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The nation, after 25 years, found its new Birmingham moment - in Los Angeles and to nobody’s surprise. The nation’s most abusive police department found a new way to capture the national headlines, trying to shut down the immigrants' May Day march by firing 240 “rubber bullets” indiscriminately into a crowd. Depending on whose version you follow, the demonstrators either were told to disperse, or were not told to disperse, or were told to disperse in English but not Spanish, or were told too late, after some 600 L.A. police officers (including a 100 man Metro elite unit) began bowling over everyone in sight. Marchers, news media, families and children were all in the park that day, yet in typical LAPD paramilitary fashion, the LAPD took a "command and control" posture and aggressed on the crowd in the most disgusting way since, since…Birmingham almost 25 years. Watching people who were expressing their right to assemble and protest, suddenly being beat down in the streets and fired upon, as if L.A. were Rwanda or something, took us back to another place in time. It took us back to a time, back to the South, when raw abuse of massive resistance shocked the world. This time, it wasn’t fire hoses and police dogs turned on the crowd. It was rubber bullets.  

Last week’s second annual immigrant reform demonstration, which took place nationwide, showed L.A. as the new South. And it is. Just as Alabama and Mississippi were the tipping for the 20th Century civil rights movement, Los Angeles is the tipping point for the new civil rights movement—the immigrant reform movement, bolstered by the nation’s most formidable Latino political agenda. That agenda enables the immigrant voice to be magnified in the nation’s second largest city (and second largest media market). Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is the state’s second most popular politician (behind Arnold) and one of the Democratic Party’s “rising stars.” He’s also over the “promised land” for immigrants, as Los Angeles has the nation’s largest alien resident population. Mexico has essentially eroded the nation’s southern border, making it literally impossible to determine where Northern Mexico ends and Southwest USA begins.

The new South is Southern California, specifically L.A. where Villaraigosa avoids the immigration question like the plague. He was conveniently “out of town” when this year’s May Day March took place. But not even the Mayor could envision his police department turning on a public crowd like they did. Los Angeles keeps a perpetual “black eye” because of the LAPD, but this is a new level for even the LAPD. Police Chief Bratton, who is the best politician the department has had since Daryl Gates, was seen as a lock for a second term until last week. It has become obvious that he is simply masking a culture that we all know is still there. The LAPD always manages to show its underbelly at the wrong (or right) time. Bratton, while pulling 60 officers off the street until this investigation is complete, always sides with the LAPD culture and doesn’t openly challenge the culture. Now, after his officers attacked working media, who are tearing the LAPD new a**hole, Bratton is in full damage control. He’ll never be able to explain away the rubber bullets hitting women and children. No more than Bull Connor could justify turning fire hoses and dogs on women and children in Birmingham, in 1963.

This is 2007, however, but you would never know the difference, except for the composition of the crowd. Though fewer marched this year than the 500,000 people who showed in L.A. streets last year, the nation’s 12 million illegals (some put the number as high as 20 million) have found an annual vehicle to advocate for amnesty—by shutting down every city where a critical mass can be formed to demonstrate the nation’s over-reliance on cheap labor. The argument that immigrants do the work nobody else wants to do, though true in some instances, has become a mantra for an open border policy that no one agrees with but can’t figure out how to fix. The continuing influx of illegal immigrants is trying the nation’s patience (and budget). While “let me stay and I won’t break the law no more” isn’t an adequate defense, everyone knows that sending millions of immigrants “back to where they came from” is somehow impractical, even un-American. Still, the fact is that they’re here and have civil rights protections while they’re here. They can even march and protest in a way that Americans wouldn’t be able to do in foreign countries, but that’s what makes America great. What constantly gives America a black eye is when liberties and rights, on either side (by government or protesters), are exploited. Some suggest that march “interlopers” got out of control. That is possible. The LAPD had the right to restore order, but it didn’t have the right to shoot into crowds as if this was Apartheid South Africa. Nor did the LAPD have the right to bowl over women, or club the press who were filming news, as they did in Birmingham. We know the LAPD has been out of control. Bratton is on record saying he will not try to “defend the indefensible.” That’s a surprise, because he has defended everything else. This time, he can’t. Finally, the LAPD has done something that can’t be defended by its chief.

The blue beast escapes from its dark dungeon and manages to embarrass the city again.

Meanwhile, California, a state that is perceived as liberal, but is really anti-immigrant (Prop. 187), anti-race (Prop. 209), anti-youth (Prop. 14), anti-gay (defeated Prop. 22) and anti-redemption (Three Strikes) is now on record as one of the most conservative states in the nation. And now, with the MacArthur Park melee immortalized in newsreel history, we can add—the most socially intolerant as well. All we can say, here in L.A. is, “Welcome to the new South.”     

BC Columnist Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad is a national columnist, managing director of the Urban Issues Forum and author of the upcoming book, Saving The Race: Empowerment Through Wisdom. His Website is AnthonySamad.com. Click here to contact Dr. Samad.