On Sunday, anti-ICE demonstrations in LA had become more chaotic: protestors hurled heavy objects from a highway overpass onto police below, set Waymos on fire, looted businesses overnight, and took over the 101 freeway. By Saturday, a Wikipedia article titled “June 2025 Los Angeles protests” had already emerged, and within hours, the core debate on the article’s Talk page centered around how to refer to the chaos in Los Angeles: was it a "protest," "riot," "civil unrest," or something else?

In a section on the Talk page titled “Protests or Unrest?” one editor, SpringField23402, noted, “Protests began peacefully on June 6th, but later turned to civil unrest, vandalism, and lawlessness. I’m wondering if we should discuss if these incidents are even protests anymore?” Irruptive Creditor responded with an interesting (and perhaps still somewhat taboo) comparison, writing, “I would honestly describe it as June 2025 Los Angeles unrest, as it appears to be unfolding similar to how the 2014 Ferguson unrest did.”

The article’s top contributor by text, Jamie Eilat (who has spent significant time editing articles on the Australian cartoon The Amazing Digital Circus and the canceled Disney show The Owl House), was “hesitant to switch out the word ‘protest’ with any other terms without some good secondary sourcing to back that terminology up. However, I do think the inclusion of ‘anti-ICE’ in the title would be a decent idea.” Others voiced full-throated support for changing the article to focus on the term “unrest.” As of writing, the article remained titled “June 2025 Los Angeles protests.”