The Tea Party Express Visits Los Angeles

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Appearing on television recently, comedian , had this to say about the “Tea Party” demonstrations:

“Let’s be very honest about what this is about. It’s not about bashing Democrats, it’s not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don’t know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up”.

She went on to call the people who attend such protests, “a bunch of teabagging rednecks”.

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Former President Jimmy Carter has also added to the accusations of racism by saying:

“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American”.

On Oct 25th The Tea Party Express made the second stop in it’s cross-country tour of the United States, at Griffith Park, in Los Angeles.
So I went down to have a look for myself.

Where Have All the Anti-War Protesters Gone

Posted on by ringospictures

I’ve long suspected that most of the people who participated in anti-war demonstrations during Bush’s presidency were not so much motivated by a deep opposition to “the war” so much as by a visceral hatred of President George W. Bush. If the dismal turn out at the recent protest against the War in Afghanistan is any indication then my theory may be accurate.
International ANSWER, who at the height of the Bush years could easily get thousands of people to march in opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, can now barely get 100 people to show up for a protest… And, of the 100 or so people who did attend the “8th Anniversary Protest Against the War in Afghanistan”, nearly all of them were either the same smelly old Communists who show up at every leftwing demonstration, or the usual clique of 9/11 “truthers” who regularly gather at various locations around Los Angeles to annoy tourists.
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The Occupation of Los Angeles

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On Friday – Veterans Day – Nov. 11th, I stopped by Occupy LA just in time to join up with a group of “occupiers” who were heading out to “have a dance party in the street”. Our leader was a pleasant looking young woman with feathers hanging from her ears and a megaphone in her hand.
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She marched around the park calling for people to come join our “party in the streets”. After about 20 minutes she managed to muster up a rabble of approximately 40 or so. It was a mixed group – there were a handful of anarchist types with bandanas around their faces, a few angry young Latino-Communists, a couple of hippies, four or five shady looking guys with shaved heads, punk rock girls with blue hair, some normal looking teenage girls, and a man with a giant psychedelic paper-mache chicken head.
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And there was one guy trying real hard to look like Che Guevara.
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Our leader explained to us that we were going to dance around in the middle of the street at busy intersections near freeway entrances in order to cause traffic jams. The purpose was to provoke the police into a confrontation, and to get on television. Some people at Occupy L.A. are apparently suffering from some strange form of “police brutality envy”. They’re frustrated that they haven’t had the confrontation with the police that they so desperately need to fulfill the fantasy that they live in a fascist police state. They hear about Oakland and New York and wonder “why can’t I get pepper-sprayed or tear-gassed”. It’s a strange form of inferiority complex that only radical Leftists, anarchists and certain types of hippies can understand.

