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.