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	They Go Whole Hog to Gain Attention

Terry McDermott staff writer L.A.Times 8/14/2000 pU6

First, to take care of the attention problem, you might decide to wear a 7-foot-tall pink pig costume. No problem. Costume shops will make anything. If you've had the suit for a while, you ought to get it cleaned. It typically costs $25 a shot, dry cleaners tend not to have pig suits on their rate schedules, so err on the high side, but the cleaning is worth it, especially in this heat, Diener says. It's hot in there. Diener's suit has a little battery-operated fan built into the head, but it doesn't work very well, so he doesn't use it.
Once you get the costume stuff straightened out, you need a dump truck. This, too, is easier than you might think. Dump trucks can be rented almost everywhere. You don't need a commercial driver's license, and the trucks cost less than $100 a day. Then, of course, there's the manure. Some places, this has proven difficult. Once, said Sean Gifford, a fellow activist, he was planning a manure dump and couldn't get his hands on manure anywhere. He had to go to a home improvement store and fill the truck with fertilizer.

Usually, though, it's not that tough. This spring, in the District of Columbia for protests against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Gifford says the manure was obtained from the D.C. Police Department horse stables. Southern California has a great many stables that are almost always willing to give away manure to anybody who wants it. Otherwise, they have to pay to have it shipped off. "Manure is everywhere. They're giving it away. They'll load it up for you and everything," Diener says.
"The best thing about that is it's fresh," says Gifford. But doesn't it, ah, smell? "Wow," says Gifford. "Wow. Wow. Wow. It stinks really awful. Makes you almost pass out." If you're professional about this sort of thing, not some reckless amateur, then you'll probably want to get the manure the day before, so you don't run into any last-minute problems.

Diener did this at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia last month. Then he parked the truck outside his hotel overnight. Big mistake. He came out in the morning, ready for the dump run, and found his tires deflated. He suspects the Philadelphia police, but who knows; maybe they just leaked. In any event, he pumped up the tires and resumed his mission and was almost immediately surrounded by squad cars. Police confiscated the truck and arrested him on the novel charge of "transporting a material intended to be used to create a public nuisance." End of mission.
So, again speaking hypothetically, Diener says, you probably ought to park the manure somewhere far away overnight, then come get it in the morning. "It's very important, obviously, to be low-profile ahead of time. Then go in one time in blazing glory. You have to know the route very, very well. And make sure you know the mechanics of the dump very well. You only have one shot."

Saturday's dump was letter-perfect. The Wilshire Grand Hotel was chosen because it is the headquarters hotel of the convention and is a media hot spot. Diener was cited for misdemeanor vandalism after police questioned him for two hours. Officers joked, as they invariably do, Diener says, that he's been arrested for impersonating an officer. They seemed interested in determining if he had accomplices in the manure dump, in which case he could be charged with a felony.
Was this a part of a larger conspiracy? they asked. Diener, no doubt thinking of the 4 tons of fresh horse manure fouling the asphalt, told them, "Fellas, it looks like this has moved way past a conspiracy, doesn't it?" Diener, out of his pig suit, is a strapping young man in a T-shirt and jeans, having a ball. He and Sean Gifford, a fellow activist, were basking Sunday in the glow of Saturday's success. Gifford bailed Diener out ($1,500, paid by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), and they plotted the rest of their week.
They're both committed activists and regard this week as a huge opportunity to sell their cause. "Because I have a cause, I feel like I'd be nothing if I did nothing about it," Diener says. "I believe humans to be good people. If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everybody would be a vegetarian. If we can show them our message, they'll believe."

Gifford and Diener have rented a red Chevy convertible and have planned drive-by "piggings" of a number of high-profile events. Diener's pig suit is in police custody as evidence, but the activists have two backups. They've enlisted other activists to don the suits, sit in the back of the convertible and ride around L.A. waving animal rights signs. Rolling north toward Pasadena on the 110, big-band swing on the stereo, blond hair shining in the California sun, Gifford throws his head back and laughs.
"Here I am, a sunny day, driving a red convertible down the highway. 'Wow,' I think. 'This is my job.' " He laughs again. "I really love my job," he says. For some reason, other people seem to love his job too. They cheer, laugh and smile when they see pigs riding down the road. They point, take pictures and shout. "Look, the pigs are here." "Right on, pigs."
PHOTO: A convertible carries activists for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, including two in pig suits, outside Pasadena's Ritz-Carlton.

