It was billed as the biggest act of civil disobedience in Los Angeles history — rivaled only by Californians’ defiant use of appliances during peak hours back in the days of the energy crisis.
In reality, it was street theater in three acts with a confusing plotline. Thursday’s march encouraged unionization of hotel workers at the Hilton near Los Angeles International Airport, coupled with a call for amnesty for illegal immigrants. Or, to put it plainly, unions demanded higher wages for workers, while throwing their weight behind an immigration movement that drives wages down. And all the while thinking that shutting down Century Boulevard into LAX during evening rush hour would endear Angelenos to their cause.
Even better, the march organizers had planned in advance with the Los Angeles Police Department who would get arrested, passing along driver’s license numbers days beforehand to speed booking. Reportedly a handful of would-be arrestees were advised not to show up — presumably because the police had a bit more to charge them with than civil unrest.
I crashed the party, which is becoming a habit of mine. Before the boulevard filled with protesters, I watched from atop a parking garage next to the Hilton; a police officer was doing the same from the roof across the street. The first party arrivals were guests uninvited by the organizers — anti-illegal-immigration demonstrators waved American flags and had their signs and bullhorns at the ready across the street from the Hilton, passing cars honking in support. “Great day to be an American, eh?” a man wearing a “Stop illegal immigration now” T-shirt exclaimed as he strode past my perch and down the parking garage stairs.
It was a day for them to be ringed in by the LAPD. When the marchers chanting “Si se puede” came down the westbound lanes of the palm-lined street, the Minutemen and others were kept on the other side of the eastbound lanes by at least a dozen cops facing them down. When one man with a sign against illegal immigration ventured out of the group and down the sidewalk to make himself better seen to the union demonstrators — but still staying on his side — two cops quickly zoomed up to him, like he’d escaped his cage or something.
As most left-wing protests are catch-all affairs, there were signs denouncing Bush, T-shirts denouncing Schwarzenegger, and requests to end all deportations — and add a guy strolling through the crowd with a sign that read “Ask Jesus to save you now.” A flatbed truck with speakers led the march, blaring a cheesy rendition of “We Shall Overcome” — wasn’t there a day when protesters actually sang it? — and then blasting ranchero music. T-shirts proclaimed, “Soy un ser humano” — “I am a human being,” as if the Hilton had been hiring extraterrestrials — and marchers chanted, “The people united will never be defeated” in Spanish. Participating groups included the South Central Farmers — remember Daryl Hannah perched in a tree? — and Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center. Several people held a sign with a drawing of a Klansman, stating “Minutemen racists,” and beside them others carried a large Mexican flag.
When it was time for the orchestrated arrests — those who had done their advance arrest planning had a colored rag tied around their upper arm and/or a yellow “human being” placard instead of white — the vast majority of the thousands of marchers were pushed up onto the sidewalk in front of the Hilton as a few hundred sat in rows in the middle of traffic lanes like kindergarteners in time-out on the blacktop. A double row of police officers lined up as motorcycles fell into place. Even the cavalry was out for maximum street theater effect, the horses wearing riot shields over their eyes as they left plenty of droppings on Century Boulevard for some nice Mercedes to run through later.
Demonstrators handed out flowers, but there was hardly a need to stick a bud in a gun barrel — the line of waiting police came in on cue, and calm as can be, to slap on the plastic twist-tie handcuffs. Three large buses pulled onto the boulevard, delivering card tables and folding chairs to expedite processing. As each arrested protester arrived with his or her police escort, he or she would have a giant stick-on name tag slapped on his or her chest and a Polaroid photo taken against the side of the bus. Then onto the cushy bus for the ride to the very short stay in jail.
I was just a few feet from the booking area. The consummate protest crasher, I stood among five burly Teamsters organizers. One chided an other to get out of the way when I was trying to snap a photo. They also hollered and cheered when each arrestee got on a bus. Behind us, across the eastbound lanes of Century, the anti-illegal-immigration group was yelling for deportation of the protesters. “We’re waiting for the final act of this three-ring circus!” a woman yelled through a bullhorn.
Not surprisingly, those being arrested were not a homogenous immigrant group (one can speculate who might not have wanted to be taken into custody). There were white girls with flowers in their hair, elderly ladies, clergy, an assemblywoman, and collegiate socialist-club types. And Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello, who told MTV News: “In these political dark ages, it’s important for us to stand up for one another. These hotel workers by the airport make 20-percent less wages than hotel workers around the rest of Los Angeles. We’re here to express our solidarity with them, to help them unionize and to help them close the gap between their sub-poverty wages and the millions and millions of dollars the people who own these hotels make.”
Though it would have provided a great third act to this play if Paris Hilton had shown up to defend her family’s hotels, it’s also worth noting that airport hotels have lower room rates than downtown hotels.
“This is how things have changed, is by people on the lower rungs of society standing up,” Morello also said. “People have been arrested in this country for a woman’s right to vote. People have been arrested in this country for desegregated lunch counters. Those things didn’t come about because of the wisdom of presidents — they came about because of average ordinary working people standing up for their rights.”
Comparing suffrage and segregation to the union rally/immigration advocacy defies logic. Unions are looking to bulk membership; they see organized immigrants as a possible power source. But if you call for mandatory higher wages for workers, while demanding the legalization of 12 million more at the same standard high wages, you’ll have price jumps and companies less able to hire those workers in the first place. The wicked corporations, though, are viewed as endless money pits, and the consumers are naively viewed as having endless patience and willingness to dig deeper in their wallets.
The protest displayed a confounding alliance of groups that should have worked against each other, if anybody had taken the time to think about it. And all I could think as I watched the umteenth twist-tied protester get tossed onto the bus was, who’s picking up the tab for this massive police presence out here? Because Lord knows the drive-bys and the holdups across La-La Land aren’t put on hold for the benefit of unionites keen on sitting in the middle of Century Boulevard.
– Bridget Johnson is a columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News. She blogs at GOP Vixen.