Show of strength

Today: Tod Seelie, photographer and author of BRIGHT NIGHTS: Photographs of Another New York.

Issue No. 344

No Kings: Los Angeles
Tod Seelie

HYDRANYM No. 4: Vote!
The Editors

No Kings: Los Angeles

by Tod Seelie

What the LAPD, Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and California Highway Patrol lack in numbers, they make up for in sheer violence. Other cities like to kettle protesters and do mass arrests. The LAPD would rather shoot you in the head with a less-lethal projectile and hope you don’t come back next time. Announcements to disperse come at a whisper volume, followed by a lot of tear gas. 

I’m not saying the cruelty is the point. But it’s certainly a feature, more than it's a bug. Los Angeles protests have always been a wild mix of chaos and levity, violence and boredom, occasionally tilting into the surreal and dangerous.

I covered L.A.’s No Kings protest on June 14th wearing a helmet with a press badge on it and my media credentials. I was tear-gassed multiple times, shot in the leg with a projectile, shoved almost to the ground by the LAPD, and shoved to the ground by protesters objecting to photography. Other journalists fared far worse than I did.

HAPPY JUNETEENTH TO ALL

HYDRANYM No. 4: Vote!

by The Editors

HYDRANYM is a word game for Flaming Hydra subscribers.

THE RULES

Players create an ENTERTAINING and APT acronym from the letters provided, using only (and all) the initial letters—and in the order shown.

If there is a theme specified, your HYDRANYM should refer to it in some way. For example if the theme were HISTORY, and the letters given G F P M, a possible submission would be:

Greeks Found Perseus Manly.

On Thursdays all subscribers can vote—using the link below—on the best 21 entries received, as judged by a panel of Flaming Hydra editors. Winners will receive bragging rights and their name and winning entry will be posted on the ANNALS of HYDRANYM page.

BEHOLD THE 21 BEST HYDRANYMS... AND VOTE!

Again, we only just invented this game and we want it to be the most fun, so if you have ideas for improvements, please let us know about them at [email protected].