Dissent on parade

Pasadena police are preparing for the Rose Parade by training to remove protestors — whether targeting a China-themed float or joining Cindy Sheehan in a call to impeach President Bush — who they expect may attempt to bring the parade to a halt.

Pulling people from the street “is really the last thing we want to do,” said Pasadena Police Chief Bernard Melekian, “but we are prepared to do that very quickly and very efficiently. We always prepare ourselves for this.”

Melekian will lead a New Year’s interagency task force that includes FBI agents, bomb-sniffing dogs and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), as well as members of the National Guard and Marine Reserves. The city also holds contracts for patrol services with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and California Highway Patrol.

As many as 200 anti-Bush activists are hoping to capture international attention by staging multiple demonstrations along the 5.5-mile parade route, an action they are calling Operation White Rose after an historic Nazi resistance movement. Groups joining the Los Angeles National Impeachment Center include antiwar organizations such as CODEPINK, World Can’t Wait, the ANSWER Coalition and Veterans for Peace, said organizer and Glendale resident Tobi Dragert.

Meanwhile, tensions remain high after a breakdown last week in negotiations to develop a city-sanctioned human rights march for those opposed to religious and political oppression in China and the float celebrating the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Following months of criticism from several groups, the Tournament of Roses began closed-door talks with chief organizer John Li for an event immediately preceding the parade that would give float critics — including Tibetan and Burmese Americans, local Falun Gong practitioners and organizations such as Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International — an outlet for expression.

Police rejected many of Li’s demands for the human rights procession, citing logistical and security concerns, but offered scaled-back options that included a press conference or a loosely organized march on foot that would not allow amplified sound.

Li, who had wanted a moving platform for speakers and a marching band, refused those offers.

“They diminished the importance of human rights and were not equal to the Beijing float — a cynical propaganda tool for the Chinese government to cover up the persecution and torture [of dissidents],” said Li, president of the Caltech Falun Gong Club.

Club members, many of whom have been granted political asylum by the State Department, gather to practice the exercise and spiritual movement that was outlawed in 1999 by communist authorities.

A final attempt Friday to reach agreement involving Melekian, Li and Mayor Bill Bogaard did not produce a compromise. “Whatever happens, I thank the Tournament of Roses for their help

[in drafting proposed pre-parade plans] and … I don’t want people to do anything illegal,” said Li.

Activists have, however, put out a united call to parade spectators asking them to turn their backs on the controversial float as it passes, and many are planning other legal expressions of dissent from the sidewalk.

“Tibetans are prepared to show up in force to protest the Beijing float. We’ll be going among parade spectators encouraging them to [turn their backs],” said Tseten Phanucharan, president of the Los Angeles Friends of Tibet and a past board member for the Southern California Tibetan Association.

Organizers with both political efforts say they do not intend for anyone to disrupt the parade, but offer no promises either.

“There are no plans for civil disobedience, but what happens at events one never knows,” said Linda Milazzo, an impeachment protest organizer affiliated with the anti-war group CODEPINK. “We’re not a group that has any desire to take away the joy of the moment. The only way I would see civil disobedience taking place is if somebody stood up and somebody else said sit down.

It would be something that happened in the moment.”

Building a controversy
Preparations for the China-themed float have been anything but spontaneous.

Still being painted and assembled this week by Azusa-based float-builders Festival Artists Worldwide, its top will be circled with representations of shooting stars and will tower 40 feet high, announcing “Beijing 2008” above a representation of the interlocking Olympic rings.

Beneath that, a rotating platform will hold 8-foot tall representations of the five mascots for the Summer Games, which are cute childlike creatures that represent characteristics of animals and the Olympic Torch.

The float’s $400,000 price tag was footed by Pasadena-based office supply manufacturers Avery Dennison Corp., which employs 10,000 people at 20 locations in China, and a group of wealthy Chinese-American businesspeople with the Roundtable of Southern California Chinese-American Organizations.

Discussion of an Olympic float appearing in the Rose Parade goes several years back to conversations involving Mayor Bill Bogaard, the Pasadena Sister Cities Committee and representatives from Xicheng — Pasadena’s Chinese sister city and an administrative district of Beijing.

Bogaard’s efforts, including an appearance this year with the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles, have made the popular mayor a target of criticism from demonstrators at Tournament House, City Hall and last week outside his own home. Last month Bogaard drafted a letter to Xicheng detailing the City Council’s support for the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an effort criticized for not going far enough in condemning Chinese abuses.

