May Day Demonstration - Los Angeles, CA on May 1, 2008
In1889, the Second International - a collection of prominent Marxists and socialist groups from across Europe - gathered for the first time in Paris and, among other things, declared May 1st as International Workers’ Day. Since then, labor unions, Communists and other disgruntled groups have used the day to stage demonstrations, strikes and marches… taking their grievances into the streets.
Last year, at the height of the immigration debate in the US Senate, over 100,000 people marched in the streets of Los Angeles demanding immigration reform. At the end of the otherwise peaceful march, a small number of agitators wearing camouflage pants, hoodies, and bandanas over their faces, began throwing rocks and bottles at police officers in MacArthur Park. This led the officers to attempt to clear the park using what many observers saw as excessive force against those who disobeyed. Tear gas and rubber bullets were employed leading to a number of injuries. A National Lawyers Guild observer was beaten with a baton when she attempted to intervene with the police and some news crews had their cameras smashed.
Much to my regret, I was not at last year’s demonstration, and so this year, like a good worker, I ditched work and headed downtown for the 2008 Los Angeles May Day March and Demonstration for Immigration Reform and Immigrant Rights.
This year the march was scheduled to start at three different points, converging at the intersection of 5th Street and Broadway, and then continuing to the final rally point at 1st Street between Broadway and Spring St… just around the corner from City Hall and directly in front of the Los Angeles Times building.
I decided to walk with the march from the west and so I took the subway to MacArthur Park and waited for the crowds to arrive.
MacArthur Park, in the heart of the Westlake District of Los Angeles, is surrounded by classic art deco architecture and was once one of the most beautiful places in the city. Today it is among the most densely populated and crime-ridden areas in all of California, plagued by gangs and defaced with graffiti. Most of the classic art deco buildings are now either boarded up or have been turned into low-income housing. The park itself is now known as a place to buy drugs and counterfeit Social Security Cards and fake drivers licenses.
I arrived early and saw that people were gathering at the corner of Alvarado and 6th Street.
The LA Police Dept had been undergoing extensive training for this event in hopes of avoiding the type of trouble that occurred last year. Much of the training seemed to be about smiling and being friendly.
At around 1:30pm the park began to fill up with demonstrators…
This guy was conducting a little pep-rally.
People were selling American flags…as well as the flags of other countries, Mexico being the most popular.
Some people brought their own flags. Like this fellow, who claimed to be an anti-Zionist, Jewish-Trotskyite.
Before long he had made a friend.
Soon the park was full of people…
This fellow wrapped his face in a red Palestinian Keffiyeh and proudly held one of the most offensive signs I’d see all day…
At about 2:15 pm the march, which actually started a few blocks down the road, approached the park and everyone began moving out into the street.
These guys carried an enormous white cross with the words "Jesus sin Fronteras" (Jesus without Borders) written across it…
A flatbed truck with a band playing cumbias (and an occasional rock & roll number) led the way.
The homeboy with the Hammer & Sickle flag ran out waved it back and forth at the very front of the march… that is, until some official media types asked him to get out of the way. I guess they thought he was ruining their video.
At this point I joined in the march, snapping pictures along the way…
Of course the Korean drummers were there, banging away…
LA Police Chief, William Bratton stood outside of Langers’ Deli… (yummy!)… smiling and shaking hands with people. Some in the crowd booed him as they passed, but most waved… some even cheered
Last year most of the demonstrators wore white shirts, this year there was no color theme, but red was very popular… as were images of the late Communist icon, Che Guevara.
To be fair, not everyone wore red… Many demonstrators sincerely waved nothing but the American flag.
These guys seemed genuinely annoyed by all the Mexican flags and Communist symbolism…
I continued along with the march - crisscrossing from one side to the other, occasionally running ahead - snapping shots all the while…
Vomit Bomb?
As we headed towards downtown, we passed through one of the most gang-ravaged neighborhoods of Los Angeles…
There are murals on many of the buildings in this part of the city.
Some legally commissioned…
Some not so legal, but still creative…
But most of the walls were covered with illegible tags…
We were literally marching through ground-zero of the illegal immigration crisis in America. And as we passed an elementary school you could see the faces of the most innocent victims of this growing, and seemingly unsolvable problem…
A little further along a Coke-a-Cola truck was parked and a couple of people were handing out free Cokes…
I continued snapping shots of anything which caught my attention…
And here we have "The Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere"…
Say it with me now, "Si Se Puede!"
