Who—or What—Does America Protect Now?
What a college trip to Los Angeles revealed about who America protects—and who it’s willing to sacrifice.
“Well, we do have college to pay for, but we also need to live a little, right?” I say, smiling at Adom in response to the price he’s just revealed for the adorable Prada evening bag my daughter has looped over her forearm.
$2,600.
For a handbag.
I catch the flash of disbelief on my daughter’s face, even as I keep mine — if not beatific, then at least placid.
It isn’t hard to smile. Adom is an adorable 30-something salesman who loves his job and treats us with nothing but kindness and good humor— showering my eighteen-year-old with handbags to try on and gushing about what’s great about each one. She’s delighted.
“Absolutely! You’ve gotta live it up!” he says.
He means it, and most days, I do too. But today, my capacity for joy is blunted by the news I read just hours earlier.
Across the country, another 30-something man didn’t get to “live it up” — or even to live. He was in Minneapolis during a federal immigration enforcement operation, trying to help someone nearby, and he didn’t come home.
The man was Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Veterans Affairs hospital who cared deeply for the most injured and vulnerable patients. Witnesses and video footage suggest he was filming and trying to assist others when federal agents opened fire. The circumstances of his death have sparked widespread protests and outrage.
I’m angry. I’m scared. My heart feels heavy. I’m supposed to be present for this precious time with my daughter. I’m also supposed to teach her, to lead by example.
“Mom, put your phone down and live in the moment,” she says.
It’s good advice. Is it good advice today?
We walk on down Rodeo Drive. Every store is flawless, guarded, designed — surreal in its retail grandeur.
I sigh as we continue our walk, observing the handsome men in immaculate designer suits standing beside velvet ropes in front of every store. They aren’t there to sell handbags. They’re there to decide who gets inside.
There’s more visible security protecting leather goods than I’ve seen protecting people in our cities.
Who do we show up for, I wonder. In the United States right now, the answer feels clear: we protect products over people.
We no longer reliably honor our inalienable rights unless they come with a velvet rope and a logo.
It’s fun to window-shop on Rodeo, to marvel at all the beautiful things. But I feel the contrast tightening in my gut.
Luxury is safe. A man is dead.
And I keep circling the same question: who — or what — does America protect now?
My daughter and I are in Los Angeles for yet another college tour.
This school has offered her a generous scholarship, including a travel budget to come see the campus. So here we are. On the flight down, she announces, “I know I’m going to love LA.” But she’s lukewarm on the school itself, to my surprise.
“Give it a chance,” I tell her. “Tour it with an open mind.” It’s a good school, and the idea of her living on the West Coast, in a blue state, feels like a comfort to me.
Or does it?
The siege in Minneapolis has been going on for more than a week. I’ve never been there, but I have a close friend from Seattle who is, and know several others who have moved from Seattle to Minneapolis. I’ve long thought of us as sister cities — big blue dots, liberal politics, weather most people find unappealing but those of us who choose it love, and a shared GenX soundtrack of 90s bands and losers. Even Cameron Crowe seemed to get it: the Singles soundtrack was comprised almost entirely of Seattle bands plus Paul Westerberg of the Replacements — a Minneapolis icon. We’re not the same, but we’re kin.
I’m hyper-aware that where Minneapolis goes, Seattle may follow.
They’re known for hotdish niceness; we’re known for the Seattle Freeze, coffee, and heroin. Neither city is famous for fighting.
But those Minneapolis folks?
They’re warriors. Heroes. I see it now.
They’re out in subzero temperatures. They’re literally whistleblowing to warn their neighbors. And in a city with deep Northern European roots, they’re rising up to protect everyone — especially their brown and Black neighbors.
Will Seattle do the same? I don’t know. I hope so.
Could I put myself on the front lines and risk tear gas, arrest, or even death at the hands of the worst of what our nation can unleash: a scrambling gang of angry, poorly trained, overpaid, and over-empowered bullies who provoke, detain, and disappear people without just cause or consequence?
I’m not sure I have that flavor of bravery.
And could I live with my child alone in a faraway city and forced to do the same? Absolutely not.
But I know this much: I need to get clear — fast — about what I’m willing to do, and what I’m willing to risk.
They could be waiting for us when we get home.
And my child has a college decision looming.
I’m not surprised my daughter does, indeed, love LA.
She has always been brand- and beauty-conscious. It isn’t who I am, but she isn’t me, and that’s okay. I don’t see it as a moral failing when she wants to visit Erewhon to see the $20 single strawberry (sold out) or drink the $20 Hailey Bieber smoothie (delicious, like most strawberry-banana smoothies). I see her as aligned with her Gen Z peers, and sometimes, I indulge these interests.
