That’s the way it looked from my viewpoint from about the middle of the long May Day march as we approached Macarthur Park on Alvarado. The March had been high-spirited and positive; a wonderful diverse mix of thousands of people of all ages; the 2nd of two major marches on the same day. Everybody was well behaved, and even the cops directing traffic on their bicycles seemed to be enjoying the day.
But as we entered the park there was suddenly a mad rush of sirens, patrol cars and motorcycles that seemed to come out of nowhere. Nobody near me could see anything, and there didn’t seem to be any reason for all the excitement, so everybody pretty much ignored it, chalked it up to one of those weird unknown things that the cops are wont to do, and continued in good spirit into the park where many took advantage of water and food vendors. It had been a long day and many people had participated in the earlier march downtown, chalking up many march miles in the sun.

What we couldn’t see from Alvarado and 7th Street however, was that on the other side of the park, on Parkman and Wilshire, the cops had rushed into a group of people on the street with their motorcycles for no known reason, breaking up the people entering the park from that side. OK, so they didn’t want people in the street. But there were thousands of people converging on the park from all sides, and everybody had been happily following directions all day. There was no reason to use those kinds of tactics on a perfectly mellow peaceful crowd.

Then the cops did it again, rushing a throng of people on Wilshire Blvd. Where it cuts through the park. The street was blocked off from traffic, and people were dancing and celebrating to drum beats in the street, when the cops rushed them , with motorcycles and patrol cars, again seemingly for no reason and with no warning. I was standing there watching, and just managed to see a cop seeming to leap into the crowd breaking people up in all directions before a friend pushed me over a short stone wall and into the park where I had my vision blocked by taller heads than mine. We hung out near there until it looked like the march organizers had showed up to take control and calm things down, and satisfied that everything was cool, we walked down the slope and into the festivities in the park.

It was great. There was a band playing cumbias on a large stage, and all around there were thousands of people doing festival stuff. The kids that play Son Jarocho were there getting into the spirit with their Jaranas, traditional instruments from Veracruz, Mexico that look and sound a little like ukulele’s. There was a theatre group doing a silent skit that looked something like the statue of liberty in a sweatshop. There were all the activist tables where pamphlets and books were available about all the socialist workers groups in town, and how each one is better than all the others, and there were thousands of people milling around: Spanish speakers from many countries, Asian Pacific natives, Aztec dancers, Anglos and others. Ages ranged all the way from in baby strollers to on walkers. It was colorful and celebratory. There was no alcohol and everybody seemed to be in good spirits and mellow.

Then I saw a group of people coming in from the street being led by a smaller group with sound coming out of some kind of big speaker on a tall pole. The sound was the voice of one of the event organizers talking to the crowd following and surrounding him.

“You don’t want to fall into the cop’s game,” he was saying in Spanish, “they want us to fight with them so that they can say that we’re unruly, that we start riots, and that for that reason, we don’t deserve to have papers.”

Oh, I realized, this is the crowd from the street, and this guy, whose name I never found out, was working brilliantly to get everything under control.

“But,” he continued, “We’re smarter than that; and we have something to prove. Because, what do we want?” he asked the crowd, “Justice”, came the answer. “And are we good hardworking people?”
“Yes!” screamed the crowd,
“And do we want to live here and raise our children here?”
“Yes” came the answer.
And it went on like that, involving the people in the spirit as he worked them into the larger crowd where people were speaking from the bandstand.

That’s nice, I thought, but suddenly I broke a tooth on a frozen ice cream bar and had to start working my way towards the Metro on Alvarado on the east side of the park and leave before finding out who this great organizer was. That will have to wait until another time.

On the east side of Alvarado I was confronted with another police action. There was a knot of people who didn’t seem to be doing anything standing on the green medium by the sidewalk, with another knot of cops standing in front of them in the street, and then suddenly there was a rush of motorcycle cops and patrol cars with sirens blaring, and then what seemed to be a small army of cops running up in perfect military formation, all converging on this knot of people standing on the grass. Then I saw a young guy holding an American flag up in the air stand up on a bench and hold a pose, (American and Mexican flags were a big theme of the day), and another guy lift both arms up in a proud and defiant victory salute. Then somebody threw a soda bottle into the street where it smashed with a rush of orange soda, and all hell broke loose for a second. More patrol cars came rushing around the corner with their sirens screaming, and a rush of officers on foot came storming out from behind the subway structure and ran through the crowd standing on the sidewalk, and across the street. Now there were literally hundreds of LAPD cops milling around in the street mostly looking bored, with this knot of people in front of them; the young guy still standing up on something with the flag in his hand looking like a male statue of liberty symbol.