Earlier this week, one middle-age woman toted a sign that read: "Proud mother of a North American anarchist." Susan Billig, a librarian from Santa Barbara, came to support her son, 26-year-old Black Bloc anarchist. Though police had focused attention, even pepper spray and rubber bullets, on the Black Bloc, Billig was not worried. "I'm going to keep my eye on him." "What Does It Take to Get Arrested in This Town Anyway?" Nora Zamichow from staff & correspondent reports L.A. Times 8/18/2000 pU5

After a Week of Anarchism, Back to Bagging Groceries
Carla Hall & Nicholas Riccardi staff writers L.A.Times 8/18/2000 pU6

Hart, who has a girlfriend & lives in Fullerton, tries to embody this philosophy. He is part of a group that sends shoes to prisoners who it believes are being held for their political beliefs. Hart could not be more impassioned on the issues of police brutality and political prisoners--which may be why he sounded so fiery on Wednesday. In late-night conversations over coffee and even while marching in tense demonstrations, he is generally soft-spoken and contemplative.
Still, like all anarchists, he is hungry for revolutionary change. Some are willing to use eye-catching tactics toward that end--smashing chain-store windows during protests against sweatshops and gentrification, trashing police cars while protesting the legal system. Although Hart said he personally does not believe in those tactics, he does not condemn those who use violence as a revolutionary tool. Indeed, some of the "political prisoners" he supports are incarcerated for killing police, in "self-defense," Hart stressed.
"How do we feel about [former South African president] Nelson Mandela?" Hart asked rhetorically. "Mandela helped create the African National Congress, which did bombings." Hart certainly didn't change the world, or the Democrats, this past week. And he may have gotten some attention he didn't want. "I'm the only person in my family with an FBI record," he said, laughing nervously.

The Millers and a teenage son piled into a car and drove through the darkness to Los Angeles, arriving at the Twin Towers Jail at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday. A clerk told Gary Miller that his son was being held on $2,500 bail for reckless driving. Miller pulled out his checkbook. But jails do not take personal checks. So he headed for a Bank of America. By the time he returned, with $2,500 in cash, he was told he was too late. Kevin was no longer in the jail. He had been transferred to a lockup at a court across the street and would have to wait to have bail set by a judge.
The judge could not act right away, though, because, in the parlance of the courts, "the bodies had arrived," but "the paperwork" had not. The Millers and the other parents were people accustomed to getting answers, frustrated because, in this setting, they could get none. The head clerk was pleasant enough but said she simply did not know even if the initial hearings would take place that day. While waiting in a block-long, pale yellow, florescent-lit corridor, whose only accouterments were benches, three pay phones, two bathrooms, and a soda and candy machine, the relatives compared notes. They shared remarkably similar stories they had heard from their loved ones' collect calls:

The bike riders, sponsored by the environmental group Critical Mass, which stages monthly bike rides at rush hour as protests against America's dependence on automobiles, had been escorted by police who encouraged them to stay together & led them through a series of red lights. Unexpectedly, they said, the police arrested the group, accusing them of reckless driving. Elizabeth Swanstrom said of her Web designer husband, Scott Svatos: "He was really irritated. … He thought they were being chaperoned."