The flag of the Fiji Islands…
As we approached the Harbor freeway overpass, I ran ahead to get a view of the march as it descended into downtown… That’s when I saw this guy, who had a crazy look in his eyes and was dancing around violently with a large shield in one hand and some kind of rusty metal spearhead or hatchet in the other. A few police officers were watching him from a distance, so I quickly snapped a couple of shots and ran on ahead.
Here’s a picture of the march crossing the freeway before heading into downtown…
Hmmm, cerveza…
The "Bus Riders Union" is one of the loudest and most annoying groups at LA protests…
Here’s a sample…
The police were keeping a wide distance and all of them were wearing big smiles…
At this point I ran ahead of the march to get to the intersection of 5th and Broadway where the other two marches were scheduled to meet up with the one I had been walking with. Along the way, this bus stop ad caught my eye…
When I reached the intersection it appeared that the smaller march coming from the east had already arrived. LAPD officers were lined up along the final stretch of the march but only a few had the usual riot gear with them…most where on bikes or walking.
People lined the streets, and eventually spilled into them as all three marches merged into one…
There were a number of old hippies on hand…
This fellow had a plastic dollhouse attached to his head…
As everyone came together for the final 5 blocks, I noticed that the march coming from the south up Broadway had a lot more red shirts, commie banners and black-clad anarchist types than the group I was with, so I quickly headed into the vortex of moonbats and agitators….
This pea-brained goon - who was with a group of about 15 - 20 people carrying red banners that read "Fight For Communism" - told me that I was not allowed to photograph his group. He even tried to push me away with his oversized, bulldog body.
I just kept snapping.
A little farther along there were a few guys dressed like the peasants from The Magnificent Seven…
At one point I was surrounded by every sort of bad political ideology imaginable .…
Thankfully there we not too many Keffiyehs to be seen, but this guy was very noticeable as he ran back and forth through the crowd wildly waving his Black & Red Alliance flag…
Here are some more photographs which I took as we approached the final rally point in front of the LA Times building.
Yes, these poor, cute kids were available for adoption…
Not everyone was an anarchist or a Communist or an Aztlan re-conquistador. Many of the demonstrators clearly wished to become Americans…
One of the best moments of the afternoon was when two men became so irritated by all of the red-shirted Communists wandering around, that they walked over and unfurled a huge American flag right in front of the spot where the same group of Communists who had told me not to photograph them had gathered. They rolled open the large flag and the invited passersby to stop and have their pictures taken in front of it… and many people did.
The commies eventually moved further up the street.
Finally the march ended in a massive rally directly in front of the Los Angeles Times building.
Yes, I did eat one of those bacon-wrapped sausages, smothered in onions and green peppers, served on a hotdog bun with mayonnaise and ketchup.
And it was good…really good
So as I looked at the thousands of people assembled around me and listened to the angry speeches, mostly in Spanish, I wondered if the Los Angeles Times would actually report this event realistically - warts and all, as they say. After all, how could they not see the Hammer & Sickle flag that was literally right under their noses?
How could they possibly miss the all the Red-clad Communists that were camped on the sidewalk right outside their offices?
If it was neo-Nazis or Klansmen standing on the sidewalk outside of their building, they wouldn’t miss that, would they?
I spent the next half hour walking around with all the little Che-bots, checking out the kiosks selling anti-capitalist merchandise and souvenirs…
The LA Teachers Union, one of the most Leftist groups to take the stage that afternoon, was selling t-shirts…
Of course there were also plenty of other trinkets available for the raving Leftist in your life…
As the day wore to an end, there was no sign of violence….even though some people tried hard to provoke it…
This young man became so frustrated by the lack of violence that he actually went up to a group of policemen - very large policemen - and called them pigs, sticking his middle finger up right into their faces….They completely ignored him, continuing their conversations as if he didn’t exist.
It was a bad day for the black-clad teeny-boppers….and a good day for the LAPD.
The sun was now sitting low in the sky and a cool breeze was flapping the flags of Aztlan, so I headed back to the subway for the short ride home…
It had been a long afternoon and my head was a bit scrambled from all the things that I had seen and heard that day, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t see Fidel Castro riding on the train home with me.
The following day I read the Los Angeles Times article about May Day march, and not to my surprise, the demonstration which their top-notch journalists described bore almost no resemblance to the demonstration which I had attended.
Posted 5/3/08
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