is anywhere safe now for someone who can’t show the right papers?

People of a certain age might remember the songwriter Jimmy Webb’s weirdly compelling “MacArthur Park,” with its refrain that begins: “MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark.” Growing up in the East, I had never heard of MacArthur Park when the song hit the charts in 1968, and I wasn’t sure it was a real place. 

All these years later, something real is melting for sure. It is the glue that holds civil society together.

Editor’s Note: The above commentary was provided by retired Rio Grande Valley educator Mario Reyna. The commentary first appeared on Reyna’s social media pages.

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