From my blog, which has more photos
http://www.polizeros.com/2005/05/15.html#a5412

The city of Baldwin Park has a monumement at a MetroLink stop honoring Mexican culture, not surprising for a heavily Latino city.

The Save Our State organization, a new anti-immigration group with ties to the Minutemen, demanded the city remove it. The city council said not a chance, outsiders won't tell our city what to do. Save Our State decided to hold a demonstration in Baldwin Park.

Latino groups organized a counter demonstration, ANSWER and others were there in solidarity. How noxious is Save Our State? The entire Baldwin Park City Council spoke. They said they had received death threats related to their opposition to the monument's destruction, and would request the L.A. D.A. prosecute for hate crimes.

These are precisely the groups that Gov. Schwarzenegger is now encouraging. His polls numbers are way down, so he's throwing red meat to the racist right. Bush called the Minutemen 'vigilantes' but Arnold praised them.

These opposing demonstrations were just a precursor of what's coming. The Minutemen plan to be at the California/Mexico border this summer (Sue opines, sharp thinking guys, to be in the hottest desert in the world during the summer.)

How did the counter-demo go? We vastly out numbered them and succeeded in driving them away. We won and won big.

After an opening demo with the Aztec Dancers and the City Council, we marched to near where SOS was. The police had barricaded the areas between us. After an hour or so, we went down side streets and confronted SOS directly. They were on one corner, maybe fifteen left, down from a maximum of about fifty. We were on the other three corners, several hundred strong. with 40 police in between. We moved into the intersection. I wasn't sure what the cops would do, so I scanned the side streets for approaching phalanxes of police. But none appeared. We began chanting 'we won't leave until they leave.' And then, to great cheers, the police ordered SOS to leave.

We won! They won't be back to Baldwin Park. I expect this type of confrontation will escalate dramatically in size during the coming summer. People get ready.

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This was early, later on several hundred of us took the streets.

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that first picture says it all. hahah great job everyone, keep up the pressure.

Having attended the rally its clear your account is a steaming pile of distorted manure.

The fact is that 30-40 patriotic Americans assembled to exercise their constitutional rights and a racist, hatemongering force of third world-mannered riff-raff (organized by the Baldwin Park city council) tried to interfere with those rights.

You showed your contempt for American democracy and your hatred of the United States on Saturday. You exposed your agenda for open borders and annexation of a large portion of the United States. In essence, you used the wonderful freedoms afforded to you by this country to incite hate and separatism.

This day will not be forgotten. We stood our ground and left at the appointed time - 2 PM. We did not flee in the face of your hate and aggression and your assault on a 66 year-old member of our group.

If you think this is over you are in for a rude awakening. A sleeping giant stirs. Your racism, hypocrisy and traitorous behavior shall be met again under very different circumstances.

Abuse a right, Lose that right.

The right to free speech does not mean you have the right to engage in hate speech. Those who abuse free speech to promote an agenda of racism and ultra-nationalism designed to deny the rights of others have lost any claim to free speech rights.

No free speech for hate mongers! No free speech for those who use words to hurt and kill people. You Abuse a right, You Lose that right.

... it'll be waving the flag.

First of all, even some kinds of hate speech are protected, particularly when it masquerades as "patriotism" peppered with racism, but even when it takes form as anti-state rhetoric like "kill all cops" or "go home crackers."

They had a right to be there, just as we had the right to be there and blow their side away with our sheer numbers. They threw the first punch, by organizing the protest against a non-controversial monument, turning it into a controversy, and using blatantly racist material to promote their event. They fueled the fire by openly having a lot of racist material on the site.

If you want to see their "true colors" look at their website. Many of them are racists, and have some deep seated issues against Mexicans. They don't really know it, though, because they're in areas where old-style anti-Mexican hatred is not uncommon.

The message on the website, they considered barely racist, or not racist at all, uncorked decades of rage against the discrimination that millions of brown people have suffered. That these ignorant people should even consider demontrating in the heart of a city where Chicanos have power, and are doing their best to realize the "American Dream" (of ever escalating real estate values), was foolish.

That white guy who said "it was better before THEY came" was nostalgic for the bad-old-days of racist restrictive covenants. See: http://www.progressivela.org/history/forties.htm . These deed contracts that stated that only whites could occupy specific houses were deemed illegal in 1948, but the practice continued another decade. (Ask any person of color or Jewish person over 60 about this. They will have stories about back when somone's relative or friend was unable to buy a house in some neighborhood. )

That was the wellspring that the SOS people tapped. Poverty, exclusion, cultural marginalization, erasure of history, and racism are the living legacy of racist laws, racist business practics, and racist government. It continues until this day, and, when some ignorant people organize to protest against unthreatening symbols of Mexicanness, accusing the symbols of racism, it's like rubbing salt in the wound.

They are probably unaware of the composition of the protest. They think it's all "Mecha". It wasn't. At least half the people at the standoff, maybe more, was not Mecha or another nationalistic group. Half or more were leftists, who are total integrationists and internationalists.

If Hellfire USA thinks the BP protest has waken a sleeping giant, we'll see what kind of giant it is. It's probably a giant in a pointy white hood, ready to light a cross on someone's lawn.

Also, think about it, HFUSA. There are no Chicanos interested in integrating California with Mexico. If they wanted to be in Mexico, they'd be there. Baldwin Park is America, with a lot of Mexican flavor. If you can't handle the flavor, just refrain from eating the salsa. Nobody is forcing it on you.

Additional photographic coverage of this anti-race hate rally can be found at http://www.skeptictank.org/nohate.htm

I forgot to mention that the Mayor of Baldwin Park gave a brief speech and noted that the city had received numerous death threats by racists and that the city would be filing formal felony criminal charges against the bigots.

Note that Rice counted 2300 people at the rally.

Kwento counted 1000.

The right-wing San Gabriel Valley Tribune counted 200.

The SOS counted at least 400, because they claimed they had 40 and were outnumbered 10 to 1.

It's possible that my numbers may be way off. I tried to climb to high ground to get a fairly accurate count. I counted the number of people in an area -- 57 -- then I multiplied by the area covered, then rounded up.

2300 is a far cry more accurate than 200.

I think I've covered the phenomena enough here. If any racist wants to contionue the discussion, email will work. I will, of course, web your email.