May Day Protesters Clash With Police in Long Beach; More Than 100 Arrested

About 200 May Day demonstrators and half as many police officers clashed Tuesday in Long Beach, echoing violent protests of another era.

More than 100 protesters were arrested and several received minor injuries, as did a police officer, during the afternoon confrontation, said Long Beach Sgt. Steve Filippini. Protesters threw rocks, bags containing ball bearings and bottles, and police answered with bean bag rounds and rubber bullets, he said. As protesters scattered or were arrested, police found about a dozen hammers and other tools; hundreds of pyrotechnics, including M-80s; several bags of feces and urine and gas masks, Filippini said.

A wooden barricade was thrown on top of a police car and at least one business was spray-painted, Filippini said.

“They could have caused a lot of damage--to people and property,” he said. “I think we surprised them with our aggressive stance.”

At the beginning of the standoff, officers in riot gear gathered and pushed the protesters south on Pine Avenue to busy Ocean Boulevard. The melee caused traffic jams and temporarily closed the Metro Blue Line.

Elsewhere in Los Angeles County, the day was peaceful as groups sought to publicize a global range of causes and demands.

Also known as International Workers Day, May Day once went hand-in-hand with the slogan “Workers of the world unite.”

But the protest movement with which it has been closely allied has discovered the concept of synergy, and today’s catch phrase seems to be: “Everybody with a favorite cause unite.”

In Los Angeles, rallies marked May Day with demands ranging from better treatment of home-care workers to better services for the disabled to increased rights for immigrants.

“May Day has expanded to celebrate a whole constellation of progressive politics that at the start of the 20th century had its beginnings in organized labor,” said Steven Ross, a USC history professor. “It’s a day of political camaraderie for people of all groups to present their message to the media.”

That was indeed the case Tuesday at the Los Angeles Federal Building, where about 20 people representing a coalition of groups gathered to decry the treatment of the disabled, garment workers, Third World factory workers, single mothers, nannies, indigenous people, home-care health workers and others.

Although violence and arrests were far more common during the Vietnam War era than they are today, the new generation of protesters has the same fiery delivery and determined attitude of the ‘60s and ‘70s leftists.

“We are fed up with welfare reform. . . . We are fed up with immigration policies. . . . We are here to proclaim that we want a change in priorities!” shouted Margaret Prescod, coordinator of the Los Angeles Federal Building rally and spokeswoman for the International Wages for Housework Campaign.

While borrowing some of the techniques of yesteryear, the new breed of activist is not afraid to leave the single-issue protesters of the past behind.

“We have a slogan: ‘The Party’s over,’ ” Prescod said after the rally. “It means that the parties of the organized left--the Greens, the Socialists, the Communists--have seen their day. We’re not waiting for them to speak for us.”

Although May Day is a much bigger event around the world than it is in this country, it originated in the United States as part of the late-19th-century campaign for an eight-hour workday. It remained a largely labor-driven event into the 1960s.

Today, May Day is still a day for labor groups to publicize their agendas. A labor union representing 17,000 University of California employees scheduled rallies at all nine UC campuses, including UCLA. The university’s contract with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees expired Monday.

Like other May Day protest groups with broad goals, the union demanded a pact promising more than just higher wages. “We want respect on the job. We want fair treatment. And we want safety on the job,” said Lakesha Harrison, a licensed vocational nurse at Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center. About 450 union members marched peacefully in a two-block area at UCLA.

Some critics say multi-cause protests--such as those that disrupted the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle--dilute everyone’s message. But Sidney Ross-Risden, a protester at the Federal Building rally, applauds the move from single issues to demonstrations that cover the globe.

“I participated in antiwar protests at Barnard College back in the ‘60s. There was always pressure from some groups to come up with one issue because they felt it would be too complicated,” she said.

“So the antiwar movement would get picked, and Black Power or civil rights would get dropped. We’re saying everyone should get out there and have their say.”

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Times staff writer Louis Sahagun and Hector Becerra contributed to the story.