Link to piece on the immigrant-rights march and rally this week, now at LAWeekly.com. An excerpt:
Back at the corner of Park View and Wilshire, Bratton reappeared and was surrounded by the sort of people you commonly see cleaning office buildings or tending to a garden, wishing to have their picture taken with him. At which point a guy wearing shaggy hair, a red Mao T-shirt, and an indigenous-chic shoulder bag hollered, "Wipe that smile off your face, Bratton!"
The chief ignored him. But a group of three Guatemalans did not.
"We have to respect people," a woman said out loud. "You don’t achieve anything with insults. Latinos also have manners." She said she was an immigrant from Guatemala and a restaurant worker.
"That's why we're the way we are," said her companion, Julio Velasquez, also from Guatemala. "The countries we come from, there’s no respect. Here, you respect the authorities, you have to. We’re not like this," he said, gesturing to the guy on the bike.
And then the guy on the bike tried to explain his anger. It didn't work.