by Cliff Olin
Monday, Feb. 12, 2007 at 1:55 PM
cliffolin@sbcglobal.net 6262818741
The hardcore Minutemen/SOS paraded down Hollywood Blvd. to protest the imprisonment of two border-patrol Agents. The LAPD were were out in large numbers, as were counter protesters who walked the sidewalks and interacted in varying ways with the anti-immigrant protesters.
antiracist_003.jpg, image/jpeg, 640x480
Hollywood II
Saturday the Minutemen and SOS emerged from under their rocks and paraded down Hollywood Blvd. Due to fear of attack from violent "illegals" and their
sympathizers, the Minutemen/SOS have a unique marching protocol. Unlike progressive protest marches that begin in one spot and end in another where a rally is held, then people disperse on their own from the rally, the Minutemen/SOS are so paranoid that they insist on a large police escort from the time they leave their cars in a guarded lot, to their "rally" at the starting point then along the ten blocks west on Hollywood Blvd. to the ostensible end of the march, which is not the end at all, because they turned around and walked back down Hollywood Blvd. to their guarded parking lot. They really believe that "la
raza", or homicidal "illegal immigrant" "reconquista"
thugs are lying in wait ready to kill or assault all
white people as part of their plan re-conquer Southern
California.
Saturday, dozens and dozens of police were there to
protect the Minutemen/SOS, I mean, to keep the
opposing sides apart. Two squads (about 12 each) of
L.A.'s gendarmes rode bicycles while dozens of others
stood around, sat in their cars, or lined up on the
street and stood by ready to push back the
counter-protesters. The cops were burned at last
year's Minuteman march by video showing them beating unarmed, peaceful counter-protesters, so this time the L.A.P.D. was ready with a full-time cameraman eagerly running to film anytime the cops suddenly rushed to a spot where they thought that we
counter-protesters were about to go break the "law",
which nobody did, though one counter protester
apparently got arrested for--don't laugh--using his
sign as a shield
At noon the Minutemen/SOS were still holding forth at
their "rally". One Minute-lady sobbed as she bemoaned the outrageous injustice dealt to Ramos and Compean, the two Border Patrol agents now rotting in jail after being sentenced to 12 and 11 years for shooting an unarmed immigrant in the backside as he was crossing back into Mexico. Since sadistic "la migra" officers accused of beating or shooting immigrants are routinely exonerated, when charges are even filed, which is rare(see the superb movie "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" to see how the Texas migra operates.), one can be sure that the shooting and cover-up by Ramos and Compean were so egregious that the jury, in Texas no less, had no choice but to find them guilty.
None of that mattered to the true believers out on
Hollywood Blvd. Now, they say, even the U.S. Justice
Department is helping the "illegals" and punishing
those brave Americans that try to stop them, Some
protesters held signs claiming that "Bush framed Ramos and Compean". Or the ever popular "Free Ramos and Compean", "Ramos and Compean, American heroes," and so forth.
The march went off without serious incident, and
mostly without spectators. There were very few
tourists out on Hollywood Blvd. that day. The
Minutemen/SOS were playing to the "America's Most
Wanted" film crew there to show the upposedly "grass
roots" campaign to pardon Ramos and Compean.
About an equal number of counter-protesters on the
sidewalk accompanied the Minutemen/SOS on the march down Hollywood Blvd. At one point a very tall
Minute-lady walked amidst the counter-protesters while filming everybody. She had a deport illegals sign loosely hung from her neck. When confronted, she went berserk and tore a "Diga No al Racismo" sign from a counter-protester. She shouted, trying to get the attention of the cops. Then she barged through the counter-protesters and bumped them with her sign. "Who pushed me? Somebody pushed me," she wailed. She went right to a police officer driving his car along the march and demanded that he arrest somebody for pushing her. For five minutes she berated the cop, who did nothing, and probably felt like pushing her himself after enduring her haranguing.
The hardcore regulars were there: Ted Hayes with his
tunic and strange Moses-in-the-desert messianic
complex, a Christer who insisted that God opposes the illegals because he ordered the Jews to expel immigrants from their lands...", a grotesquely obese Latina lady proclaiming that Ramos and Compean are heroes, a smattering of stone-faced elderly white people with "deport illegals" signs, a few biker types with ZZ Top beards, and SOS founder and erstwhile San Bernadino school board candidate Joseph Turner walking in the rear and calling out to a counter-protester he recognized from the Alhambra Home Despot protest, and then chatting amiably with him as they walked along Hollywood Blvd.
All in all a bit of nostalgia and a lot of shouting
back and forth. One Minutemen, remembering last
year's LAPD attack on counter-protesters, held an "I
support LAPD" sign, and surely hoped for a repeat of
the LAPD acting thuggish. It didn't happen.
