I'm not sure whether this is a journal entry or a witness statement
I went with three friends to the May Day immigrant rights protest today. We had class during the march, but we went to MacArthur Park, where it ended, to see what was going on. There were people milling around, lots of kids with Mexican and some American flags; a pleasant, innocuous, vibrant scene, though the noise of low-flying helicopters overhead reminded us that it was all under constant surveillance.
Then we saw the police on the ground.
They were lined up and standing in some kind of face-off against peaceful protesters: nightsticks at the ready, guns at their hips, bodies rigid in static violence. One of my friends is an activist who has been working with Cop Watch - a counter-surveillance group run by youth who are threatened by police violence in South Central LA - and when we ran into some of their members, they told us what had led to the situation we found. Some people had been dancing in the street, an Aztec dance they said, and the police had ridden right through the group on motorbikes, scattering them and pushing people away, arresting people for standing in the street. The Cop Watch kids moved in to protest and take pictures and managed to stop some arrests, but more police were arriving all the time. My activist friend's brother, a filmmaker, had been arrested for standing on a raised block in the street to videotape what was happening.
We were standing on the periphery, watching but unable to really see what was going on, where there started to be movement among the protesters. Something was happening with the police; people started running towards it, taking cameras out to bear witness to whatever brutality was taking place. There had been television cameras earlier, but now there were none: cameras were in the hands of the protestors and they were using them to show that whatever acts of racist violence were occurring would not be invisible. There was no violent instigation that I could see.
We didn't move in to see, didn't join the mess of protesting people. Maybe we should have, maybe that would have been a better act of solidarity than standing looking on and then walking away; but nevertheless, we stayed out of the way.
The police were trying to herd people out of the park, and we ended up standing at an intersection, directly in front of a line of police who were stopping anyone from passing them in either direction. Many protesters, including kids, were still inside. We watched as more police arrived. More cops, and more, and more. More guns. SWAT teams. Vans with riot police. I have never seen so many police in one place in my entire life. I thought I had seen overpoliced demonstrations before; I have never, ever seen anything like this. My cameraphone pictures don't cover much, but I may as well post them; there were no media there, a fact of which I am sure whoever authorised this was entirely conscious. Much of the time we could barely see the protesters for the police; they covered the whole road. And, let me just reiterate again, the protest had been completely peaceful. There was no riot, no violence that the police did not commence; that the police did not commit.
I'm a sheltered British white girl who learned most of her radical politics mainly from books and who expresses them mainly in the privileged zone of the academy. I would not have considered myself particularly sheltered before today. I understood before that the US is a police state built on violence and racism, had a theoretical idea of the role the LAPD play in that systemic structure; but I had never seen that violence in action with my own eyes, before today. So I guess this is my initiation into the concrete political reality of the city I am living in; and probably into that of the world.
I may be getting ahead of myself with the analysis, not having yet arrived at the end of what happened. We kept watching the police as more and more and more cops arrived. I couldn't make out too much of what was going on. But I could see them pushing around people, see the movement, though I couldn't see what they were doing. Then: shots. Rubber bullets. Though I'll admit that wee Scottish me, who grew up in a place where police don't carry guns and who heard way too many monster stories of gun-crime-ridden LA before I moved here, didn't figure that out at first. I've since heard that there was tear gas; people beaten; children separated from their parents in the chaos. The police were herding people around the Metro station, though we couldn't see what they were doing. I have since found out that there were many beatings, many injuries, many arrests. Remember, these people's great crime had been to stand in a park. A park which had now become for all intents and purposes a holding cell.
As I stood watching mute and transfixed, a young woman standing near us screamed and yelled at the police. She told them over and over that they were hurting innocent people, that they were hurting kids. The cop's response? That they were using rubber bullets. I.e, the biggest danger was that they would blind the kids, and there was only a small chance they would kill them. No problem at all, then. I cannot comprehend what kind of human being lives behind that impassive face. How is it possible to stand by and let this happen, to do it? What does that man believe that lets him do that?
At one point, an elderly Black man with a cane limped across the road into which the police were forbidding us from stepping. He stumbled in front of an officer, who reached out a hand to help him stand up. Then he stumbled right in front of the next police officer, and the next one, down the line; after he crossed the road, he walked off. A small 'fuck you' performance, which highlighted the ludicrous notion, given the situation, of the idea that the police force's job is to "Protect and Serve."
We left when the cops looked like they were starting to move forward, to pick up the people standing outside the park as well. I have since heard that my friend's brother has been charged with resisting arrest and obstruction; that they're asking $10,000 bail, which the family cannot possibly afford (can anyone?); they are waiting to speak with a lawyer.
I have personal introspections to add to this; but I think I will make another post of those, and let this factual account stand alone. I haven't seen any media coverage yet (but I haven't watched TV or listened to the radio, just looked online), only a little on Indymedia and comments from people who were there. I wonder if there will be any. I suppose this is my contribution, such as it is.
