000844 PETA Protests Hits Democrat Convention in LA

Los Angeles, CA - Animal rights activists dressed in pig costumes got the Democratic Convention protests off to a smelly start on Saturday, declaring “meat stinks” by dumping four tons of manure at a downtown Los Angeles hotel where many delegates are staying.

The protest at the Wilshire Grand Hotel by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was one of a smattering of small demonstrations to take place on Saturday in the city, where police are battening down for much larger rallies planned later in the convention period.

Anti-abortion activists greeted arriving journalists and delegates at Los Angeles International Airport, and later staged a protest outside the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, where the convention is due to officially begin on Monday.

Several dozen immigrants rights advocates later held a noisy, drum-thumping protest several blocks from the center to denounce U.S. “ethnic cleansing” and policies they said harmed Hispanics.

“We want to tell the Democrats that they don't have the Mexican-American vote in their back pocket,” said Jaimie Cruz, a spokesman for the National Chicano Moratorium Committee which organized the small march.

The Los Angeles Police Department was on high alert ahead of next week's threatened protests, determined to head off the type of melee which broke out in December 1999 at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.

Activists planning some 20 major rallies and marches won a court order on Friday barring police from raiding the headquarters where they are making giant puppets, placards and banners.

On Saturday police beefed up their presence downtown with police officers and sheriff's deputies arrayed on street corners, crouched on hotel roofs and squad cars stationed at road junctions around the Staples Center and the nearby hotel and business district, where many small shopowners decided to close their stores for the week.

Fleets of bicycle cops glided through the quiet downtown, while the Staples Center itself -- cordoned off to traffic and ringed by a 13-foot (4-meter) high security fence atop concrete blocks -- resembled a cross between a police garrison and a ghost town two days before the start of proceedings on Monday.

“The police are everywhere,” said one Los Angeles resident. “It's the first time I've ever seen the LAPD walking the beat.”

Los Angeles law enforcement authorities, facing their toughest week since the 1992 riots following the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of black motorist Rodney King, have veered between tough talk and conciliation toward the thousands of protesters expected to stage a week of marches and rallies.

At Saturday's events police took a relatively low profile, although it was clear the force was on high alert. Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, in an interview with C-SPAN on Saturday, said any troublemakers would be dealt with severely.

“We've got plenty of room, so you're going to be in jail if you think you're going to commit crime at this convention,” Baca said.

According to one report on Saturday police descended in force on a small group at a church that was setting up 553 crosses representing people who died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border over the past six years.

“About 100 of them arrived in 20 or 30 cars. It was like a military squadron,” said Juliette Beck, spokeswoman for Global Exchange.

The group, numbering fewer than 20, claimed it was harassed and threatened, its van was searched and police threatened to confiscate the crosses because they could be “instruments of crime.”

Police said there was no record of any incident at the church. “We have no information about that,” a police spokeswoman said.

At the PETA demonstration, about a dozen pro-vegetarian activists gathered at the Wilshire Grand Hotel and cheered as a dumptruck unloaded its cargo of manure, a spokesman said.

“Meat stinks for your health, for the environment, and most importantly for the animals,” PETA member Sean Gifford said. “Animals lead short miserable lives and die violent gruesome deaths to become food.”

While the protest was good-natured, with two demonstrators clad in pink cotton pig costumes waving to passers-by, the driver of the truck was arrested, Gifford said.

There was another arrest at the protest by the anti-abortion Operation Rescue group when an employee of a Los Angeles medical clinic either stumbled into or purposely assaulted Troy Newman, the group's director.

The woman was booked for misdemeanor battery and subsequently released.

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