So off we marched chanting “Viva La Revolucion!”
As we marched, a small group of Los Angeles bicycle police followed along behind us.
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We marched right past the Los Angeles Times, but no reporters came out to document our little insurrection.
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Eventually we came to the intersection of 8th St. and Figueroa, and our leader instructed us to “go party in the street”. In the video below you can see the occupiers, chanting “Whose streets? Our streets”, and walking out into the traffic. Although it’s difficult to see, at the end of this video clip a man in a suit and tie is chased into the office tower on the corner. Apparently he yelled something at the protesters, and like a mob they swarmed toward him as he ran into the building. A security guard quickly locked the doors.
They briefly stood in front of the building’s entrance chanting “Fuck men in suits! Fuck men in suits!” before the leader of our small band of revolutionaries lead them back out into the intersection, once again chanting “Whose street? Our street!”…
And without any sense of irony they chanted “This is what democracy looks like!” as they blocked people from driving home from work on a Friday afternoon.
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Eventually a man got out of his car and confronted Che Guevara Jr. A little shoving ensued, but Che Jr. backed off.
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Where were the police you might ask?…I don’t know. They rode their bikes down the street and just watched from a safe distance as the “occupiers” confronted drivers and screamed at pedestrians – often berating them, sometimes calling for them to get out of their cars and join the protest.
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Eventually, after about 15 minutes of snarling up traffic, our leader called everyone over to the sidewalk and told them that we were heading to another intersection, that this was just a warm up. So off we went again chanting.
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On the way to the next intersection they spotted a small Bank of America branch and instinctively started screaming and yelling and waving their fists.
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It took a few minutes before they realized that the bank was closed for Veterans Day.
The next stop was 6th St and Figueroa, where there are both an entrance and an exit to and from the 110 Freeway. The protesters quickly occupied the intersection chanting “Free your mind, open your eyes!” – our bicycle police escort followed along and watched from a distance.
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A few cars forced their way through, nearly running over protesters. Others were simply stuck. Traffic quickly backed up as far as the eye could see. Horns were honking. The police just sat there watching. Some drivers called out for the police to do something, but the police did nothing except watch, refusing to even respond to the drivers’ requests.
The girl pictured below would walk right up to cars and implore them to get out and join the protest, when they would refuse she would berate them with profanity.
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This went on for about 20 minutes. Some of the protesters were nearly hit by cars that tried to push their way through, especially the man in the giant chicken head mask who wandered aimlessly into the path of oncoming vehicles. As you can see in the following video, police watched and made no attempt to clear the intersection. We were less than a mile from the LAPD’s main station, and bicycle officers had been monitoring this protest since we left City Hall Park, yet only three or four more police arrived on the scene.
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Once again our leader called for everyone to move back to the sidewalk. When we were all assembled on the north-east corner she told us that we were now moving on to 3rd and Figueroa. It was a holiday and it was Friday, people were leaving work early, and she expected this intersection would cause the biggest traffic jam of the day, this being the route many people who work in the corporate towers of the financial district take to get on the freeway when leaving work. We marched onward chanting “Viva La Revolucion!” and “Power to the people!”

Occupy

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Every year in Downtown Los Angeles a massive May Day march takes place, the biggest in the United States. In recent years the march has focused on immigration reform, but it has always been about more than that. May Day is, and always has been, a Socialist “workers” holiday; and every year contingents of Communists and Socialists of every stripe can be seen marching down Broadway waving red flags, and calling for revolution.
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The so called “Occupy” movement, which had taken a winter hiatus, was once again looking to get the attention of the media, and had called for a “General Strike” on May 1st. They decided to use the already established L.A. May Day March to stage their big comeback.
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The police had cleared Broadway of all motor traffic for the march. The main march was supposed to meet up with a second smaller “Occupy” march at 5th Street and continue down Broadway to First Street where a rally was to be held. Occupy L.A. (OLA) had no interest following any predetermined parade route – screaming at the police and causing traffic jams was their specialty. So no sooner did the two marches converge before OLA broke through a police barricade and began pouring down 5th Street into traffic. The police were out numbered, and unable to stop them. Hundreds of Occupiers forced their way past the police and streamed through traffic for two blocks down to Main Street. Clearly it was all planned in advance. Within minutes they were setting up tents in the street, as a thrash band powered by a gas generator played crappy music. Banners were unfurled. People queued up for free food. The Occupiers were ecstatic – Main St. was occupied!
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This party in the streets lasted no more than an hour before maps were passed around featuring the locations of nearby banks. Soon small groups began heading out. The police couldn’t possibly bock every street and alley way. Occupiers headed out into open traffic searching for police to confront and hurl obscenities at, while the police attempted to herd them back towards Broadway. This is how it went for the rest of the day.
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The local news reported a “carnival” atmosphere with no violence, and only a few arrests. I suppose that’s accurate so long as you consider unprovoked mobs swarming police, hurling epitaphs at them, and hitting them with skateboards, drums and wooden pallets to be non-violent. The only reason there were so few arrests is because the police chose not to enforce the law out of fear that the crowd’s response would only escalate the situation into a full fledged riot. There is more about the assaults on police officers further down on in this report.
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Stupidity was the order of the day. Many of the signs I photographed contained incomprehensible messages, and atrocious spelling errors.
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Every incoherent philosophy or long discredited political ideology was proudly promoted. There were Communists and Socialist of every stripe walking the streets.