Bedtime for Democracy

[magicalspork]

On Tuesday, November 9th, 2004 - the 66th anniversary of Kristallnacht - there were tanks on the streets of L.A. (link contains full movie clip - 6.8 Mb)

This was a peaceful protest like any other, and the state responded with the same audacious tactics commonly employed by dictators in third-world countries. Fucking tanks? Is this part of

Comments

Just found this.

[magicalspork]

Beaverhausen  (1000+ posts)
Wed Nov-10-04 04:58 PM
Original message

Tanks at LA Protest - NOT what you think

This is from the LA Indymedia site:

I wasn't there at the Tuesday night demonstration in Westwood, but I
did do some follow-up investigation this morning about the two armored
vehicles.

Turns out the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration was having a
Veterans Day parade and celebration this morning (Wednesday). I drove
over and walked in to the WLA VA to look around at 10:50am.

Lots of marching middle school ROTC "cadets" (including
11-to-14-year-old boys and girls from Mt. Vernon Middle School all in
US Army uniform, some shouldering parade "rifles") and a high school
band and antique cars filled with VAFW members. And two USMC Striker
armored vehicles complete with 6 or 7 Marines in fatigues and body
armor giving junior high ROTC kids and adults tours of the vehicles.

I talked to one Marine with one of the "Striker" vehicles. He told me
they had driven the vehicles up from Camp Pendleton the night before
(Tuesday) on the freeway. Getting off the 405 Freeway going north, they
would have passed Wilshire and Veteran where ANSWER had called a rally
to protest the attack on Fallujah in Iraq.

I asked him if he was "rolling around Westwood" Tuesday night. He said,
"Yeah, and we drove past that anti-war demonstration. We was lost.
We're not from L.A. We didn't know where this place (WLA VA) was. We
were trying to find it."

"Did you drive around the block twice?" I asked.

"Yeah, we did. We stopped to ask them (the protestors) directions, but
they weren't very nice."

There was more conversation, but that was the gist of it from the
Marine side concerning the armored vehicles. For what it's worth.

I've also been receiving emails from friends who were at Tuesday
evening's Westwood demostration. They report that the LAPD officers
said they had no idea why the two armored vehicles had appeared and
then disappeared.
=========================

It appears you are correct! Thanks for the clarification - many people were confounded at the idea that tanks would show up to a peaceful protest like that.

Phew.

Re: Just found this.

[anhline]

Thank goodness. Yeah sending 2 armored vehicles in response to what seemed like a handful of peaceful demonstrators would have been way overkill. Like I said, you don't ever see military vehicles on Wilshire over there, so it makes sense that those were just some lost Marines.