As clerks started processing the paperwork, the court's normal business ground on. A middle-age drunk, representing himself, agreed to plead no contest to drinking in public as long as he did not have to pay a fine. A teenager in jail for gang graffiti was placed on probation as long as he did not associate with the gang. The judge agreed to amend that condition so that he could associate with his immediate family.
The rest of the files for the bicyclists showed up at 6:30 p.m. and at 8 p.m. three judges, two imported for the occasion, got down to work. When it was the turn of Susanne Blossom, a third-year law student at UCLA, to stand up in her jail-issue blue jumpsuit, a prosecutor argued for substantial bail. Having heard from her public defender that Blossom had no criminal record and that her mother was in court, Judge Dale S. Fischer released her without bail, directed her to return to court next month and sternly ordered her not to ride a bicycle.
"You ride a bicycle, you're liable to find yourself in jail. You understand me!" Over the objections of Deputy Public Defender Sam Leonard, Fischer imposed the same condition on a number of other cyclists, including a man who makes his living as a bicycle messenger. Down the hall in Courtroom 82, Superior Court Commissioner Martin R. Gladstein released most of the cyclists on their own recognizance, but was strict in insisting that those who were from out of town post $2,500 bail.

The Millers were in Courtroom 81, where Judge Alan E. Ellis was businesslike but more relaxed. He was letting most people from out of the area go home on $75 or $100 bail. When Miller's case was finally called at 9:20 p.m., prosecutor Christine O'Ghigian scanned the paperwork, the product of slick computer technology that sometimes falls short, and said it showed that Miller had failed to provide a driver's license, was born in Montana and had a weapons charge in Texas. His shocked, indignant and sleep-deprived father rose from the audience and declared: "He was born in Laguna Beach and he's never been to Texas."
A muscular bailiff started toward him, but the judge decided to hear the father out. Gary Miller approached the railing, handing his own identification to the bailiff, who gave it to the prosecutor, as a defense lawyer asserted that the reason Kevin hadn't given an ID was that the police had seized it. "He'll be released," the judge ruled.
That took all night. At 6:24 a.m. on Thursday, 22 hours after his parents had arrived, Kevin Miller was released. He and his family spent several hours trying to bail out some of the other bikers. Then Kevin, who was dehydrated and complaining of stomach pains, was taken to a hospital, treated and released. Twelve hours after Kevin was freed, several of his fellow bicyclists were still behind bars.
PHOTO: police confiscated about 50 bicycles from protesters.

Los Angeles police arrested at least 95 demonstrators Tuesday as a diverse array of activists, by turns angry and jubilant, energetic and heat-weary, marched and rode through downtown streets to champion issues that ranged from animal rights to gay rights, buses to bicyles. Throughout the day, battalions of police in riot gear filled the streets, keeping tight control of the swirling protests. By nightfall, in a bizarre game of cat-and-mouse, small groups of protesters marched through downtown, chased by scores of police wherever they went.
There were so many marches that demonstrators could scarcely keep from running into each other as they commandeered swaths of the city's center. They demanded higher women's wages and "justice for youth," the legalization of drugs and better treatment of veterans, teachers, and county workers, among other causes. At one point, there was temporary gridlock when youth protesters met up with women's march demonstrators at 3rd Street and Broadway. "This is mad, crazy," one protest leader said as police tried to direct traffic.

This week's protests are timed to coincide with the Democratic National Convention, although it has not always been clear whether demonstrators are trying to sway delegates to their causes or merely siphon off some of the news media attention. Delegates say the demonstrators' message is not getting through. "I don't even know what they're demonstrating about," said one Michigan delegate, Bill Hanner, a teacher from Battle Creek. "I don't think they're doing a very good job of getting their message out, because we're very willing to listen."
Police arrested the animal rights activists Tuesday afternoon on Grand Avenue between 6th and 7th streets after they had entered the two stores chanting slogans but causing no apparent damage. After they were led onto police buses in plastic handcuffs, one cried, "This is what happens when you stand up for what you believe in."
Police said they seized a bottle of charcoal lighter, a bag of paint balls and an aerosal can, which they referred to as a homemade flamethrower. Police said 45 people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit felony crimes, bombing businesses, LAPD Cmdr. David Kalish said. Later, at 18th and Flower streets, between 50 and 70 people wearing bicycle helmets were arrested after about 100 cyclists wreaked havoc on downtown streets { they had a police escort herding them through each red light ed. } with a demonstration of "Critical Mass", an international movement in which cyclists take over city streets to promote their cause: more bicycles, fewer cars. Paul deValera, 29, a Reseda resident who rode in the demonstration, acknowledged that the group had been "riding wildly." He said the bicyclists had swarmed a black limousine and were riding on the wrong side of the street. That, he said, led to the arrests.