After a day wandering Santa Monica Pier and Venice Beach, she is ready for glamour.
“Mom, I want to see fancy LA,” she says.
I look up from the grim news out of Minneapolis. Of course she wants this. And of course, we have to keep moving. Spending the day buried in headlines won’t bring Alex back or make the protests safer. My daughter still deserves her vacation day, and I’m determined to give it to her.
Of course, Rodeo Drive it is.
She’s never seen Pretty Woman, so I insist we watch a few iconic scenes in our hotel room first. I watch an impossibly young Julia Roberts clomp down Rodeo in her iconic white-and-blue hooker outfit. It was a star-making role. My daughter is awestruck.
“She’s so beautiful!”
She’s only known Julia as the mom in Wonder, not as the devastating wild-haired ingenue she once was.
In the clip, Julia’s character enters a Rodeo Drive shop asking for “something conservative” and is dismissed with a prim, “I don’t think we have anything for you. You’re obviously in the wrong place.” The shop clerks are stuffy, well-coiffed, tightly buttoned — more like Southern matrons than the style icons my daughter expects.
Our YouTube clip skips ahead to the shopping montage, set to Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman.”
“Those clothes are super ugly,” my daughter opines. She’s not wrong. They’re of their era, but it’s a conservative slice of it — prudish, matronly, nothing that appeals to a modern teen or, frankly, to me.
“But wait for it,” I tell her.
The line is coming — you know the line — and I know she’ll love it.
Julia doesn’t disappoint. “Do you remember me? I was in here yesterday and you wouldn’t wait on me. You work on commission, right…?” Then the perfect pause as she holds up her arms, laden with shopping bags, and drops it like it’s hot for those snotty shop girls…
“Big mistake. Big. HUGE! I have to go shopping now…”
My daughter grins. “Yeah. She’s a baddie.”
And so I call an Uber and take my pretty woman of a daughter to Rodeo Drive.
Rodeo Drive is tree-lined and pretty, but not as imposing as I expected.
Yes, we have to wait in line to cross velvet ropes into Goyard, and the well-suited shopkeepers greet us with nearly imperceptible sneers. But as a price of admission, it feels worth it — the luxury wares are fun to visually fondle, a fleeting glimpse of how the other side lives.
We move on to Gucci, YSL, Tom Ford, and others, to similar results: luxurious leather goods, impeccable jewels and watches, and invisible price tags. If you have to ask — don’t.
The sunshine and sidewalks prove to be great equalizers, the sun warming our backs as we dodge dog poop strewn along the path. The shoppers of Rodeo clearly love their dogs, just as we love ours. Do they not believe in picking up after them? Even inside these highest-end shops, we see loads of dogs. I’d never bring our dog Kira into a store selling handbags worth more than my car, but sure — let’s pretend a wagging tail couldn’t turn into a five-figure accident.
I spot a man carrying what look like conjoined white mini-poodles while his presumed wife is escorted through Hermès by several staff members. I smile and ask, “May I say hi to your dogs?” as he passes. He barely acknowledges me and keeps pace with the group, his dogs as indifferent to my offer of affection as he is to my very human question.
“Okay, I guess not,” I mutter to his retreating back.
Then a fleeting thought: maybe he doesn’t speak English. He isn’t Edward from Pretty Woman, even if he is paying the bill and carrying the dogs.
And then an observation: unlike Pretty Woman, almost no one in the shop is white — not the salespeople, and not the customers.
My daughter approaches me by the scarves. “No one in here will talk to me or even acknowledge me,” she mutters.
This has never happened to my gorgeous, stylish, white child. Retail spaces have always been welcoming — sometimes aggressively so.
“This is why Pretty Woman is timeless,” I tell her. We’ve all had that moment of being misjudged or dismissed by someone snotty.
“Imagine what it’s like to be Black and have this happen everywhere,” I add.
She rolls her eyes, and I deserve it for making it a lesson so fast. She already understands. But after today, I think she understands more deeply.
“It doesn’t feel great,” she says.
“No, it really doesn’t,” I say. I feel it too — the judgment, the coolness, the disrespect. I’m not used to it either. Even though I don’t care what they’re judging me for, my skin isn’t that thick. It gives me the ick, too.
“To be fair,” I offer, “they probably clocked us as tourists, not customers. There’s no way I was dropping thousands on a bag. This is how they make their living. I’m sure they’ve learned to be discerning.”
“But they don’t have to be rude about it,” she counters.
She’s not wrong.
And it gets me thinking: why were they so sure we couldn’t afford it? I’m a late-middle-aged white woman. I have the credit limit. I have the good sense not to spend that kind of money on a logo — but if I wanted to, I could.
