I haven’t done a lot of looking, but I haven’t seen anything yet that takes on the May Day events a lot. I need to start looking more, and see what I can see.
Some from the autopsy list sent me this report on their experiences in LA:
Today was definitely not business as usual in Los Angeles. From the early
morning to about 11pm more than a million people could be found marching on LA streets leaving the rest of the city eerily quiet and lonely.It could have been the unseasonal, thick morning fog but it felt like a
Twilight Zone episode where everyone has disappeared. Almost all the
businesses in my neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods (east and
central Los Angeles) were closed for the day. The traffic was freakishly
light, there were barely any students walking to school and there weren’t
even people waiting at the bus stops. I watched the morning news to get an
idea of some of the earlier marches (they were about 4 different marches in
LA going at once). The news media was going crazy over the General
Strike/Boycott with live reports all day, they seemed quite excited (and
even a bit sympathetic) to it all.Around 12pm we made our way to the Strike/Boycott sponsored march downtown. I was shocked at how many people showed up, possibly 500,000. There were people everywhere, spilled out over streets parallel to the march, walking to the march, leaving the march (which made a new march in itself!) Latinos of every ethnicity and political persuasion were represented. There was also contingents of White folks, leftys, commies, hipsters and the “topanga peace alliance” with their rainbow peace sign and matching birkenstocks. The atmosphere was fun, nothing terribly exciting (I admit I’m not a big fan of marches) except for when the police did their famous riot squad thing and tried to block off a side entrance to the march. The FMLN and the RCP were about to walk by and I guess they were afraid of a breakaway march. Their ‘riot squad’ move wasn’t tactically well thought out and they were soon surrounded by marchers trying to move between streets.
People were angry by the police presence and the cops were subjected to a good amount of taunting. Eventually, the cops gave up and let people move through their riot line. Unlike the march of 3/25, the police did their best to make a show of force and many marchers found their heavy handed tactics annoying. The well used Mexican taunt of “culero” and it’s corresponding whistle could be heard whenever a cop car sped by.
The amount of American flags was so excessive, it was almost ridiculous. The
flags seemed to be used as shields, as a way of saying you can’t fuck with
us cause we’re carrying your damn flag. I saw quite a few flags carried
upside down unintentionally. I saw cholos, all tatted up with gang names and
profanities with American flags. I saw people carrying FMLN flags and
American flags together. They were tied around people’s faces to hide their
identities and as shade hats for the sun. It became a game for us to find
the most contradictory American flag holders in the crowd.
All in all the crowd seemed a bit more aggressive and less humble than the
march a month ago.We didn’t go to the second march (a few miles away and starting at 4pm)
‘cause we needed some beer and food and we were all a bit sunburned. Maybe we should have gone because I heard it was more fun than the first. Folks who had been at the first march begin walking to the starting point of the second. The second march probably started with about 800,00 people. I know there were massive amounts of people at this march because my neighborhood was so fucken empty it was beginning to give me the creeps. It wasn’t until about 8pm that I begin to see people walking around my street and heavier traffic on the road.Thinking we might have missed something exciting, we headed to the second
march on Wilshire and got the tail end of thousands of people make the 4
mile trek back to the starting point at Mac Arthur park. It’s around this
time that we begin to hear reports of skirmishes and ‘illegal gatherings’
around the park. The cop cars begin to stream past us with sirens blazing
towards the Pico-Union neighborhood of MacArthur Park. We followed the
helicopters through side streets and came upon a fleet of riot squad vans,
loaded up with riot geared cops hanging on the outside of the vehicles,
cable car style. We ask some young RCP looking kids, faces masked with Che
bandanas, what’s going on. They tell us a bunch of people took over some
streets and the cops came in and started beating people down. Everyone
scattered but was trying to regroup. They then took off running down the
streets and ducking behind cars as they went. There were tons of people out
in the neighborhood on roofs, hanging out of the windows and standing in the street. The cops begin to close in around the neighborhood shutting the
