The Agitator

I am beside myself. This post will not be one with my usual combination of facts and inspirational evocations. It is posted in rage at what happened in LA on Tuesday. There will be no pretense to objectivity.

May 1 became International Workers’ Day over a century ago in commemoration of the immigrant workers peacefully rallying in a great American city, assaulted in a massive wave of police violence, amid trumped up claims of provocation. That was Chicago 1886; now here we are 121 years later and it’s deja vu all over again, with a massive, coordinated and by all available evidence unprovoked assault on peacefully rallying immigrant workers in Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park by hundreds of riot equipped LA police. According to early reports, the LAPD fired at least 240 rounds of rubber bullets into the crowd of some 25,000 assembled in a rally for the rights of immigrant workers.

Police apologists and the mainstream press have rushed to assert that the police were assaulted by rock and bottle throwing mobs, and that as many as 15 police were injured as a result. the Agitator calls on LA Police Chief Gates William Bratton to produce these injured officers. As Bratton himself acknowledges, the fact that not a single arrest resulted from this “police action” raises significant questions. As anyone that’s ever been in a peaceful demonstration that is subject to heavy police presence (never mind a riot) the very slightest offense leads to immediate and indiscriminate arrest. If there was violent assault on LA police officers, why was not a single one of these miscreants arrested? There is only one logical answer: there was no such assault. Just as with the supposed “anarchist bommbers” at Chicago’s Haymarket; as with the non-existent “sniper” at Kent State in May 1970; the Mayday violence in LA was entirely initiated by authority in arms, and perpetrated on an unsuspecting and unoffending public. Even Fox News, if only momentarily, acknowledged that the police actions in MacArthur Park were far beyond the pale acceptable in a civilized society.For those that question what the nature of the event was prior to the initiation of the police sweep, here is a clip of singer Tom Morello performing for the assembled crowd:

That hardly seems like a terribly threatening assemblage, now does it? (Unless of course one is opposed to fair play for workers, immigrants and people of color.)

Lest there be any question that this was a carefully planned and executed operation on the part of the LAPD, readers should view this video shot by an interested spectator who had attended the rally out of curiosity and perhaps to get some colorful video footage. (Hat tip to OpEdna for the link.) The military precision with which the police operation was carried out, and its extensive and decisive nature, are hardly the behavior of a police force responding to a sudden provocation.

I realize there are many white Americans that will applaud this elevation of executive authority and the rule of law enforcement over the rule of law. It may be that the police were trying to prove that they could do a better job of handling brown immigrants than self-appointed enforcers of white supremacy. What is incontrovertible is that all appearances to the contrary, this incident indicates that there has been no measurable social progress in the USA since 1886, that unhinged, unprovoked and uncontrolled police violence is the normal mode of operation of the American State, and such principles and practices are championed in a knee-jerk manner by a substantial proportion, if not the majority, of the white nativist population.

I know that there are a fair number of readers of this blog from other countries. Please pass this information along to your comrades, spread the word through email and listserves, websites and IndyMedia, about waht happened in LA on MayDay, 2007. To all the MayDay organizers and participants around the world, I say let the word go out, that little or nothing has changed in America in the way of social justice from Chicago 1886 until this very day.

<> UPDATE  Not to be missed, reports and analysis from  Para Justicia y Libertad and from The Unapologetic Mexican .