Later still, a protest for gay rights turned tense after about 1,000 demonstrators, who had intended to hold a rally in front of the Federal Building at Los Angeles and Temple streets, were boxed in by police. After intense negotiations, the group turned back and marched to Pershing Square, chanting, "We're here, we're queer, we're fabulous, get used to it!" Among the other demonstrations Tuesday:

• About 3,000 teachers, clad in red T-shirts, completed a grueling yet orderly 2½ mile march across downtown on a Pilgrimage to Save Public Education, and hoping to bring attention to their demand for a double-digit pay raise.
• A larger-than-expected crowd of 1,000 rallied across from Staples Center to castigate the U.S. government for maintaining economic sanctions against Iraq.
• An estimated 1,000 county workers joined a union rally near Staples Center to hear Los Angeles City Atty. James K. Hahn and state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Van Nuys), among others. "What do you want?" they chanted. "Fair share! When do you want it? Now!"
• About 300 people gathered at MacArthur Park to watch a series of skits & short speeches organized by the Bus Riders Union.
• One of the skits consisted of a bus rider with an Al Gore mask being confronted and ultimately pushed off the stage by a caped superhero, Super Pasajero (Super Passenger). The organizers demanded that the federal government enforce civil rights consent decrees between the union and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and use its influence to stop rail construction and help fund the purchase of 1,000 new buses.
• About 200 protesters chanted and banged drums at a youth rally near the Belmont Learning Complex to decry poor school conditions in minority neighborhoods. The Los Angeles Unified School District had been building a new Belmont school until environmental concerns prompted school officials to abandon it last year.
• "We're marching for educational justice," first-grade teacher Ramon Martinez said. "We feel that young people and minorities in low-income neighborhoods are set up for failure." 'The Power of Women Don't Stop'

"No one really wants to talk about this," said activist Siuhin Lee of South Pasadena, one of the "security" team that locked arms to keep anarchists back Monday night. "No one really wants to face it." The biggest flash point has been from the "Black Bloc," an increasingly visible squad of anarchists who don black, cover their faces and march military-style with linked arms, a group that was rowdy Monday night but peaceful Tuesday.
Han Shan, a program director with the protest training camp Ruckus Society, said organizers in a lengthy meeting discussed tactics such as establishing a buffer zone between disorderly protesters and police and monitoring fringe elements such as the Black Bloc group. "The consensus was that the trouble had been caused by police and a small group of people, and no one wanted it to continue," Shan said. At a demonstration Tuesday morning in front of the Ronald Reagan State Building, Joe Hicks, executive director of the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission, acknowledged the problem.
"There are a lot of differences within the ranks of the protesters and even within each of these individual marches," Hicks said. "They have different characters in them and different thrusts in their missions. The police department understands there are people trying to keep the demonstrations peaceful and on track and on point." Meanwhile, the first protester arrested this week was arraigned Tuesday. Daniel K. Woutat, 18, of Los Angeles, pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of malicious vandalism for damage he allegedly did to a fence at Staples Center on Sunday.

Although the damage to the fence was only $50, according to the police report, authorities said it cost $980 to repair it because workers had to be called in at weekend overtime rates. That brought the total damage cost to $1030, above the $400 statutory minimum for a felony. In one of the week's stranger episodes, Tim Leiweke, president of Staples Center, joined homeless advocate Ted Hayes and 60 others for a candlelight march Tuesday evening from Hayes' Dome Village encampment to Staples Center.
Leiweke walked up 9th Street to meet Hayes, who was hurt the night before when he was hit with a beanbag shot by police. Hayes was treated at a hospital and released. "We apologize from all of us for what happened last night," Leiweke said. "It's a terrible thing that happened. I wanted to come over and express that. Let's walk together. I believe in what you're doing."

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