Police provocations in an earlier era

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

[This is from Nexis. It is clipped substantially in order to keep Don Roper
happy. Although it details the undercover police role in enticing a key
protest into an adventurist direction, it omits discussion of one very
important fact. After this debacle, there never was another sizable
demonstration in Los Angeles. Police riots have a tendency to keep folks
who are not 100 percent committed to the "cause" away from subsequent
demonstrations.]

Los Angeles Times, June 23, 1997, Monday, Home Edition

THE BLOODY MARCH THAT SHOOK L.A

A 1967 CLASH BETWEEN ANTIWAR PROTESTERS AND POLICE INJURED DOZENS,
IRREVOCABLY CHANGING THE CITY AND ITS POLITICS. THE PANICKED CONFRONTATION
FORESHADOWED A COMING NATIONAL UPHEAVAL.

By KENNETH REICH, TIMES STAFF WRITER

The war at home over Vietnam had yet to explode in mid-1967. Five hundred
American soldiers were dying every month, yet 40% of Americans still
supported sending more men.

So 30 years ago tonight, when a coalition of 80 antiwar groups staged a
march to the Century Plaza Hotel where President Lyndon B. Johnson was
being honored, Los Angeles Police Department field commander John A.
McAllister expected 1,000 or 2,000 protesters.

"When the mass of humanity came up Avenue of the Stars and over the hill, I
was astounded," he recalled. "Where did all those people come from? I asked
myself."

Ten thousand marchers, by most estimates, were assembling across the street
from the Century City hotel. Hundreds of nightstick-wielding police--using
a parade permit and court order that restricted the marchers from stopping
to demonstrate--forceably dispersed them.

The bloody, panicked clash that ensued left an indelible mark on politics,
protests and police relations. It marked a turning point for Los Angeles, a
city not known for drawing demonstrators to marches in sizable numbers.

The significance of the evening lay not simply in the 51 people who were
arrested and the scores injured when 500 of the 1,300 police on the scene
pushed the demonstrators into, and then beyond, a vacant lot that is now
the site of the ABC Entertainment Center.

Far more powerfully, the Century Plaza confrontation foreshadowed the
explosive growth of the national antiwar movement and its inevitable
confrontations with police. It shaped the movement's rising militancy,
particularly among the sizable number of middle-class protesters who
expected to do nothing more than chant against Johnson outside the $
1,000-a-plate Democratic Party fund-raising dinner and were outraged by the
LAPD's hard-line tactics.

Johnson rarely campaigned in public again, except for appearances at safe
places like military bases. Within nine months, opposition to the war grew
so strong that he shelved his reelection campaign. White liberals in Los
Angeles, meanwhile, began to complain about excessive force by the LAPD, a
subject traditionally raised only by black and Latino residents.

By the next summer, when Chicago police beat demonstrators in the street
outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the country was at war
with itself. In retrospect, the Century Plaza demonstration was one of the
earliest battlegrounds.

"The importance of this demonstration cannot be underestimated, in terms of
its relevance to the LAPD, to the magnitude and effectiveness of the
antiwar movement and to what kind of public appearances President Johnson
would risk in the future," said McAllister, now retired at 73.

Coming less than two years after the Watts riots, the Century Plaza
incident provoked another important test of Los Angeles police-community
relations that would reverberate for decades.

One of the most contested LAPD policies--spying on leftist civilian
groups--was at the root of the department's conduct on the night of the
march.

THEN-LAPD CHIEF TOM REDDIN SAYS THE DEPARTMENT INDIRECTLY WORKED WITH FOUR
PRIVATE SECURITY AGENTS WHO INFILTRATED THE MARCH-PLANNING GROUP. THE
AGENTS WERE HIRED BY A SECURITY COMPANY THAT WAS RETAINED BY THE CENTURY
PLAZA HOTEL. ONE OF THE MARCH'S TOP ORGANIZERS SAYS THAT ONE OF THOSE SPIES
WAS AN AGENT PROVOCATEUR, CONSTANTLY SUGGESTING SUCH ACTS AS BREAKING INTO
THE HOTEL AND ACCOSTING JOHNSON.

The demonstration's co-leaders, Irving Sarnoff and Donald Kalish, have come
to disagree over why the march broke down.

Kalish says Sarnoff and others radicalized the march without his knowledge.
Sarnoff, who chaired the Peace Action Council that sponsored the march,
says Kalish behaved "indiscreetly" in allowing one of the undercover
infiltrators, whom he first met only five days before the march, to listen
to idle boasting and confidential conversations. . .


Louis Proyect

(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)