I’ve lived in L.A. for nearly 10 years now. I’ve never seen armored tanks in the streets.
Last night, during an otherwise peaceful anti-war demonstration in front of the Federal Building in Westwood, two armored tanks were called out.
Here’s the story, here’s the QuickTime video. What the hell is this country coming to?
UPDATE: The links above are not broken as one reader reported, but traffic at both the page and the video is now very heavy, so keep trying. Here, in the meantime, is the text of the article:
LOS ANGELES, November 9, 2004 – At 7:50 PM two armored tanks showed up at an anti-war protest in front of the federal building in Westwood. The tanks circled the block twice, the second time parking themselves in the street and directly in front of the area where most of the protesters were gathered. Enraged, some of the people attempted to block the tanks, but police quickly cleared the street. The people continued to protest the presence of the tanks, but about ten minutes the tanks drove off. It is unclear as to why the tanks were deployed to this location.
UPDATE: AMERICAblog now has more details on this.
I work next to the Federal Building and even walked past the protesters last night around 6:30pm. All seemed in order, there were signs and chants but no one was blocking traffic or anything out of the norm.
What the hell indeed!
Home sick but thankfully back on line. WTF?!?!?!
I used to work in the neighborhood during the start of the war and remember all those protests, but never had a tank been called out.
Sheesh.
You know, it begs the question, what exactly were they going to do with those tanks? Other than pure intimidation, I couldn’t imagine what would happen if they ever actually turned those tanks on our own people. I hope our nation wakes up!!! I don’t want to live in a police state!