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Thousands of Angelenos enraged by Donald Trump’s decision to commandeer their state national guard swamped the downtown streets on Sunday, bringing a major freeway to a standstill. But the national guard, hemmed in by the protesters and by dozens of Los Angeles police cruisers, played almost no role in any of it.
A vocal, boisterous but largely peaceful sea of protesters engulfed the north-eastern corner of downtown Los Angeles around city hall and the federal courthouse. They hurled insults at Trump and at the immigration enforcement teams who had conducted mass arrests of undocumented migrants in the area on Friday.
They converged on the Metropolitan detention center, the federal lockup where many protesters arrested over the previous 48 hours were being held, and an adjacent loading dock that about 50 national guardsmen, in battle gear with riot shields and semi-automatic weapons, were using as their staging ground.
The protesters did not hesitate to walk right up to the heavily armed men. “We’re not afraid of you!” one organiser with a bullhorn, John Parker, yelled. One of the many banners on display read: “National Guard LOL.” Every building and wall in the immediate vicinity was covered in profane graffiti, the most common being “Fuck ICE”, “LAPD can suck it” and “Kill all cops.”
Shortly after noon, the guardsmen, flanked by armed officers with Department of Homeland Security insignia, fired teargas into the growing crowd so a caravan of DHS and Border Patrol vehicles could push its way through. People backed off briefly and donned masks, only to come back in larger numbers within a few minutes.
That was the extent of the national guard’s involvement.
Within a couple of hours, the crowd had swollen to several thousand, as marchers from earlier protests – one in Boyle Heights, east of downtown, and the other at city hall – moved on the federal complex from different directions, spilling so broadly into the surrounding streets that it brought traffic to a standstill. Several drivers caught in the snarl-up honked enthusiastically to show their support.
At first, the Los Angeles police department issued orders to disperse and threatened to arrest anyone who did not comply. Dozens of patrol cars tore through downtown, forming a barricade just north of the protest and slowly pushing the crowd in the opposite direction. LAPD riot officers sprinted down the sidewalks and fired several rounds of flash-bangs, which alarmed the crowd but did not appear to harm anyone. They also fired rubber bullets, mostly in the air.
Soon, the LAPD patrol cars had – whether by design or by accident – hemmed the national guardsmen into their staging area, making it impossible for them to make their own attempt at crowd control even if they had wanted to.
The crowd, meanwhile, had split into two, with one group clustered so thickly along Alameda and Temple Streets that the police soon gave up on attempting to move them further.
The other group sprinted down freeway off-ramps leading to the 101 freeway, bringing traffic on the major artery to a standstill. Police fired round after round of flash-bangs in an attempt to push the protesters back up the off-ramps.
Thick clusters of onlookers gathered on the bridges above the action, shouting “shame, shame!” at the police as well as profanity-laced slogans – in English and Spanish – directed at Trump and his immigration enforcement efforts.
Unlike the national guardsmen, the LAPD appeared reluctant to resort to teargas. Unlike the county sheriff’s department, who shot a news photographer in the leg on Saturday with a so-called “less lethal” round, the city police also shied away from more drastic crowd control measures.
California leaders including the governor Gavin Newsom and the Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass have accused Trump of compounding the problems caused by his immigration raids by taking the unorthodox step of requisitioning the state national guard. By mid-afternoon Newsom was urging the president to rescind the order.
“We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved,” Newsom said. “This is a serious breach of state sovereignty – inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed.”
Some of those frustrations showed on the street, as LAPD officers – even as they appeared determined not to inflame the crowds further – had to endure loud insults and a flurry of empty plastic water bottles thrown whenever they made an attempt to take control of the crowd.
In isolated incidents, LAPD riot officers manhandled or arrested protesters who threw fists at them or beat on police cars. At one point, a black police cruiser moved through the crowd at high speed and was reported to have injured a bicyclist knocked to the ground.
There were isolated episodes of vandalism – graffiti sprayed on buildings and vehicles, and a protester who damaged the side mirror of a parked car he passed. A line of spray-painted Waymo driverless cars, one with a smashed windshield, were later set on fire.
But the vast majority of protesters seemed determined to vent their anger through slogans and placards only.
“People experiencing oppression are expressing their first amendment rights,” said a protest organiser who wanted to be identified only as Angelica R for fear of government reprisals
“This is not the making of a dictatorship,” she said of Trump’s immigration crackdowns. “This is the description of a dictatorship.”
It was not clear what plan, if any, the national guard had going into Sunday. Newsom said about 300 guardsmen had deployed to the LA area – far short of the 2,000 requisitioned by the president. As the day began, two dozen of them appeared to news crews outside the federal complex as though intent only on posing for photographs.
They had the visors of their helmets up, and many wore shades, even though the day started out cloudy. Mayor Bass, speaking to the Los Angeles Times, accused them of “posturing”. Maxine Waters, the veteran congresswoman from south LA, taunted them by asking: “Who are you going to shoot?”
It was only as the crowds grew thicker that they donned riot shields and turned to face the street, not the television cameras.
The size of the protests appeared to take everyone by surprise. LAPD squad cars tore towards city hall at one point, only to spin in circles and head back to the federal complex moments later. One protest organiser outside the Metropolitan detention center yelled at one point: “This is only a distraction! We need to go to city hall!”
But as soon as people started heeding her call, they ran into a sea of several thousand protesters moving in the opposite direction.
