The Los Angeles ICE raids and the protest against them had just begun when I set out for downtown on Saturday. My destination: the Orpheum Theater and the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Last Remaining Seats, an annual film series held in Broadway’s movie palaces. But first I needed to drop my newly retired housekeeper at Union Station, where a bus would take her home from work for the last time. We were both nervous about this: she is Latino and a permanent resident, the former of which makes her an ICE target while the latter offers no guarantee of protection. There were LAPD vehicles lined up outside the station and nowhere to pull over legally near the bus, so our goodbye—after 34 years—was disappointingly rushed. I stopped at the nearest red light and urged her to hurry to the bus stop. She got home uneventfully, I later learned.

As I headed south along Los Angeles Street, I saw a clusters of CHIP vehicles at the on ramp of the 101, the officers chatting amiably as they blocked the freeway entrance. Otherwise this major street was quiet—eerily so—and I drove a mile without seeing a single Latino in an overwhelmingly Latino area. But Broadway was reassuringly lively, as a crowd of moviegoers converged on the neon-lit Orpheum Theater.

Like the other theaters along Broadway, the Orpheum was built for vaudeville and movies. It opened in 1926 as a glorious Beaux Arts palace of entertainment, and since its renovation in the early 90s has been constantly booked for concerts and other live events. Last Remaining Seats is a throwback to its early days, when a night at the Orpheum began with a Mighty Wurlitzer concert and a cartoon short before the main event: a Hollywood movie. On Saturday the audience enjoyed all three. After seeing Betty Boop in “Poor Cinderella” (1934), I watched “Roman Holiday” (1953), but even Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn couldn’t distract me from the events outside. What would await us as we exited the theater?

As it turned out, nothing beyond the usual scramble in the parking lot. As I drove home, I saw few pedestrians and only one or two police cars. It was so quiet that I pulled over to take a quick picture of City Hall, beautifully lit for Pride Month, before getting on the freeway. On the way there was nothing out of the ordinary, let alone the kind of unrest that would make calling up the National Guard necessary. But Trump did, and those troops were followed by a battalion of Marines whose presence is designed to escalate tensions

This summer marks the 36th anniversary of my becoming an Angeleno. This means I’ve lived through the Menendez, Latasha Harlins, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman murders, the Rodney King beating, the 1992 Riots, the Northridge Earthquake, the O.J. car chase and murder trial, and the Eaton Canyon, Sunset and Palisades fires. Of these events, only the Riots prompted a deployment of National Guard troops. It was justified: 63 people died and 2,383 were injured in the violence. Multiple fires burned within six blocks of the house where I sheltered with my eight-year-old son, and looting in nearby Koreatown was intense.

But even in that extraordinary time the danger was over within two days, and the troops were gone within a couple of weeks. Now, after days of mostly peaceful protests, Angelenos will face troops trained to kill, not control crowds and keep order. This Saturday’s No Kings protests will be a test for the Marines and newly federalized California National Guard, but for Los Angeles it will be just the latest in a long series of civic challenges. Angelenos survived the others, and we’ll persevere through this one.