I saw someone I knew standing there, and I asked her if she had been there for a while, and if she had any idea what was going on.
“Yeah,” she said, “The kids were dancing and drumming in the street when the cops just charged them. There was no warning,” she said, “they didn’t need to do it like that. Everybody was cool.”

So there it was. The cops were acting in a completely inappropriate way, and it looked like they were really trying to create problems.

I hung around for a while, but my broken tooth was really bothering me, and so I got on the Metro and headed home. When I got off the train, my phone was ringing, and it was one of my compas from the Indymedia collective, with the news that right after I left, the cops stormed the park with rubber bullets and teargas, attacking the peaceful crowd and starting a riot. There were thousands of people in that park. There were babies there. And grandmothers. I had just left.

In the hours since the incident, I have sat by my computer waiting for calls, and people have reported that more cops showed up in full riot gear, and that hundreds of cops, including the equestrian team on horseback were pushing people back into the surrounding neighborhood. Some people were trapped in the park, and the last anyone has heard, there were reports of actual hand-to-hand combat with the cops in the park, and that some motorcycles got knocked over. Somebody said that before anything happened in the park some of the cops were threatening marchers with teargas, so maybe there was something going on previously.

There is an unconfirmed report that somebody talked to one of the cops, or there was a press conference, where the cops said that there was a shooting in the park and that was the pretext for the attack on the crowd.

That doesn’t square at all with the mellow happy crowd of thousands that I left behind me, but even if it’s true, one wonders at those kind of heavy handed tactics. It’s kind of like bombing a whole country and killing millions of people because you’re looking for one guy hiding in the mountains.

I have not been able to get a hold of any of the people I know that were supposedly among the ones trapped inside the park, and I hope none of them got arrested. So far there are no arrest reports or word of injuries. I’m worried about those babies.

thanks, ana for the report. glad to hear your okay. the local news has lots of footage of reporters and that were beat up and shot with projectiles.

The comment about "gangsters" ruining it all is nonsense. Literally as soon as the march arrived at MacArthur Park, the LAPD began their aggressive and heavy-handed tactics, squaring off with the crowd at Wilshire and Park View, batons held horizontally with two hands, standing in that slightly crouched position that clearly signals readiness for combat.

Mind you, this was within minutes of the march reaching the park.

Because there was only one small entrance to the park to the right at that point, the crowd had nowhere to go, and some people (including me) who didn't move to the right fast enough were shoved violently with batons by officers. The cowardly officer who did it to me did so while I wasn't even facing him. It was about this time that the motorcycle cops rushed the crowd.

Did I mention that this was right after the marchers arrived? Yes, that's what I thought. Even if there had been "gangsters" among the crowd determined to bait the cops and start trouble, they wouldn't have had time to do so. The LAPD's primary purpose in acting the way they did was to start a fight, straight up.

Their secondary purpose, I suspect, was to stop the marchers from getting overambitious and trying to continue down Wilshire toward La Brea, like last year. But they could have easily and nonviolently accomplished this by "corking off" the intersection of Alvarado and 7th right when the march hit the park, thus funneling the crowd in such a way that the marchers had no choice but to flow into the park. It is far easier to make a crowd continue to go straight (or in this case, veer just a tiny bit left) than it is to stop them while they're going straight and force them to make a tight turn...especially into a narrow opening. Any police tactician, at least a police tactician whose aim is to promote public safety and maintain order rather than provoke unrest, should have known this.

Anyway, the events I've just described happened a good while before the firing of the rubber bullets and the clearing of the park. A whole lot of other things happened in between, which I won't describe right now because my point is simply to debunk this silly statement about hotheads in the crowd starting trouble. The police started the trouble, period.

secret shopper, please give us more info when you're ready.

