An Eyewitness View from MacArthur Park

Bullets, be they rubber or otherwise, don’t stop and ask the target for their green card. By Desiree Cristina Velasco

After being invited to speak on the Fourth of July in 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered a historic speech entitled “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” in which he pointedly asked his hosts, “Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?” Rather, he lamented, as I do today: “The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you not me…[today] you may rejoice, I must mourn.” As I reflect upon the events that occurred on May 1st, during what was supposed to be a celebration in honor of workers and a peaceful demonstration in support of dignity for all persons, but which ended in a police-instigated and violent maelstrom in which innocent people were harmed, the impassioned words of Mr. Douglass reverberate loudly within my ears. Today I ask, what to the Mexican, to the immigrant, to the illegal, to the queer, is the Fourth of July? Are the principles of the Declaration of Independence, of “We the People…” extended to us, to the communities that we serve and represent? Of course, back in 1852, the pernicious Three Fifths Compromise remained the law of the land. Blacks, whether born in the US or elsewhere were denied the rights, privileges and benefits of citizenship. Denied the right to vote, the right to assemble, the right to worship freely, even to read, Mr. Douglass, was right to mourn for his enslaved brothers and sisters. Only after a bloody civil war in which the slave owners and their supporters fought to the death to keep Blacks in perpetual servitude and ensure that the Constitutional provisions that protected “Americans” could never be applied to those of African descent, were defeated, and the 13 th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the US Constitution were enacted, was this to finally change. The language of the 14th Amendment is clear: “…No person nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Equal protection of the laws includes, among other things, the right to freedom of speech and the right to freedom of assembly. Person means any PERSON, regardless of citizenship, that is found within the jurisdiction of the United States. The jurisdiction of the United States has been interpreted broadly to include any state, US territory, surrounding body of water, or any action in which US agents have authority to arrest and detain people while acting under color of state law even if not operating on US soil. In sum, everyone within the jurisdiction of the US is entitled to due process and equal protection of the law. Everyone! Even aliens, even illegals, even criminals, even alien, criminal illegals, as some would allege, demonstrating in a public park under a lawfully issued permit in the hope of securing a better life not only for themselves, not only for their own children, but for all Americans. Surely this jurisdiction, this protection guaranteed by the US Constitution must extend as far as the public sidewalks surrounding Mac Arthur Park. On paper, of course, they do. However, I am only one of many generations following Mr. Douglass to question whether such protections exist for people of color, for women, for immigrants, or for other minorities, in practice. In fact, more than 100 years after Mr. Douglass concluded his remarks, concluded his public mourning that somber Fourth of July, a contributor to The Black Panther newspaper wrote in 1969: “Terror, intimidation, brutality, and murder have become the order of the day as the police try to keep any progressive or dissenting elements from developing in our communities…the Constitution is based on the idea of the power of the people to enjoy certain “inalienable rights” and exercise those rights. Supposedly it is the people that direct the actions of the government and sanction its authority. Today the Constitution has been distorted and we find ‘Government of a few, for the few, and by the few.'” For this writer, the lofty aims of the Civil War amendments were a miserable failure as she continued to see her people harassed, intimidated, and irreparably harmed by wanton and unchecked police brutality. Nearly forty years after the above writer laid down her pen and submitted her article for printing, there are elements of American society, of Los Angeles, that not only rejoice in the failure of those same amendments but would see our country returned to a system of slavery, to a system of apartheid, a caste system, in which only some people have rights, only some people have protections, only some people have privileges, only some people have remedies for the harms perpetrated against them. There are those within our society whose greed and lust for power are not satiated by the government of the few but want a government of the fewer, for the fewer and by the fewer. To achieve this goal, they have attempted to amend our Constitution, namely the 14 th Amendment, to read “citizen” instead of person and to end birthright citizenship for those born to “illegals”. These people commend the police for their reprehensible acts of violence against persons involved in a peaceful demonstration arguing that the police should have “deported the illegal alien agitators and criminals.” The most severe acts of violence, however, were not directed at “criminals” but at journalists and lawyers. According to official reports, at least seven reporters were attacked and injured by overzealous, baton-waving police officers fully equipped in riot gear and shooting rubber bullets. I’m sure each and every one of them had their papers. Furthermore, there is no escaping the fact that police officers fired indiscriminately into the crowd, prior to issuing an order to disperse, injuring men, women, children and elderly persons REGARDLESS of their citizenship status or racial/ethnic identity. In attendance at the rally were not just undocumented, “criminal” Mexicans, but other Latinos, Koreans, Filipinos, Chinese, various community organizations, contingents of the Labor movement, taxi workers and members of the queer community. Many of whom were in fact, US citizens. All were exercising their constitutional right to peaceful assembly and expression. Moreover, as my former law professor used to say, while the Constitution recognizes that not all of us are constitutional heroes willing to be arrested for violating an unconstitutional police order, there are among us, those who would rather go to jail than to have their constitutional rights abrogated by threats of force by the police. Such constitutional heroes, whether citizen or not, whether documented or not, whether English-speaking or not, must be allowed to abide by their conscience and must not be cowed into silence by the police or any other arm of the state. I am a US citizen by virtue of my birth in the country. I am the offspring of my parents and grandparents who were also born here. Yet, my physical attributes mark me as a “Mexican”, possibly even an “illegal”. I was present at the marches and rally at Mac Arthur Park joining my voice with those who seek justice and dignity for all those who find themselves within the arbitrary borders of this, the United States. In the eyes of some, therefore, I was the legitimate target of police violence. However, unlike them, I believe it is dangerous to differentiate between groups of people that are more or less deserving of Constitutional rights and protections, especially when many rights, such as the freedom of speech and assembly, are granted to all persons regardless of their citizenship status. In these days, when we again invade sovereign nations draped in the mantle of our “superior” democracy, singing a seemingly unending mantra of our superior principles, our superior freedom, our superior form of government while at the same time destroying anything and anyone deemed to be a threat to our national security, we should consider that perhaps we are not so superior after all. We should consider that when residents of Los Angeles cheer the police for firing on children and elderly persons, perhaps our American Dream has as Malcolm X once so eloquently put it, become an “American nightmare”. We should consider that perhaps our democracy is not in fact superior. And that for many people of various colors, creeds and orientations, it has been only a dismal failure, a chimera, fading faster rather than growing stronger, with each passing day. We should consider that when our nations’ lawyers and journalists are unsafe and become the target of police violence, ALL of us are in danger, citizen and noncitizen alike. For, bullets, be they rubber or otherwise, don’t stop and ask their target for their green card.

Velasco is a UC Davis law graduate.