White supremacists, demonstrators square off in LA
LOS ANGELES
Police officers stood between the white supremacists and
counter-demonstrators on the south lawn of Los Angeles' City Hall,
where about 50 members of the National Socialist Movement waved
American flags and swastika banners for about an hour.
Five people, all of them counter-protesters, were arrested for
throwing items, police said.
The white supremacists, many of them wearing flack helmets and
black military fatigue uniforms, shouted "Sieg Heil" before each
of their speakers took the podium to taunt counter-protesters with
racial, anti-Semitic and misogynistic epithets.
"We will meet you head on," one of the white supremacists,
whose name could not be made out over the fuzzy public address
system, warned the crowd from behind several phalanxes of police in
riot gear.
Members of the Detroit-based group said they picked the location
for their rally because of Los Angeles' large immigrant population.
They accused some of the immigrants of stealing jobs and committing
crimes.
Group members also said they were reacting to the recent number
of street marches across the country encouraging legislators to
enact reform that includes amnesty for some illegal immigrants.
National Socialist Movement regional director Jeffrey Russell
Hall announced that the group would begin backing political
candidates who agreed with their anti-immigrant message.
But much of the white supremacists' words were drowned out by
such chants as "Hey hey, ho ho, Nazi scum have got to go" from
the larger crowd of about 500 counter-protesters who held signs
that read "Nazis: Get Out of Los Angeles" and "Racists Are
Ignorant."
There was a brief flare-up of violence before the speakers
arrived. A shirtless man was seen being escorted to safety behind
police lines by a plainclothes officer as counter-protesters
punched and grabbed at him. Blood could be seen at the base of the
man's neck.
National Lawyers Guild executive director James Lafferty, who
attended both as a legal observer and counter-protester, said he
saw the man get into a fight with crowd members who saw his Nazi
lightning bolt tattoos.
Police Commander David Doan said a second man who crowd members
believed was sympathetic with the white supremacists was also
assaulted during the rally. Both men were treated for minor
injuries at a hospital and released.
As the rally ended, counter-protesters hurled rocks, branches
and other items over the police line and into a parking lot where
the white supremacists' had left their cars.
Some members of the group had trouble starting a black Ford
Mustang and attempted to hook up jumper cables to their engine.
They protected themselves from the flying debris by holding up
swastika-emblazoned shields.
The white supremacists eventually gave up and pushed their car
away so they could jump-start it out of range of the projectiles.