this may be of interest. Begin forwarded message:
From: Sasha Costanza-Chock <costanza@usc.edu> Date: May 3, 2007 8:50:41 PM EDT
This may be slightly offtopic, but I stayed up late last night cutting this video together so I'm sending it out to the world as part of my own catharsis and attempt to shake the creepy feeling that always comes over me after I watch armor clad police use batons on fleeing defenseless people.
If you are not in LA, the story is that LAPD brutally attacked thousands of families celebrating international workers' day in downtown macarthur park, using rubber bullets, batons, motorcycles and chemical spray. They even attacked several members of the media, including Fox News and Telemundo correspondents! It was so ludicrous that they are no longer even attempting to spin it in the standard way (ie, 'we used controlled nonlethal force against a few troublemakers). They have abandoned that line and even the chief (bratton) has admitted that it got out of hand.
I was there to support the event and to play music with my band fosforo. We were literally on the soundstage playing when the police attacked without clear warning. I happened to have a cam and hid behind a speaker stack to record everything.
For you non-spanish speakers, the music is a cover of Bob Marley's 'War,' itself an interpretation of a speech by Haile Selassie I.
The band is my band Fósforo, the footage is a mix of stuff shot by me, some shot by Larry Gross (!), and some pulled from la.indymedia.org and from YouTube at 2am.
enjoy the (riot) porn.
download at 43.5 megs http://la.indymedia.org/uploads/2007/05/fosforo_mayday_rough_cops.mp4
or watch on myspace (lower quality): http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm? fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=2026799363
or if you must, youtube (still lower.): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfkoULiI8N0
For good firsthand accounts of what happened, check http://la.indymedia.org
peace sasha
Jeremy Hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu) Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. --Byron