Corporate Media journalists stood onstage at the Rage Against the Machine concert with IMC journalists as the police ordered dispersal on a lively but still peaceful crowd. When the crowd refused to disperse, teargas and rubber bullets were fired. Riot Geared officers on horseback panicked the crowd who rushed the fence.

As the police charged their horses over several small bon fires that had been lit with trash, officers on horseback stampeded the remaining 400 protestors. It is a unanimous report that police instigated violence and a brutal clampdown. The network news, in the meantime, continues its regular programming, ignoring the police brutality and demonizing protestors as vandals and troublemakers.

The streets of LA are plagued with sounds of hundreds of sirens and unrest. Reports are flooding the IMC of police brutality of protestors and young people at Pershing Square and around Downtown Los Angeles.

As a long time law-abiding citizen, I'm really starting to lose respect for law enforcement officials in general. The LAPD has once again proven their violent nature....they'll be no reform anytime soon. Perhaps, after we're all dead.

I just watched MSNBC's coverage and footage of the protesters' and cops' activities since Sunday through last night. I'm a bit concerned about the situation involving the ANARCHISTS and their actions. The bottles and stones reportedly thrown at the police, was it assault on them or self-defense against their riot mode? The ANARCHISTS have my respect, but I just hope they don't take their civil disobedience beyond reasonable measures. It could extremely dangerous and everything....

NEWS FLASH! DIRECT ACTION NETWORK protester YUKI KIDOKORO was just interviewed on CNN LIVE at 10:30 am ET/ 7:30 am PT during their segment THE DNC PROTESTS.

The police are on the defensive, they are scared of us protestors. And because they are scared they are going to attack us more and more, and we will become more and more determined. We are learning that reform is a fantasy that can never provide any real solutions for us. We are learning the brutal truth that the only way to make change in this world is to turn it upside down. Revolution is inevitable, and they will do anything to keep movements down. We will step up. Everytime they draw a line in the sand we will step over it. We won't draw a line in the stand, because this is our world, not theirs, and we want settle for anything less than the world. Mao said, "Fight, fail; Fight again, fail again...until final victory!" We will fight again and again and again, until final victory.

I heard briefly that there was trouble after teh Rage show on the news and stayed up until 2 in the morning scanning several news channels and found hardly anything on this. CNN hardly covered it, and for a few broadcasts just referred people to their web iste for more info. C-Span covered LA local news live for a while, but then just went to repeating all the speeches inside the convention. Hardly any of the other channels covered anything or if they did, they mentioned that protesters were trhowing bricks at cops. I haven't seen anything else on that, but I have more reason to doubt the corporate media take on events than anyone else's. Especially since they take most of their reports directly from police statements, and we all know LAPD's history on truth telling when it comes to these kind of things.
The mainstream press is purposefully ignoring this major news event. It shouldn't be a surprise though.
It's also not a surprise that the IMC was shut down over a bomb threat, an easily faked event with no way of verifying.
It's also not a surprise that the IMC's web site and d2kla's went down.
It's all part of the propaganda.

I live in the L.A. area, and as far as I know, the AP news story here is inaccurate.  The police officers who spoke with the local L.A. television media said that the protestors threw "dirt and bottles" at them; nothing was mentioned of "pieces of concrete" to the local media. 

This is the second time in an hour I've heard the protestors threw "concrete".  The police weren't too terribly convincing with the story about "dirt and bottles" when they were on the air--I'm having a hard time believing people threw concrete at them.

Also, in watching the media coverage, it really appeared that the police were the
cause of the incident (no surprise there). 

They continued firing rubber bullets at people who were dispersing and even apparently trampling some who'd fallen with horses.  The camera angle on that was bad, though, so it was hard to tell, even after watching for it the second time on the footage.
As many of you are probably aware, the LAPD have been itching for this for quite some time. 

It looks to me like this was what they've wanted to do for a while, especially after their rather embarrassing inability to deal with the Lakers' riots a few months ago.

OK...the media is ignoring us, *as usual.* So let's end run them. Most major news sites (CNN,MSNBC,Slate,Foxnews) Have messageboards attached to them. Turn their messageboards into our press-conference. Don't get into debates with the regular users there...it's not worth it. But just keep posting Indymedia stories. Just use those boards to let people know about the police riot, let people know about Indymedia being shut down. Let them know about all the Indymedia outlets they can use to get accurate information.

In watching the mass media coverage on C-Span and Nightline it looked as if the police were merely clearing the streets so that the delegates would only see calm as they left the convention. There was no visual of protesters instigating anything and no convincing mention of the protesters throwing anything, even tho the mass media reports today that some protesters claimed a small minority did get out of hand, but not enough so to provoke the response.

How it did appear was reminiscent of the police crackdown at the end of the permit time at the Million Youth March in NYC or the Simpson's Monty Burns releasing the hounds to clear guests at the end of an event.

if you go to www.wtvf.com/news/election_2000/diary/aug_15.html" you will be pleased to know some journalists are reporting fair and humanistic events of last nights clear out from the dnc(although this guy seemed to interested in the celebrities than much else) he would be worth writing to to express some insight into the causes of the protest...i emplore as many people to as possible..
later daze
rebelrouzer

I read the comment by Janx quouting Mao. I am down for the cause but let's not get carried away. I have been to China and let me tell you brother,their ways are not that which we should follow. I think alot of these would-be revolutionaries get a little confused and tend to incorporate old revolutionary thought into their ideals blindly. Are they then really revolutionary? Or are we dealing with people who are copying a genre of thought, people who may be caught up in the nostalgia of it all. Facing your enemies in battle, head to head, is not necessarily the means of victory.

I read the comment by Janx quouting Mao. I am down for the cause but let's not get carried away. I have been to China and let me tell you brother,their ways are not that which we should follow. I think alot of these would-be revolutionaries get a little confused and tend to incorporate old revolutionary thought into their ideals blindly. Are they then really revolutionary? Or are we dealing with people who are copying a genre of thought, people who may be caught up in the nostalgia of it all. Facing your enemies in battle, head to head, is not necessarily the means of victory.

Looking on CNN or MSNBC or anywhere else it's not suprising that there's no coverage. We have a long and hard road ahead of us brothers and sisters. All we can do is keep pushing forward and gaining strength. The Media is controlled by the Feds and do you think that the Democrats are going to let what is going on outside their convention be seen by the world?

Our presence there is a powerful statement and this violence that we've seen so far is the response to that statement.

Yo, I understand. In Philly I just saw 450 plus friends swept up off the streets (many of them in random searches and arrests that went on all over the city throughout the convention) and then beaten and tortured behind closed walls in the jails. No media there, and no media cared, they just talked about how wonderful the pigs were on the streets, what a great job they were doing cuz when people marched they didn't shoot them all! I mean a cop only pulled out a real gun and almost shot a protester to death once during the Philly protests! What wonderful restraint!
And don't forget there are STILL people being held in jail from the PHilly arrests, and now that it seems like most might get out for at least a week or 2 before their trumped up ridiculous trials in September -- NOW they are adding more trumped up charges against people, including 5 new felony assault charges against 1 person -- you see the pigs just remembered seeing him beat up 5 cops that day, but it slipped their mind til now! Like Mumia's confession!
When I went to Philly I thought that police were human beings -- after Philly I say no justice, no peace til every cop's deceased! I know it ain't really a good way to think, but it seems like it's the only way they want to leave us to think. Keep that in mind.