Marchers, Police Pass First Part of Big Civics Test

In the first test of the week for the Los Angeles Police Department, thousands of people wound their way peacefully through downtown on Sunday in a raucous but mostly disciplined protest against the death penalty and police brutality.

After preparing for months for demonstrations timed to coincide with the Democratic National Convention, police faced taunts but no real violence or widespread lawlessness.

The outcome of Sunday’s demonstration appeared to satisfy both the LAPD, which has trained vigorously for this week’s events, and the demonstrators, who expressed pride at their spirited but peaceful march through the city streets.

Despite fears that the city would be engulfed by anarchists running amok, a sense of mellowness and restraint seemed to characterize several demonstrations held throughout the city Sunday.

However, the coming days are packed with opportunities for more protest and dissent, along with potential flash points for confrontation.

For example, Rage Against the Machine, a militant, loud and popular rock band, plans a free concert outside Staples Center tonight while President Clinton is addressing the convention.

The downtown demonstration Sunday kicked off at Pershing Square in midafternoon in a cacophony of drums, chants and whistles. As demonstrators filled Broadway, shoppers poured out of stores to watch the spectacle.

The march was primarily designed to bring attention to the cause of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former journalist now facing the death penalty in Pennsylvania for murdering a police officer.

Some demonstrators wore black bandannas over their faces in a show of revolutionary zeal; others, gas masks painted to resemble skeleton faces. They held signs, banners and huge papier-mache puppets that carried their message in graphic, sometimes humorous, form.

One 12-foot-tall puppet was designed to resemble an LAPD SWAT officer, holding a baton in one hand and a large red bottle of mock pepper spray in the other. The bottle sprayed water on the crowd--a welcome assault on a day when temperatures climbed into the 90s.

As the marchers approached, some shop owners pulled down gates to cover store windows. “Hurry! Hurry!” they shouted in Spanish.

Amid the Stern Faces, Some Signs of Goodwill

The march proceeded under extraordinary police scrutiny along a route that included Fifth Street, Broadway, Seventh and Figueroa streets until it reached Staples Center. Officers with riot helmets and belts holding tear gas canisters occupied side streets and peered through transparent faceplates as the demonstrators wound their way noisily to the fence of the convention arena.

At one point, about 40 self-described anarchists, clad in black tennis shoes, black jeans, black shirts and black bandannas shrouding their faces--began shouting obscenities and chanting: “L-A-P-D, go away! Racist, sexist, anti-gay!”

At another point, a young man in Army fatigues dropped his pants, flashing his white briefs at the officers. Stone-faced, police didn’t react. The youth then pulled an orange from his backpack and threw it down the street, where it splattered on the asphalt. As the youth stalked off, his fists pumping the air victoriously, police continued to ignore him.

But demonstrators as well as police showed self-restraint. And at some points, there were signs of goodwill--or at least good humor--breaking out between authorities and demonstrators. A Fire Department truck pulled up next to the fenced-off protest area outside Staples Center and showered water onto the crowd of sweaty, sun-scorched demonstrators. The impromptu spritzing prompted people to dance and frolic in the spray.

At another point, a man wearing a rubber devil’s mask told police through a megaphone: “Attention! Attention! L.A. police, your services are no longer required. Come out with your hands up. You are surrounded by love.”

Jim Lafferty, executive director of the Los Angeles office of the National Lawyers’ Guild, praised the LAPD officers who lined the route and followed the marchers at a respectful distance as they snaked their way through downtown streets from Pershing Square to Staples Center. “They’ve been very low-key,” he said.

Organizers estimated the size of the crowd at 7,000; police said it was half that. One man was arrested on suspicion of felony vandalism; police identified him as Daniel Katz Woutat, 18, of Long Beach. Paramedics treated as many as a dozen people for heat-related ailments.

Organizers said they were proud of the crowd’s behavior.

“We have been orderly, disciplined and we have been able to put out our message that Mumia Abu-Jamal deserves a new trial,” said Dele Ailemen, an organizer.

Abu-Jamal awaits execution in Pennsylvania for his killing of a Philadelphia police officer, Daniel Faulkner, on Dec. 9, 1981.

Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party member and was well-known to Philadelphia police for his radio journalism in which he was highly critical of that department. He claimed to have caught Faulkner beating his brother, and said Faulkner shot him as a result.

Prosecutors contended that Abu-Jamal fired at the officer, hitting him in the back. They said Faulkner managed to return fire before dying. Abu-Jamal was convicted after a controversial trial in 1982. Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court refused on Oct. 30, 1998, to grant him a new trial. He is now appealing the case in federal court.

Gap Owners, ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats Take Heat

The downtown march was one of several Sunday. Among the others: an AARP bus tour demanding changes in Medicare and Social Security, and a demonstration at Loews Beach Hotel in Santa Monica, where Jesse Jackson and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney spoke to draw attention to a local labor dispute.

As the day wore on, about 500 demonstrators thronged the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica in a protest against the owners of the Gap stores, who also own a logging company in Northern California. Some wore Christmas tree costumes, and others dressed as turtles, foxes or frogs.

At one point, demonstrators carried in a giant redwood stump, symbolizing the trees being felled by Mendocino Redwood, the logging company owned by the Fisher family of San Francisco, which founded the Gap.

The demonstrators were gently escorted off the Promenade by Santa Monica police. As night fell, they held a party in the sand below the Santa Monica Pier, directly below the site of a party being held for a group of moderate “Blue Dog” Democrats.

Shortly before 10 p.m., a group of several hundred demonstrators climbed onto the pier and stood outside the entrance to the party. “Sellout!” they yelled, and “Shame on you!” while waving dollar bills and booing. About 20 police officers stood nearby, including 12 on horseback, creating a corridor for the party-goers to pass through to get into the affair.

Another 30 police officers in riot gear were posted inside the party.

The Democrats appeared unfazed by the demonstrators, although some were slightly agog at the usual summer tourist throngs on the pier. “I’m from a very small town in southwestern Louisiana,” said Rep. Christopher John. “The walk down the pier, we don’t see things like that every day.”

For most Angelenos, the run-up to the convention and its attendant protests have so far remained a fairly distant affair, no more of a factor in their lives than the Republican gathering in Philadelphia two weeks ago. But it did intrude on some people Sunday.

Traffic was snarled throughout downtown and wherever President Clinton went. The president’s motorcade swept from Century City to Santa Monica, where Clinton spoke at a morning gathering to honor his Cabinet, and then up Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu for a brunch at the home of singer Barbra Streisand. Gridlock followed, as it usually does in the wake of a presidential motorcade.

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Reported by Times staff