Headin’ for the Revolution

Good news on the L.A. Communist revolutionary front.

Pack your lunches, chill the beer and get ready to join the bourgeois-bashing, proletarian fun. The overthrow of America is coming soon. Admission is free, bring the kids.

It has been widely broadcast by our local Reds that occupants of the U.S. Immigration Service’s detention centers for illegal aliens will rise up against their captors on June 10, precipitating a nationwide revolt.

This will, of course, include those detained in the center on Alvarado Street, the scene of previous clashes between fun-loving Communists and armies of policemen with terse, one-syllable names like Nick and Mike and Spud.

They will meet again on the day of Armageddon, the Communists say, to resume their brief but active relationship. Nick and Mike and Spud can hardly wait.

Thereafter, we are told, Communist revolutionary fervor will spread from block to block, mini-mall to mini-mall and state to state until the dirty-pig American government is overthrown and either Rojo or Sasha take over.

I haven’t been so excited since Raincoat Jones predicted the end of the world in Oakland in 1957.

We held an End of the World Party on the eve of the apocalypse and drank with such careless abandon that many among us believed the world had indeed ended . . . only to learn with head-pounding disappointment the next day it had not.

I view with equal anticipation, albeit some misgiving, the End of America on June 10, but only because I feel a personal involvement beyond that of casual observer.

I think I may have started it all.

Let me preface this by saying I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Communist, despite what my mother once told the U.S. Marine Corps.

Mom was upset because I hadn’t come home for a few days (well, actually, several weeks) during my feral college years and, in her search for me, told the commander of my Marine Reserve unit I had probably run off with the Reds. Other than running off with Protestants, that was the worse thing she could imagine.

Au contraire, mom.

I am, if nothing else, a capitalist to the core. I would rather dine on cochon de lait than peasant stew, I am emotionally incapable of dressing in revolutionary rags and if I ever become rich beyond imagination, I intend sharing my wealth with no one.

Then why, I hear you ask, do members of the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Revolutionary Youth Brigade distribute copies of my column whenever they march on behalf of dialectical materialism and a classless society?

It’s this way.

When the cops and the Communists clashed May 1 in front of the aforementioned Immigration Detention Center, I was there watching the head-bashing.

I wrote that through their excessive response, the police had transformed a laughable handful of nobodies into bloodied heroes of the Pico-Union barrio. The headline on the column--”Heroes of the Barrio”--was intended as irony.

However, there are segments of the population upon which irony is lost, among whom are the aforementioned revolutionaries. They thought I was praising them, and the next day swaggered around addressing each other as Comrade Hero.

Talk about dumb kids.

This came to my attention when one of our reporters covered a recent demonstration outside the Criminal Courts Building.

“We are heroes of the revolution,” a Communist who called himself Rojo said. Rojo means red in Spanish. Rojo. Red. Communist. Get it?

“Who says you’re heroes?” the reporter demanded. He is a tough pro who would not take a golden vision of Jesus in his kitchen at face value.

“Your paper says,” Rojo replied.

Rojo’s real name, by the way, is Francisco Fiallos. He calls himself Rojo because no one is going to fight to the death for a guy whose English name is Francis.

He handed a copy of my column to the reporter, who read it, shook his head and said, “Well, then, it must be true, Comrade Hero.”

Rojo, whose limited perceptions also do not include an appreciation of irony, thanked the reporter and swaggered off.

Meanwhile, a young woman named Sasha, who appeared to be chairman of the Youth Brigade Pep Committee, cheered and shouted that now the revolution was coming for sure, rah, rah, rah.

Well, all right.

I have no objection to a wide distribution of my column, but if Rojo, Sasha and the gang feel that a thin mantle of heroism is going to offer spiritual protection against physical abuse, I have bad news. It won’t.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.”

All things considered, I’d rather not.