Jim Anarchrist is a pig. indymedia LA sort this shit out.

Jim, I don't know where you got the idea that I am an anarchist or that I have claimed to be one. I am just a person who is sickened by abuse of power, and I saw abuse of power today in one of its rawest forms. What I saw today was abuse by armed men, under color of authority, of people who posed no threat to them or anybody else, many of whom (as the police well knew) will be afraid to speak out about what happened to them. Indeed, the young woman from the NLG who was trying to get names and addresses from people who had been hurt or witnessed people being hurt was getting frustrated as the evening wore on, because some people didn't want to talk to her.

Ani, I left off my description right after the motorcycle cops had rushed the crowd at the west end of Wilshire street where it cuts through the park--right at the intersection with Park View street.

What happened after that, in that location, was a longish standoff during which the police kept demanding that the crowd not only leave the street, but that we clear the sidewalk and enter the park. The obvious stupidity and unconstitutionality of that order was not lost on the crowd, and the vast majority of the people on the sidewalk quite rightly stayed where they were. Unfortunately, a few NLG legal observers, thinking that they could placate the police by cutting deals, were also making the same request (astoundingly, one of them even made it from inside a police car, over the police PA). Some NLG volunteers were walking along the curb, asking people to get off the sidewalk and go into the park; I and some other people on the sidewalk pointed out to them that it was a public sidewalk and explained to them that cutting a deal like this with the cops was a very bad idea. By this time, the police had advanced a few hundred feet to the east and were standing in military formation in the middle of Wilshire, batonned, helmeted, and loaded for bear.

Gradually, people were gradually leaving the street, some going into the park and some staying on the sidewalk. Parents with babies and little kids had started moving rapidly east, to get away from what had suddenly turned into an ugly situation.

Through all of this, the police and the NLG people who were trying to appease them were blathering on over the police PA about safety and avoiding trouble, in one of the more spectacular displays of cognitive dissonance that I have ever witnessed. Let me make this absolutely clear: nobody on that street or in that park had been in the slightest bit of physical danger until the LAPD showed up and started putting on its thug act.

As I said, people were leaving the street, until at one point the street was almost clear. Then, bafflingly, the police formation actually retreated, marching back west toward Park View.

Very soon after that, masses of people suddenly started running east down Wilshire toward Alvarado. I followed them, and when I got to Alvarado I saw what was happening: the police had taken over Alvarado from Seventh to Wilshire. I can only assume that they had done it the same way their colleagues had occupied the west end of Wilshire: by violently moving people out of the way, with batons or with motorcycles. I got there too late to see it, though, so I will be interested to read accounts from people who were there from the beginning.

There was another standoff there, on Alvarado between 7th and Wilshire, and it was then (and only then) that I started to see appreciable numbers of projectiles being thrown at the cops. Yes, Jim, I saw bottles. PLASTIC bottles of water. I didn't see anybody throwing batteries. That's not to say nobody threw them, it's just to say I didn't see it.

I don't want to overstate the extent to which people in the crowd threw things at the cops. At no time did I see a great hail of missiles being lobbed. It was more like every few minutes, some kid (and it was always a young male, teens or twenties) would throw something, followed by numerous people in the crowd shaming the projectile-throwers or trying to calm them down. And don't forget that this was after a good hour (at least) of blatantly provocative, violent and stupid behavior by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Anyway, after a while of futile posturing by police and angry crowd members alike, I first started to hear loud bangs. And saw people running--faster this time, as though for their lives. Some were smiling as they ran; maybe they thought it was flash-bang "grenades" that the police were firing. Some people weren't smiling, though. The people who were hit with rubber bullets sure weren't.

This is where things got sickening. Having spent the better part of an hour (or more: it's hard to keep track of time when I'm full of adrenaline) badgering people to go into the park, the goddamned police decided to CLEAR THE PARK. By force, and without regard to who got hurt.

The police advanced from south to north, firing volleys of rubber bullets as they went. They crossed Wilshire, entered the north side of the park, and kept on shooting. I was standing at the front of the fleeing crowd (closer to the police, that is), facing the cops and shielding my face and upper body with my bike. This gave me the chance to calmly (well, as calmly as possible) observe the cops with their rubber bullet launchers. The sadistic fuckers were aiming at people, no doubt about it.

