A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E http://www.ainfos.ca/ ________________________________________________ LOS ANGELES - The anarchists were coming. The cops were ready. It could have been a movie. More than 200 California Highway Patrol officers in riot gear were deployed Tuesday around the Ronald Reagan State Building, while an equal number of officers waited inside. A helicopter hovered overhead and officers stood ready with tear gas. CHP Commissioner Spike Hellman strode behind his cops, bucking them up with pats and shouts like a Marine sergeant waiting with his unit for the enemy to charge. "We have learned that there is a very small group within the larger group who may destroy property or attack officers," said CHP Assistant Chief Stan Perez. Then we heard the dreaded anarchists coming, with their fearsome drums and chants. There were about 200 young people and a few gray- hairs, including state Sen. Tom Hayden, marching behind a "Justice for Youth" banner and a flatbed truck carrying a mobile guerrilla theater. They carried a Gray Davis effigy that looked much too lively. The marchers were outnumbered 2 to 1 by the cops - 4 to 1 if you go by body weight. Suddenly the marchers went silent as they walked by the cops. Silence is amazingly dramatic. Politicians should try it. These well-organized anarchists stopped in front of the state building and started swaying and chanting to a salsa beat. Protest music has gotten better since Joan Baez. Then they surrounded themselves with their own yellow police tape and sat down in the street to watch El Teatro Campesino's show about corporations and "Gov. Gravy Davis." "They're very well-disciplined," said the CHP's Perez. "So long as they protest in a nonviolent manner, we'll work with event organizers." Plasterers working on the building across the street came out to see what was going on. "Dial 911,"' said one. "There aren't enough cops." The march was a protest against the Draconian treatment of kids caught in the justice system, but it included people interested in many problems they link to corporate power - the kind shown with every fund-raiser this convention week. These kids with nose rings respect unions, unlike the kids with bell- bottoms in the '60s. S.F. State philosophy student Thorn Coyle described her heroes as "all those people who died for the 40-hour week, so now people can work 80 hours." Coyle was marching with an elementary school teacher from Berkeley named Fern, no last name, thank you. Befitting their names, Thorn and Fern described themselves as anarchist witches. They merrily skipped out of the march to give bumper stickers to wary office workers. The stickers read, "Wake up, muggles! Conjure justice! Banish corporate rule!" Everybody loves Harry Potter, and knows muggles are unimaginative non- witch humans. Every time Fern or Thorn gave a sticker to a bystander, he or she lit up in a smile. "The only problem with the stickers is they were printed by Rainforest Action Network," Fern said. "And they don't stick to cars." Now, about this A-word dominating the news in L.A. this week, and I don't mean Al. Thorn said people mistakenly think anarchism means chaos. "What it means is you have to take total responsibility for yourself and your acts," Thorn said. "People work collectively for themselves in their own community." This is in the tradition of the anarchists of Spain and the Wobblies. Of course, there also is a long-standing tradition of anarchist madmen, and there have been a few in the streets of L.A. provoking the police. As we spoke, the youth march was joined by another march of about 200 people. "If you forget what march you're in, this is the woman's march," said someone with a bullhorn. They were surrounded by platoons of LAPD armed with shotguns loaded with the kind of rubber bullets fired into crowds Mon day night that injured dozens of people. The Democratic Party brought its convention to a town that looks about as democratic as Chile in the bad old days. As Hayden put it, "They declared martial law to allow people to protest." It's very scary here, and not because of some nasty-looking kids with spiky hair and black clothes. Downtown L.A. looks like it was captured by thousands of Robocops. The sirens and helicopters never stop. Give the demonstrators credit. They came to talk about injustice, and Los Angeles showed us what a police state looks, feels and sounds like. Before Monday night's melee outside the convention center, I rode a Metro train with a squad of LAPD. They were spoiling for action. One said he wanted to get "pro-active." That's a fancy way of saying kick some butt. Thorn was trying to relax some of the hundreds of cops along the march route. She said to me, "You know, if you smile at people, it really changes things." She sprayed scented water at them, too - from far enough away so the cops wouldn't think it was pepper spray. The scene reminded me of that 1967 photo of a protester putting a flower in the barrel of a soldier's gun at the Pentagon. Fern and Thorn complained that the demonstrators have been trivialized and demonized. If you want something trivial, just look at the convention. If you want something to fear, try getting trapped between squads of LAPD. ROB MORSE ------ News of interest to anarchist from Revolt http://flag.blackened.net/revolt ******** ****** The A-Infos News Service ****** News about and of interest to anarchists ****** COMMANDS: lists@tao.ca REPLIES: a-infos-d@lists.tao.ca HELP: a-infos-org@lists.tao.ca WWW: http://www.ainfos.ca/ INFO: http://www.ainfos.ca/org -To receive a-infos in one language only mail lists@tao.ca the message: unsubscribe a-infos subscribe a-infos-X where X = en, ca, de, fr, etc. (i.e. the language code) fs