Azteca danzantes protecting
Three lines of people joined arms across the thirty-foot open space at the entrance, discussed how to handle police batons, and determined that the minutemen would not cross. The Aztec danzantes protected the people with ritual dances and guarded the southeast corner of 43rd Street and Crenshaw. The Black Riders alternated between patrolling the other entrances to the park and standing at the front of the defense line. The International Socialist Organization ran off a Minuteman truck circling around the looking for a back entrance.
The police stretched their yellow tape around the CBA and the minutemen, penning them in across the street, and told them that they wouldn't be going to the park today. The counterprotestors roared, "Leimert, MacArthur, New Or-leans: Smash the racist war machine!" and Black and Brown allies called out, "We are not the minority--we are the majority!" One counterprotestor had a message just for Hayes: "You came to the community to stir up trouble!"
Cop cars were moved in front of the line, effectively ending any hope the CBA had of charging the park. At 2:40, the cops put their riot helmets on. The defense line, which had relaxed after an hour of the stand off, snapped to. The riot gear came off.
White supremacist groups ,Vanguard News Network and occasional ralliers with Save Our State Stormfront had been licking their lips in anticipation of a race riot in Leimert Park. The LAPD was prepared to put every on-duty officer in the city on overtime. But Los Angeles's African-Americans came to their park, stood against the rhetoric and strategy of Black anti-immigrant protestors, and ensured that the riot could not happen. A participant murmured, "They're using Black Nationalism. I didn't know Black Nationalism sided with the Klan." Then the triumphant cry: "Whose streets? Our streets! People united will never be divided!"
At 3:30, the cops forced the CBA and SOS onto the west sidewalk, surrounded them, and offered them the choice of leaving or arrest. Hayes and five of his followers stepped into the street in a last-ditch, staged arrest so Hayes, as one observer put it, would "earn his pay." And the media ran to film Hayes being escorted into a police van. They were taken to a substation and released.
legalization, reparations, stop the war
In a protest in some ways reminiscent of Baldwin Park's first encounter with the minutemen, the Leimert Park defenders had turned hate and divisiveness out of their public space. Some of the Crenshaw residents voiced concerns about the effects of migration on employment; others responded that Black unemployment had a long history that preceded today's anti-migrant backlash. Whatever their position on the causes of unemployment, they were united in denouncing the minutemen. Hayes and his crew had failed, and the Black-Brown alliance held.
Before the day began, Muffy told me that, "There's nothing like the Nazis to bring people together." Besides the groups mentioned, Mexica Movement, ANSWER-LA, Radical Women, the Sons of Jacob, Base Collective, the Progressive Labor Party, and the Brown Berets were among those on Crenshaw Boulevard.
Hayes has promised to return to the park.
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