Report by Leslie: BALDWIN PARK, June 25, 2005--By noon, about eight hundred counter protestors stood against the invasion of Baldwin Park by Save Our State from Ventura and Minutemen from Arizona, both militant anti-migration groups, and the Nazi National Vanguard, a white supremacist group, together numbering about forty or fifty. This was the invaders' second unsuccessful effort to attract attention to a monument at the Baldwin Park Metrolink station entitled Danzas Indigenas by renowned artist Judy Baca, which commemorates a Tongva ("Gabrielino") Indian uprising led by Toypurinah against the San Gabriel Mission and the history of the land from that time forward. At their first incursion on May 25, SOS had declared inscriptions on the monument referring to indigenous Mexican culture "seditious."
I was escorted into the celebration by two friends, one looking particularly sharp in his brown beret. We were met by eight hundred celebrants who had come to assert their Indigenous, Mexican, and Chicano culture in the face of the racist intruders, surrounded by cops. A mild-mannered poet burst into a fierce diatribe proclaiming "Genocide alert!" in a poem about Kristallnacht. An interlingual agitprop teatro group told a history of the Native and Mexican land grabs. Behind the tarp that hung as a backdrop, young actors hastily tore off one costume and slipped into the next. They parodied a white SOS member in the large, droopy American-flag hat who had appeared at an earlier demonstration and Lupe Moreno, the Latina spokesperson for SOS. El Pelado ended the acto with a costume transformation revealing him not to be a clown, but a proud Chicano declaring "Ya basta!"
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A coalition of nurses, teachers, firefighters and peace officers came together to speak out against the governor at a private cigar club in Beverly Hills this Friday. At issue were his cuts in funding for education, healthcare, as well as his call for a special election.
People attending the fundraiser had to cross a picket line of sorts. Some limo drivers would not cross the line and instead dropped off their fare down the street. The governor was forced to drive through a back alley and sneak in the back of the building. The protest was good spirited and there were no arrests.
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