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.
Keep us breathing fire!
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