Another Protest Outside Work Today.

by Little Miss Attila on January 6, 2009

But I haven’t posted my account of Friday yet, have I? I lost the first draft, re-wrote it over the weekend over at Hawkins’ digs, and then found my original verbiage. Do you want to read two different accounts of the same event?—or shall I weave them together for you?

I shall throw that post up tonight or tomorrow morning, with pictures to come whenever I come across that missing camera cable; I now have pictures of the protesters from two different angles.

Suffice it to say I work two doors down from the Israeli Consulate on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles, and it’s making my commute home . . . interesting. Wilshire is a main artery in Los Angeles / Beverly Hills / Santa Monica (though that last city is not affected by these protests, which occur between the Beverly Hills border and the Miracle Mile, just a few blocks beyond BH—in LAPD’s bailiwick; it may be that the Beverly Hills Police assist in sealing off Wilshire from their side, but I haven’t yet made it over to check).

My boss tells me that our need to commute to the office trumps the protesters’ right to free speech, and claims to think that a totalitarian state would work out just fine, provided he was “part of the totality.”

We are looking down on the two groups of protesters from the 14th Floor of the Petersen Building; it is really the 13th Floor, but isn’t called that because of superstition and/or the presence of a couple of firearms in our gun safe.

“Why do they let them do that?” he keeps asking. “Don’t they have any firehoses?” And he almost means it.

I stifle a laugh, because I don’t want to encourage him, and get a few new pictures from this vantage point. The last protest was on Friday night, so I’m wondering how often this will be happening; previously, it was on Fridays. Will the protest now be held on Mondays and Fridays? Every other night? Every night? I begin to think that my boss is right about this, though I know he’s playing up the Good Old Boy image.

“We have this thing called a ‘Constitution,'” I remind him.

“That’s fine, but I want to go home,” he responds. “The last time this happened while I was here, the police made me walk a few blocks out of my way.”

“Don’t walk to work,” I tell him. “That can’t be healthy at your age.”

But I’m acutely aware that I do not want to add an extra 20-30 minutes to my commute time every single evening, and I don’t like the increased pace of the protests.

While we are watching, one of the protesters on the “pro-Israel” side of the street attempts to cross, carrying a flag. We cannot see whether it’s a cop or a pro-Palestinian that knocks the flag out of his hands, but it’s clearly a cop leading him to the paddy wagon. He is not in cuffs. He is the second person we have seen arrested so far.

The equestrian cops can’t quite get into position in the middle of the street the way they were last Friday, because one high-rise is hemmed in, and the workers therein must be allowed to exit from the heart of the “protest zone.” The bicycle cops are on the other side, though, keeping the two groups of protesters apart, and there are plenty of uniformed cops on foot.

The parking lot across the street is almost full of black-and-whites, but the motorcycle cops aren’t here yet. I know the SWAT team is waiting downstairs, ready to swoop in from 40-50 feet away if things get truly ugly; I know my own parking lot is full of Crown Vics and guys who are in early middle-age—but oddly buff—loitering around.

Yet away we go, and as we ride the elevator downstairs the discussion veers away from politics here and politics in the Middle East, and back to our own deadlines, and our own need to get magazines into the hands of the pre-press people and on to the printer.

The second elevator takes us away from the cries of “Free, free Palsestine.” We enquire with the guard in the lobby, who tells us he’s sick of it, and about to lock the door that opens onto Wilshire Blvd.

“Well,” I remark, “this is one problem the gun magazines won’t have when they move to the Upper Midwest. Not in a small town, anyway.”

And as the garage spits me back out into the melée I sigh, turn the car toward San Vicente Blvd., and crank the music back up; KLOS is still playing “rock ‘n’ roll from A to Z” in honor of the new year.

I am back, for an hour—well, a bit more. Back in the safe zone.

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