ETA: news link:
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2007/05/197797.php
And video explaining just why the media disappeared before the rubber bullets started flying...
Then we saw the police on the ground.
They were lined up and standing in some kind of face-off against peaceful protesters: nightsticks at the ready, guns at their hips, bodies rigid in static violence. One of my friends is an activist who has been working with Cop Watch - a counter-surveillance group run by youth who are threatened by police violence in South Central LA - and when we ran into some of their members, they told us what had led to the situation we found. Some people had been dancing in the street, an Aztec dance they said, and the police had ridden right through the group on motorbikes, scattering them and pushing people away, arresting people for standing in the street. The Cop Watch kids moved in to protest and take pictures and managed to stop some arrests, but more police were arriving all the time. My activist friend's brother, a filmmaker, had been arrested for standing on a raised block in the street to videotape what was happening.
We were standing on the periphery, watching but unable to really see what was going on, where there started to be movement among the protesters. Something was happening with the police; people started running towards it, taking cameras out to bear witness to whatever brutality was taking place. There had been television cameras earlier, but now there were none: cameras were in the hands of the protestors and they were using them to show that whatever acts of racist violence were occurring would not be invisible. There was no violent instigation that I could see.
We didn't move in to see, didn't join the mess of protesting people. Maybe we should have, maybe that would have been a better act of solidarity than standing looking on and then walking away; but nevertheless, we stayed out of the way.
The police were trying to herd people out of the park, and we ended up standing at an intersection, directly in front of a line of police who were stopping anyone from passing them in either direction. Many protesters, including kids, were still inside. We watched as more police arrived. More cops, and more, and more. More guns. SWAT teams. Vans with riot police. I have never seen so many police in one place in my entire life. I thought I had seen overpoliced demonstrations before; I have never, ever seen anything like this. My cameraphone pictures don't cover much, but I may as well post them; there were no media there, a fact of which I am sure whoever authorised this was entirely conscious. Much of the time we could barely see the protesters for the police; they covered the whole road. And, let me just reiterate again, the protest had been completely peaceful. There was no riot, no violence that the police did not commence; that the police did not commit.
I'm a sheltered British white girl who learned most of her radical politics mainly from books and who expresses them mainly in the privileged zone of the academy. I would not have considered myself particularly sheltered before today. I understood before that the US is a police state built on violence and racism, had a theoretical idea of the role the LAPD play in that systemic structure; but I had never seen that violence in action with my own eyes, before today. So I guess this is my initiation into the concrete political reality of the city I am living in; and probably into that of the world.
I may be getting ahead of myself with the analysis, not having yet arrived at the end of what happened. We kept watching the police as more and more and more cops arrived. I couldn't make out too much of what was going on. But I could see them pushing around people, see the movement, though I couldn't see what they were doing. Then: shots. Rubber bullets. Though I'll admit that wee Scottish me, who grew up in a place where police don't carry guns and who heard way too many monster stories of gun-crime-ridden LA before I moved here, didn't figure that out at first. I've since heard that there was tear gas; people beaten; children separated from their parents in the chaos. The police were herding people around the Metro station, though we couldn't see what they were doing. I have since found out that there were many beatings, many injuries, many arrests. Remember, these people's great crime had been to stand in a park. A park which had now become for all intents and purposes a holding cell.
As I stood watching mute and transfixed, a young woman standing near us screamed and yelled at the police. She told them over and over that they were hurting innocent people, that they were hurting kids. The cop's response? That they were using rubber bullets. I.e, the biggest danger was that they would blind the kids, and there was only a small chance they would kill them. No problem at all, then. I cannot comprehend what kind of human being lives behind that impassive face. How is it possible to stand by and let this happen, to do it? What does that man believe that lets him do that?
At one point, an elderly Black man with a cane limped across the road into which the police were forbidding us from stepping. He stumbled in front of an officer, who reached out a hand to help him stand up. Then he stumbled right in front of the next police officer, and the next one, down the line; after he crossed the road, he walked off. A small 'fuck you' performance, which highlighted the ludicrous notion, given the situation, of the idea that the police force's job is to "Protect and Serve."
We left when the cops looked like they were starting to move forward, to pick up the people standing outside the park as well. I have since heard that my friend's brother has been charged with resisting arrest and obstruction; that they're asking $10,000 bail, which the family cannot possibly afford (can anyone?); they are waiting to speak with a lawyer.
I have personal introspections to add to this; but I think I will make another post of those, and let this factual account stand alone. I haven't seen any media coverage yet (but I haven't watched TV or listened to the radio, just looked online), only a little on Indymedia and comments from people who were there. I wonder if there will be any. I suppose this is my contribution, such as it is.
ETA: news link:
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2007/05/197797.php
And video explaining just why the media disappeared before the rubber bullets started flying...