People were fleeing the park flat-out now, but nobody knew where to go. In a panic, people started running across Sixth, which was full of early evening traffic. I saw some desperate people try to get the drivers of MTA buses stopped in traffic to open their doors so they could get in and escape, but the drivers remained impassive and trundled away as soon as traffic allowed.

I walked across Sixth and stopped right across the street in a little side street; I believe it was Lake Street. For some reason the police, not satisfied with having cleared the park, now started flooding Sixth Street and moving onto the north sidewalk of Sixth. This is where they finally stopped their advance. Some people walked quickly up Lake and off to who knows where, and some milled around, talking excitedly and trying to figure out what had happened. One heavyset guy was walking around with his shirt off, and plainly visible was a nasty bloody welt from being hit with a rubber bullet (I later saw him on the news). LAFD paramedics tended to a couple of injured people while helmeted motorcycle cops joked with each other, miming acts of physical violence and yukking it up. It was now that I saw the young woman from the NLG gathering information from people who had been hurt. She was desperately trying to get people to leave, so after talking to her for a minute about what I had seen I obliged her and left. I had seen enough anyway.

That's my account. If anybody still wants to believe that hotheaded teenagers or gangsters or anybody else other than the police ruined the gathering at MacArthur park today, you are welcome to your delusions. Enjoy your baloney. But I know what I saw.

Jim, if you think that my criticism of your views amounts to "censorship," then you clearly haven't the faintest idea what censorship is. I think that your take on what ruined the march and rally is a bunch of crap, and have now said so. But my saying so does not make you any less free to keep expressing your view and trying to persuade people of its legitimacy.

A little snipped I forgot to include: at one point while advancing east on Wilshire, near the beginning of all the trouble and just shortly after that motorcycles rushed the crowd, there was an altercation where some of the marching police waded into the crowd in the street and started pushing and shoving people. A cameraman from some media outlet (possibly channel 7?) walked into the street to film the action and one of the cops violently shoved and pushed him back toward the sidewalk several times. I don't know whether this made it into any of the televised coverage of the event.

HIS UNHOLINESS (GEORGE WARMONGER BUSH) : "Gee now who do you suppose sent the LAPD to do that ???????? You don't think I had anything to do with it do you ??????????"

I think it may be wise for those of you that sincerely believe you stand in defense of freedom for your fellow man...

...to be responsible to yourself first!

The tactics described here and those that were used last year have been honed by what you call "gansta's" over decades of protest.

Everyone knows that a peaceful march by people that want a better life for themselves...

...simply does not get coverage...

...what gets coverage is violence!

It is no accident that a few people threw bottles at the police cars passing by, and quite frankly...

...you were lucky they did not decide to make it a "fire bomb" which could have been deadly.

The "plants" in this organized social event...

...was simply to draw a response and get the coverage it is getting... the idea that President Bush authorized this is typical rhetoric... let's accuse him of staging an attack by the police... please!

You guys really ought to buy a vowel...!!!

Sad, very sad..!! I guess a rain of lawsuits will follow this coward attack by the Los Angeles Police Dept.

These tactics are as old as protest.

Even if you listen to the interviews with people on the street that said a bunch of young men confronted the police...

...many will not want to believe it.

There were two demonstrations, one peaceful and the other, not so peaceful.

You have been "played"... plain and simple!

Violence got you on TV... the non-violent group did not make the news... get it!

Buy a vowel... you have been had!

There is a pink 'don't feed the trolls' message right above the comment form, but I'll go ahead anyway. Whoever 'jim anarchrist' is... he either has to be joking, or he is mentally disabled in some way, or he is completely failing at pretending to be any sort of progressive or anarchist demonstrator. Everything about the way he is presenting himself and phrasing his sentences is very suspect, yet he claims that he was actually there. I don't know any activist who speaks like that.

a REAL anarchist wouldn't give a fart about a boxing match

If you were there you would know that there were gangsters throwing glass bottles, batteries, plastic bottles full of piss.

I'm not saying the cops did the right thing, but those gangsters didn't have to throw those things. Those criminals were acting just that, criminals. And I wasn't very happy about being victimized by them.

