The most absurd example is the Los Angeles Police Department plan to limit demonstrations to within a fenced-off area on Figueroa Street. This fencing in of the 1st Amendment will not work. Getting the rigid ranks of the LAPD to understand protesters is like getting Darth Vader to understand hip-hop. After videotapes were reviewed that showed that the police overreacted, however, all charges were dropped. The Legislature rejected the proposal because it didn't want to subsidize the LAPD's secret plan after it was exposed.
Pepper spray is nothing to sneeze at.
These secretive security plans have been accompanied by unwarranted vilification of the protest organizers. Of course, anything is possible in this violent society, as we saw Monday night, but the demonstrations in Seattle last November and Washington, D.C., in April were, in the main, nonviolent. Violence is not the protesters' aspiration in Los Angeles, and the police should avoid any provocation that might provide a pretext for such outbreaks. It is not a given that the Los Angeles protests will attempt to shut down the convention. In Seattle and Washington, the direct action was against a closed and undemocratic group, the World Trade Organization.