THE PROTESTERS

Police and Demonstrators Clash Outside Convention Hall

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 14 -- The long-awaited dance between protesters and
the police turned into a violent confrontation tonight when some in the
audience at a concert outside the Staples Center threw rocks and
bottles at officers, who responded by firing rubber-coated bullets and
pepper spray at the demonstrators and moved in on horseback to disperse
them.

The concert of protest itself, by the hard-rock, hip-hop band Rage
Against the Machine, was peaceful enough, staged just outside the
center in a fenced-off spot from which the authorities had tried to bar
demonstrators until a federal judge intervened.

But once the concert was over, some in the crowd threw the bottles and
rocks over a high-security fence at police officers on the other side.

When the demonstrators -- a few hundred people among a crowd of several
thousand -- refused to disperse, the police declared them an illegal
assembly and began firing rubber-coated bullets and using mounted
officers to force them away from the Staples Center, site of the
Democratic National Convention, and down a nearby street.

But delegates and journalists streaming out of the arena found their
way blocked.

"This is really a tragedy; I'm disgusted," said a man who identified
himself as a stockbroker from the Venice district and would give his
name only as Johnny. He was holding two rubber bullets that he said the
police had fired at him.

Shortly before the violence, in which no serious injuries were
initially reported, what the police described as a bomb threat forced
the evacuation of nearby Patriotic Hall, the scene of the so-called
shadow convention and headquarters for various alternative-media
outlets. The police said they were investigating a report of a bomb in
a van parked behind the building. But protesters called that a ruse to
break them up, and the conservative commentator Arianna Huffington, an
organizer of the shadow gathering, led her followers down the street in
a demonstration.

Those two episodes concluded a largely peaceful if occasionally tense
day in which hundreds of marchers -- and then a few thousand of them --
plied their way back and forth between the Staples Center and Pershing
Square, a broad public plaza about a dozen blocks away.

The official theme of the protesters' day was "Human Need, Not
Corporate Greed," but the placards, banners, puppets and armbands that
swirled through the usually sterile streets of downtown Los Angeles
embraced a dizzying range of causes and concerns. Demonstrators were on
hand to protest everything from Vice President Al Gore's investments in
an oil company that plans to drill near a Colombian Indian reserve to
the influence of the World Trade Organization.

"Life Is Not a Commodity," read one banner. Another said, "Al Gore
Corporate Eichmann." Perhaps the bleakest placard: "All Government Is
Bad."

The morning began with a rally in Pershing Square, featuring the singer
Bonnie Raitt, to protest Mr. Gore's family holdings in the Occidental
Petroleum Corporation, which has rights to conduct exploratory drilling
a few miles outside the legal boundaries of the U'wa Indian reserve in
Colombia. Environmental groups have urged Mr. Gore to divest his family
of the stock, worth some $500,000.

"As far as I'm concerned, the only drug coming out of Colombia is oil,"
said Ms. Raitt, who with John Densmore, former drummer for the Doors,
sang the old Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth." The crowd
then headed to the Staples Center, where it greeted some delegates
arriving early, including a Baltimore city councilman, Keiffer J.
Mitchell Jr.

"I came in early just to walk around and see what it's all about," Mr.
Mitchell said. "The Democratic Party and the Republican Party may not
address everything, but this shows that here in the United States of
America we can speak out on any issue without fear of retaliation or
harm."

That was not how some protesters saw it just a few moments later, after
they had turned back toward Pershing Square and tried to block traffic
at the intersection of Sixth and Flower Streets. After ignoring
bullhorn warnings to disperse, nine demonstrators were arrested.

The police moved the remaining demonstrators back to Pershing Square,
where perhaps 2,000 people were gathered and still more rallies were
scheduled. Just as the group reached the southwestern corner of the
square, there was another tense few minutes as demonstrators again
stood in the middle of an intersection, this one adjoining the grand
old Biltmore Hotel, where top Democrats and aides to Mr. Gore are
staying.

"This has been declared an unlawful assembly," the police commander on
the scene warned through a loudspeaker, his voice barely audible over
the din of police helicopters circling overhead, as officers brandished
tear-gas guns. "We need to clear the intersection."

At that, demonstrators, with bullhorns of their own, answered back by
invoking the Constitution and the First Amendment, shouting among other
things that "the right of the people to peacefully assemble shall not
be abridged." Eventually the protesters retreated, and traffic began
flowing again.