Martha married her husband, Narciso Barranco, in 2023. Just a few short years later, their family sat around the dinner table on a seemingly normal night, waiting for him to return home and eat dinner together.

Narciso never got the chance to go home that night.

Narciso Barranco arrived to the U.S. in 1994. He spent 24 days locked up in a detention center after being violently arrested by a snatch squad of federal immigration agents in Santa Ana on June 21.

We are back with another #WorkerWednesday!

For almost a year before our soft-launch, we worked to lay the groundwork for this project. A lot of that labor involved conversations about how we can build a newsroom to better serve our needs, not the ruling class.

We paused our weekly intros while our reporters have been working to cover the state-sanctioned kidnappings in communities across the Southland, but we’re bringing Worker Wednesday back to continue sharing our perspective with you.

#WorkerLed #WorkerWednesday #TheSouthlander

We just filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for violating our First Amendment rights. Subscribe to thesouthlander.com and read our latest newsletter, which gives a more in-depth account of the ICE protests in LA and the injuries our reporters sustained on the ground.

Our reporters are out in the field again this weekend! If you could ask them any question about what it's like for journalists to cover ICE protests, what would you want to know?

Don't forget to subscribe or donate at thesouthlander.com, which supports our ability to bring you breaking news.

Are you curious about the experience of journalists on the ground at the protests in Los Angeles this weekend? Tune in to kpfa.org at 10 a.m. to hear from @bencamach0.bsky.social about his perspective.

While some of our reporters will be on the ground at City Hall covering the protests, we will also be hosting our first tabling event in the South Bay. Drop by the event to chat with some of our members about the state of local news and how we can better serve the communities we cover.

Another Southlander reporter, @bencamach0.bsky.social, has joined Abe to cover the protests and deployment of the National Guard tonight in LA.

More updates TK.

From @abemarquez.bsky.social, who’s on the ground covering raids near Alondra Blvd.

“ICE/LASD can all leave the community and everything could stop. But they’ve decided to stay and terrorize the community. The people came out once the word got out that ICE was going to raid a Home Depot.”

In the coming weeks, we hope to show you why worker-led newsrooms are the only model that can meaningfully rebuild trust with the communities we cover. Subscribe to our newsletter to learn more: thesouthlander.com.

Our very own @abemarquez.bsky.social is on the ground covering a local march for Noe Rodriguez, an unarmed man who was shot and killed by the Santa Ana Police Department in December.

Our worker-owned newsroom exists to serve communities throughout the Southland, many of which are poorly covered or excluded by mainstream media. We want to change that, but we can't do it without your help.

Fill out our audience survey to help guide our coverage!
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Introducing Worker Wednesday, a weekly spotlight on the past experiences of The Southlander team. We hope to show our audience how our backgrounds as journalists and freelancers have shaped the way we are building our own workplace.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter here: thesouthlander.com.

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