According to minutes of a November 2004 meeting of the Tournament’s Executive Committee, current Tournament President C.L. Keedy was informed by a member who had met with Bogaard that a Beijing delegation interested in a 2008 float would be attending the 2005 parade.

Unrelated to those discussions, said longtime Tournament Chief Operating Officer Bill Flinn, were earlier talks with the Shanghai Tourism Board, which had hoped to put a float in the 2005 parade. Flinn confirmed that some Executive Committee members had traveled to China to attend meetings with parade and festival groups — but none of it related to this year’s float, funded by American sponsors. Flinn also said that international exchanges among parade-producers are commonplace in the industry.

Several international entries will appear in this year’s parade under its theme, “Passport to the World’s Celebrations.” Tournament members, Bogaard and Avery Dennison have described the float as a nonpolitical celebration of the Olympics, a theme featured in past parades.

The parade or portions of it will be broadcast over some three dozen international television channels, including an edited broadcast in China, said Tournament spokeswoman Caryn Eaves. The Tournament receives little or no compensation for most international broadcasts, said Flinn.

‘Law of the land’
For as much press as the float has received since Li first expressed his concerns in this newspaper, some members of the White Rose Coalition were unaware of it and related protest efforts.

Organizers say that controversy has little to do with their efforts, so the groups aren’t likely to coordinate.

“We want to start the New Year by speaking truth against the horrendous onslaught of duplicity and double-dealing [by the Bush administration],” said Jodie Evans, who leads CODEPINK’s efforts in Los Angeles County.

Evans cites numerous grievances against Bush and Vice

President Dick Cheney, whose impeachment is also being called for on New Year’s Day. Among them are manipulating intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq, the use of torture and extraordinary rendition and conducting warrantless wiretaps.

“All you can do as you try to swallow one thing after another is to go to the place where the most eyes will be on us and say bring the troops home and impeach the liars — really, the criminals — who inhabit the White House,” said Evans. Added Pasadena CO-DEPINK Director Jamie Romano, “All we can hope is that the media does its job of speaking truth and doesn’t edit us out.”

Sheehan, who has participated in many CODEPINK events, could not be reached.

Milazzo said one contingent of the group plans to wear Revolutionary War-era clothing and unfurl a large cloth banner displaying the preamble to the Constitution. “The statement is the law of the land has been severely tampered with,” she said.

The law of the land in Pasadena on New Year’s Day is in Melekian’s hands.

Should demonstrators obstruct the parade, they could be prosecuted for interfering with a special event, a charge that according the city’s Web site is a misdemeanor that carries penalties of up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

The last serious disruption of the parade was in 1993, when Dan Mathews, PETA’s senior vice president for campaigns, dressed himself as a rabbit and leaped onto a General Motors float to protest that company’s use of animals in crash tests. Mathews was charged with disorderly conduct, but those charges were later dropped.

Melekian, who became chief in 1995, downplayed the chance of anything like that happening again. In recent years, arrests along the parade route from noon on Dec. 31 to the beginning of the Rose Bowl game have declined. Last year there were 18, compared to hundreds 20 years ago, a pattern police attribute to zero-tolerance policies and

the explosion of Old Pasadena commerce since that time.

“With all the drinking, sometimes a marshmallow thrown in the wrong direction is enough to start a fight, but I think for the most part the people that are there want to have a good time and do not want to be carted off to jail. We hope that nothing happens, but we feel like we are staffed for the worse,” said police spokeswoman Janet Pope.

When it comes to the months of protest surrounding the float, “Everything that these groups have done has been lawful and very appropriate, and I expect that to continue,” he said. “We always go into the parade well prepared. There have been protests before. I think the only difference is there has been more run-up time and more public dialogue ahead of time this year.”

Police have intervened in two float demonstrations: accepting a letter on Bogaard’s behalf outside his home last week and removing Ann Lau from a Royal Court ceremony at Tournament House after she shouted questions to Keedy.

Lau has organized several demonstrations and is chair of the Visual Artists Guild, a Los Angeles-based human rights group. She holds two parade tickets to the grandstands near Orange Grove Boulevard that were given to her by former Pasadena Mayor Bill Paparian, an attorney who in 1996 welcomed the Dali Lama to Pasadena and this year has joined float critics in pressing city and Tournament officials.

Keeping up public pressure as Li negotiates, Lau said the extent of pre-parade activities ultimately sanctioned by police and Tournament House will determine the mood of activists throughout the event.

“I have no control over what everyone will do,” said Lau when asked if anyone would stop the float. “If they feel that the city has betrayed them … that the Tournament of Roses would allow for a march but the police have blocked it or reduced it in an unfair way … if they are angry enough, it is possible.”