Anyone who has covered the anti-immigrant movement in Southern California knows exactly who Raymond Herrera is. He is a manifestation of that old Sesame Street song, “One of These Things (Is Not Like the Other)”—in a sea of old, white faces, Herrera is the guy with the porcine face, big ears, and disgusting nose hair who looks like he fell off the Oaxacan turnip truck, so damn prieto he is. As if to make up for his dark skin, Herrera is frequently the nastiest of an already nasty group, braying and screaming at counter-protestors with the glee of Uncle Ruckus.
Herrera has made many appearances in Orange County over the past decade, usually teaming up with the late, not-great Barbara Coe of California Coalition for Immigration Reform infamy. But all of a sudden, Herrera has been popping up in Coe’s old stomping grounds of Huntington Beach to team up with local haters. That was him February 20 at an anti-Dana Rohrbacher rally that had nothing to do with illegal immigration other than Latino activists were there and a group of HB losers were there to mock a local Latino community group. On Facebook, Herrera called Weekly chingona Denise De La Cruz an “illegal alien reporter”—never mind that Denise was born in the United States. The following day, he went to a town hall held by the Huntington Beach Police Department to assuage fears they were going to turn into ICE agents. Herrera showed up to accuse Huntington Beach Police Chief Robert Handy—hardly a liberal—of being a traitor against Donald Trump’s Mexican-deporting orders.
“I don’t work for the president,” Handy responded. “I work for the mayor, the City Council and the people of Huntington Beach.” BOOM
Herrera wasn’t done that day. The Orange County Register reported Herrera showed up to the HB City Council meeting “accused the council and Huntington Beach police of making the city a sanctuary city in ‘violation of the American people and creed,'” which only shows how deluded Herrera is. Anyone actually think HB, of all the cities in OC, would ever even entertain the idea of helping undocumented folks? Why, all the bro rage triggered ’round town at the mere mention of that would make Surf City spontaneously combust like a flaming cocktail at Papas and Beers!
But it was nastier than that. Herrera (who held up his iPhone the entire time he rambled to the city council and sounds like Harvey Pekar’s nerdy, obese friend in American Splendor) specifically called out Councilmember Erik Peterson for being nice to the city’s Oak View barrio. See, HB’s far-right losers have gone nuts for the past two years over the city’s Mexicans no longer wishing to live as quiet peons crammed into the Slater Slums next to a garbage dump, and thus have lost all sorts of sleep over it. Herrera’s speech got a “thank you sir!” from Michael Daly, the main administrator for the bareknuckles Huntington Beach Community Forum on Facebook, and a pendejo so pendejo that he cried last year about how an Oak View performance of the chinelos, a baile folklorico from Cuernavaca that always draws big crowds during SanTana’s main Día de los Muertos event, was anti-white—why you tilting, bruh?
Herrera snarled to Peterson that he’s coming back to HB, whatever that means. In the meanwhile, he’s looking to raise $20,000 to take him to DC. He started the campaign two weeks ago; as of this writing, he’s raised $75.
The best dossier on Herrera remains a 2009 San Bernardino Sun article in which he openly professes that white makes right. “Our society, America, is an Anglo Protestant core-cultured society,” he told the newspaper. “Everything that you do is the end result of the Anglo Protestant way of life.”
The story also mentions he and his loser pals back then protested an Italian restaurant for hanging Cinco de Mayo signs and got the Hesperia City Council to take down two Spanish-language billboards. So not only is Herrera a vendido, he’s also a Communist who doesn’t believe in the free market—CHAVALA!