That's all I'm trying to say, I'm not spouting conspiracy theory, not name calling anyone, I'm not being racist, I'm not belittling others, I just wanted to post my perspective on this. That's all. Why are you calling me names? Is this not an open forum?

I can not understanding the fact that one is seeing someone/people and are branding them as "gangsters....unless one is a cop or "agent" and have been "checking them out" before. So instead of being defensive of self let US be supportive for those who were attacked on. The mayor and the LAPD must be held accountable. This was purposely done to take away the issues of what the people gathered for and what May day is really about.

yea... cops did this same shit during Seattle.
Claiming "chemical" warfare like urine filled bottles, a hoax.
'Jim' sounds just like a cop, or fed.
This provides the justification for violent reprisal.

This is not pretty but I predict that the police will be cleared of any wrong doing. Just like when they murdered Suzie Peña back in 2005.
For the individual officers that were striking people and spraying rubber bullets, they will be excused because in the end, the investigation will find that they were following departmental procedures. It will be found that the order had been given to clear the park, and officers in the films were just following orders. They will also say that the officers acted according to the training they received. If you notice, the films show the police had formed a line and everyone in front of them was being forced to move. They will say that this is some sort of crowd control maneuver and that they executed it just like they had been trained. Anyone in front of the officers had to be moved and anyone that was not moving in pace with the police line had to be pushed, shot, shoved, kicked, clubbed or whatever needed to make the people move. The order was given and they were acting according to what they had been trained to do. They didn’t intentionally come after the media people, the media just happened to be in their path. Now, maybe the investigation will find that the departmental procedures need to be changed, or the training needs to changed, but no one will get in trouble.
The investigation will also find that it was not against departmental policy when they gave the order to attack the people in the park. No matter who started it or how severe, there had been some kind of disturbance before the order to attack was given Considering that there had been a disturbance, and considering a number of other factors and excuses that the police will come up with, they will find that that everything was according to department policy. They will say that even though it might have been in bad judgment to attack the people, it was not against policy. They will say this and that needs to be improved blah, blah, blah.

And there you have it how the police will be cleared of any wrong doing.

Here is the results of the investigation when the LAPD murdered Suzie Peña back in 2005:
“It is the Commission's and Chief Bratton's intent that the lessons of this tragic incident be learned and that the Department improve its capacity to respond to future incidents of a similar nature. The Department has already instituted a series of improvements, which the Commission approved today that will provide for an improved police response in future incidents. To supplement the improvement already planned or instituted, the Commission has identified further areas for improvement and has directed the Chief of Police to institute them. There were some command and control concerns that have been identified and will be addressed.”

Seriously magforce?, come on, even if youre little hypothesis is true, lets pretend it is true, you ever here the term two wrongs don't make a right?. Forget all the testimonials, all the photos, and all the video, except for one clip, the one they show everyday where two grown men, (police officers), are taking turns cracking this kid in the legs with batons. Dude seriously, do you need batons to make a little kid move out of the way? They couldnt just grab him by the shirt?.. You know if people want others to work with the police and support them and truly believe in the system, then they cant be treating people like this. every time they do this they plant little seeds of hate and distrust, and that sure as hell isnt going to help public safety. Theres always two sides of the story, but come on man, the photo speaks for itself,..These guys are supposed to set the example, their uniform is supposed to represent the morals that this country stands for. Our kids are supposed to look up to these guys..

Seriously magforce?, come on, even if youre little hypothesis is true, lets pretend it is true, you ever here the term two wrongs don't make a right?. Forget all the testimonials, all the photos, and all the video, except for one clip, the one they show everyday where two grown men, (police officers), are taking turns cracking this kid in the legs with batons. Dude seriously, do you need batons to make a little kid move out of the way? They couldnt just grab him by the shirt?.. You know if people want others to work with the police and support them and truly believe in the system, then they cant be treating people like this. every time they do this they plant little seeds of hate and distrust, and that sure as hell isnt going to help public safety. Theres always two sides of the story, but come on man, the photo speaks for itself,..These guys are supposed to set the example, their uniform is supposed to represent the morals that this country stands for. Our kids are supposed to look up to these guys..