Isn’t Rodeo Drive supposed to be for people like me?
So what was it about me that made them so certain I didn’t belong?
The answer, of course, is obvious: they’ve seen thousands of people like us walk through their doors. They’ve learned how to read bodies, clothes, posture, and confidence. They’ve learned how to profile. Their livelihoods depend on it. And they resent those of us who enter as tourists, not customers. That’s totally fair, overt even.
What’s less obvious — and a shift from the world of Pretty Woman just a few decades ago — is what that profile looks like now.
And from what I observed, white people are no longer the default image of disposable income on Rodeo Drive.
The customers moving easily past the velvet ropes, the ones being ushered from counter to counter, are mostly brown or Asian. Many are speaking languages other than English. They arrived to Rodeo already wearing Christian Dior sneakers and Chanel sunglasses.
This is not a story about poverty. It’s a story about power changing hands.
The fantasy of Pretty Woman depended on a very specific idea of wealth: white, conservative, American, male. But that world is fading. The face of luxury has changed.
And now, we’re the ones being snubbed.
I expected Minneapolis to weigh heavily on me all day.
What I didn’t expect was this: Rodeo Drive and Minneapolis were telling the same story. And what connects the two isn’t coincidence — it’s backlash.
On Rodeo Drive, I saw a future America already here: wealth and access no longer concentrated in white hands. The people moving most easily through those luxury spaces were largely brown and Asian, a visible sign that economic power is shifting.
In Minneapolis, I saw what happens when political power tries to claw back control over a country that no longer looks the way it used to. Immigration raids and militarized enforcement aren’t just about borders. They are about reasserting dominance over bodies that represent change.
That’s why these two scenes belong in the same story. One shows who is rising. The other shows how force fills the gap when legitimacy slips. On Rodeo Drive, we cordon off luxury from the non-wealthy. In Minneapolis, we enforce control over those labeled threats.
The settings differ, but the message is the same: safety is selective, and force — whether explicit through tear gas or implied through velvet ropes — is the tool that keeps it that way.
On Rodeo Drive, that logic meant we were ignored by sales clerks.
In Minneapolis, that same logic turned deadly for Alex Pretti — a white man who defied that reassertion of dominance, who intervened when others were targeted.
When fear governs power, it does not stop with the people it claims to hate. It expands outward. And anyone who steps into its path becomes expendable.
So the question isn’t whether Minneapolis is an outlier.
It’s whether it’s a preview.
After observing Rodeo Drive, here’s what I do know: white Americans are no longer the default class among the most financially elite. We’re not the dominant consumers of ultra-luxury. Sure, we may take Ubers to get there. But most of our drivers this weekend? GenX white men, grumbling about how cool things used to be in LA and how much it sucks now.
It’s the same anger Trump’s politics thrives on — the fear of losing dominance in a country that no longer centers them.
This is the fear MAGA feeds on.
If we keep turning blue cities into battlegrounds, we only harden that fear — and make places of possibility feel dangerous. Cities are where the top earners and innovators are. Some of them are white. Many of them are not. If you make these places dangerous, the talent and money will leave.
That would be a big mistake. Big. Huge.
We don’t need to “do more shopping.” We need to do more voting. We need to make sure we don’t build velvet ropes around democracy itself.
I’ll always have a soft spot for Prada, for the kindness only Adom showed us that day.
“You two are so cool and casual, I figured you were from LA,” he says. “The locals always dress chill when they shop.”
I know he’s humoring us. With my wild red hair and sparkly cat-eye glasses, I don’t look SoCal at all. Neither does my daughter in her UGG slides. But I appreciate that he gave her a good first Rodeo experience, so I play along.
“Thanks so much for your help,” I tell him. “We might be back for this one.”
My daughter’s eyes widen, horrified. “Even I know not to spend that kind of money on a handbag,” she whispers. I nod, and her face softens; we’re in on the joke together.
We take one last look at the $2,600 bag — lush burgundy leather, the little Prada triangle blazing on the front — and step back outside the velvet rope and into the world.
We dodge the dog poop on the sidewalk, with a new appreciation of what gets cleaned up and what doesn’t.
The luxury remains protected.
People do not.
Greetings!
I’m Dana DuBois, a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I’m the co-host of The Daily Whatever Show and Editorial & Booking Director here at Blue Amp Media. I write across a variety of topics but parenting, music and pop culture, relationships, and feminism are my favorites. Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well-placed semi-colons make my heart happy.
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I am a former Angeleno. Oh, how this resonates! It’s as brilliant as the sunshine on Rodeo Drive. Just marvelous!
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