Los Angeles Indymedia : Activist News

Report by Leslie: BALDWIN PARK, June 25, 2005--By noon, about eight hundred counter protestors stood against the invasion of Baldwin Park by Save Our State from Ventura and Minutemen from Arizona, both militant anti-migration groups, and the Nazi National Vanguard, a white supremacist group, together numbering about forty or fifty. This was the invaders' second unsuccessful effort to attract attention to a monument at the Baldwin Park Metrolink station entitled Danzas Indigenas by renowned artist Judy Baca, which commemorates a Tongva ("Gabrielino") Indian uprising led by Toypurinah against the San Gabriel Mission and the history of the land from that time forward. At their first incursion on May 25, SOS had declared inscriptions on the monument referring to indigenous Mexican culture "seditious."

I was escorted into the celebration by two friends, one looking particularly sharp in his brown beret. We were met by eight hundred celebrants who had come to assert their Indigenous, Mexican, and Chicano culture in the face of the racist intruders, surrounded by cops. A mild-mannered poet burst into a fierce diatribe proclaiming "Genocide alert!" in a poem about Kristallnacht. An interlingual agitprop teatro group told a history of the Native and Mexican land grabs. Behind the tarp that hung as a backdrop, young actors hastily tore off one costume and slipped into the next. They parodied a white SOS member in the large, droopy American-flag hat who had appeared at an earlier demonstration and Lupe Moreno, the Latina spokesperson for SOS. El Pelado ended the acto with a costume transformation revealing him not to be a clown, but a proud Chicano declaring "Ya basta!"

UPDATES: Journalist Under Attack By The GGPD by 1Planet1People, A lesson in movement building by Ricardo, LA TIMES LOVES JOE TURNER by Fred Alvarez , Another Side of Resistance to Racism by TATONKA, BP Arrests/Hearings Update by Next Move, BP2: La Reconquista by Rockero420,

REPORTS:Baldwin Park 2, the Rematch! by Fredric L. Rice, Baldwin Park 2: La reconquista continúa by Leslie , Arrests in Baldwin Park by Next Move, Report from Save Our State by 1Planet1People Pictures/Report From Baldwin Park by Next Move, More Baldwin Park pictures by Next Move, Baldwin Park Picture Part 3 by Next Move, Preliminary anti-hate rally report by Fredric L. Rice, News From The Front Lines: Baldwin Park Updates, by 1planet1people, Legal action against Joseph Turner, director of SOS, is there a case? by Peoples law collective San Gabriel Valley Tribune: Officials brace for SOS by By Shirley Hsu, Garden Grove United Resistance by Pachuco, "Save Our State" / "Minutemen" Issue City Threats? by Fredric L. Rice, SOS to Abandon L.A. County? by Next Move