streets as they go. People on the roofs started throwing concrete and bricks
(missing us by a few feet), someone started a fire in the middle of the
street. The cops then told everyone who was standing on the street to move
or else they would ask the riot squad to move them. Later on, a news the
reporter blamed the initial “illegal gathering” confrontation on the
“anarchists.”It was a sight to see so many closed businesses, so many people out in the
streets who skipped school and work. There were even banners on the freeway telling motorists “monday cancelled” and “servers down, go home!”At the march there was this one dude, rather chunky and dressed head to toe
in ninja inspired blac bloc gear, all you could see were his eyes. He had
spikes up and down his arms and was carrying a humongous ‘Hasta la Victoria Siempre’ flag. He looked like he was ready to break out with some numchucks and start kicking ass. In the throngs of thousands, he easily parted the crowd and caused much head turning. Fascinated, we contemplated following him but then quickly got distracted by a guy dressed in a bunny suit dancing on a power box to the FMLN cumbia brigade. To top it off, Senor Bunny was dancing all sexy, it was simultaneously disturbing and hypnotic.Greasers, a hybrid style of rockabilly, cholo and punk is my favorite LA
subculture at the moment. They could be found here and there in the march,
some riding their tricked out low rider bikes. What more can I say than,
they’re fiiiiine… As you can tell, we kinda roamed near the FMLN during the march cause that’s where the music and action was. I didn’t see the Anarcho Punk kids but one of them told me later they were at the back of the march, I should’ve known! Other Anarchos planned a mobile dance party, going to different locations to try and encourage folks to participate.As for the upside down flags, I do think it was unintentional. People were
told to bring American flags to placate the US public but I don’t think most
people gave much more thought to the flags than that. People carried them
upside down, backwards, wearing them as capes, it was obvious they weren’t
familiar with the proper way to display them. Or maybe they thought it was
just enough to have one in their hand and didn’t give them much more
meaning.For some reason, the media didn’t cover what I thought could have turned
into a real riot in Pico Union. It’s hard to describe, but people yesterday
had such a sense of empowerment compared to the atmosphere of the 3/25
march. By the end of the night yesterday, the empowered, festive feeling had
turned into an atmosphere of defiance among some of the marchers. Driving
through Pico Union and seeing all these people in white shirts hanging off
their balconies, roofs and porches, you could tell there was a mood of
wanting to do something more. Pico Union is one of the most dense
neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The majority of the residents are Central
American, specifically Salvadoran and pretty poor. The second march crossed right through the middle of this neighborhood. There was this feeling in the air that the right spark could set things off. The cops were being fairly aggressive in trying to clear the streets but at the same time they were more restrained than usual. I think this has to do with the new mayor. I’m sure he sent word on down the line to not provoke people too much.
Throughout all these marches the cops have been struggling to be on their
best behavior. I read today, marchers didn’t want to go home and ended up marching back to city hall for an unofficial, spontaneous rally around 10pm (11 hours after the first march started.) Something similar happened at Mac Arthur park, also in Pico Union. When the cops wanted to clear the after-party marchers, people sat down in the streets and refused to move. There’s some footage of them rushing the crowds and beating the shit out of one poor guy who got tackled down.There was some funny people on the radio call in shows yesterday. Lots of
employers complaining their employees didn’t show up for work and didn’t
even bother to call in. One construction guy said he couldn’t even find day
laborers at Home Depot to replace his no show crew. When the radio host
asked if the construction owner would fire his crew, the guy was like “No
way! They’re good workers.” Another lady called in from Santa Monica to say how “sad” she was to learn her “wonderful Latina” housekeeper’s car windows were broken after the housekeeper told her neighbors she wouldn’t support the boycott.The ports were almost completely shutdown. The “troqueros” are an
interesting bunch, much more radical than the average Latino workers. During a pre-Mayday press conference, they held up signs relating their struggle to the war against Iraq. They were also one of the main proponents of specifically calling for a General Strike as opposed to a “boycott.”