Social Media Spreads Fear on Anti-fascism Caravan

For four years, thousands of people descended upon San Pedro to see the latest in advanced military vessels, vehicles and weapons along with STEM events to inspire new generations in technology and join the military. Two years later, Peace Week emerged as a counterpoint to the pro-military and by extension, pro-war messaging of Fleet Week. Peace Week typically features a press conference at Liberty Hill, an art build and the papering of downtown San Pedro with peace leaflets.

This year, the coronavirus pandemic canceled Fleet Week as it had so many other events after March 2020, but Peace Week went on as planned, upgraded with a San Pedro tour mostly focused on World War II monuments such as the USS Iowa museum ship, the S.S. Lane Victory, the Liberty Hill monument on 5th Street and Harbor Boulevard and the Industrial Workers of the World union hall (today a corner market on 12th and Centre streets),  where the local contingent of the Ku Klux Klan raided the building and scalded the face and body of a young girl with hot water. The tour also included the former headquarters from whence the Klan marched, which is now the Calvary Christian Church on 10th Street. It was promoted as being the antifascism tour of San Pedro.

The Peace Week tour ran into a crimp following a Facebook post misidentifying it with antifa (a decentralized movement of militant antifascists) and hysterically warning of violence. The post got parishioners of Mary Star Catholic Church  and other San Pedrans out to defend their church (located a few blocks away from Calvary Church) for an attack that was never going to come.

The Los Angeles Police Department was put on notice. The Harbor Division provided a motorcycle escort for the Peace Week caravan while surveilling the movements of the tour’s participants. Some 12 backup units were hidden out of sight just in case there actually was a problem.

The following eyewitness account was offered by Random Lengths freelance photographer, Arturo Garcia-Ayala:

I was there from the beginning covering the event in journalistic capacity. First of all, the peace demonstrators were harmless. A “church bingo group” is more aggressive than these folks whose average age was over 40, nearly 50 years with oldest in her 90s.

I was the second person to arrive at the event yet I waited in my car for more demonstrators to arrive. Already there were counter-protest agitators harassing the demonstrators with implied threats of violence. Yelling at the demonstrators that they are not welcomed. They then proceeded with their cell phones as a fear tactic to photograph nearly every demonstrator and their vehicles license plates. The agitators then began to leave the general vicinity when officers of the LAPD arrived.

They then waited across the street in an auto repair parking lot to continue photographing the protesters from a distance with their cell phones. When the train of cars began their tour down Harbor Boulevard, they were followed by a caravan of agitators throughout the route. When the tour stopped on 5th Street [at the Liberty Hill monument] to regroup, they continued to shadow them as the LAPD observed and forced them to maintain their distance.

The final leg of the tour was at the S.S. Lane Victory where the demonstrators stopped to mention a few words in front of the ship recognizing its role in World War II to stop fascism.

David Jones, the Lane Victory Board president, came down to say a few words of appreciation to the peace tour group, while around the bend there were three carloads with agitators continuing to follow and observe the demonstrators.

LAPD maintained a presence to prevent an aggressive incident. After maybe 20 minutes, the demonstrators disbanded from in front of the Lane Victory ship and everyone went their separate ways. There was no plan to go anywhere else in San Pedro. The tour ended at 12:43 PDT. There were no hostilities from the peace tour anti-fascist demonstrators. All the aggression came from the counter-protest agitators. Regardless, besides hostile screams, vehicle trolling, photographing the protestors’ vehicles and license plates, there was NO INCIDENT.