May Day marches in Seattle ended with several violent outbreaks by demonstrators that left five officers injured and nine people arrested, according to police.
Police reported being hit by rocks, batons and Molotov cocktails during Sunday clashes by black-clad protesters wearing masks and sunglasses.
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray released a statement commending police for their work in containing the protests while disavowing the acts of the demonstrators.
"It is unfortunate and deeply regrettable that in a city that goes to incredible lengths to respect First Amendment rights, there are some who disregard our values and engage in senseless acts of violence and property destruction," Murray said. "This city condemns any acts of physical violence against our police officers, and my thoughts are with the officers who were injured."
The protests had been trending for several hours on Twitter with the hashtag #MayDaySea.
Around the world, union members have traditionally marched on May 1 for workers" rights. In the United States, the annual events have become a rallying cry for immigrants and their supporters for better wages and fair work accommodations.
Seattle traditionally sees large, disruptive May Day gatherings. Last year, police arrested 16 people during demonstrations and in 2014 10 people were arrested.
In 2013, police arrested 18 people from a crowd that pelted them with rocks and bottles. Storefronts in downtown Seattle have also been smashed in previous protests, according to The Associated Press.
The Very Best Of Chicago 40th Anniversary Collection Full Album
CHICAGO Living to 100 is quite a feat, even if we"re talking about a bridge.
Four of Chicago"s bridges have turned or will turn 100 this year, bringing the total of city bridges to survive that long to 23, according to multiple sources, including the Chicago History Museum, Chicago Architecture and the book, "Chicago River Bridges."
The four bridges that opened in 1916 are: The Jackson Boulevard Bridge (Jan. 29); Chicago & North Western Railroad Bridge (July 30); Webster Street Bridge (Aug. 3); and Lake Street Bridge (Nov. 6).
"It"s pretty impressive that these marvels of engineering are still working given they"ve been in continuous operation," said John Russick, the Chicago History Museum"s Director of Curatorial Affairs. "And they"re well built, well maintained, and they really speak to the character of the city."
Three of Chicago"s bridges debuted in the 1800s. The city"s oldest bridges all opened in 1899 and include: the Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul Z-6 Bridge (just south of Cortland Street); theChicago, Madison, & Northern Railroad Bridge (Around the 3500 block of South Kedzie); and the Illinois Northern Railroad Bridge (Around the 3500 block of South Central Park).
Of the 300-plus bridges in Chicago, 61 are drawbridges across either the Chicago River or Calumet River, according to Patrick McBriarty, the author of "Chicago River Bridges." More than half of those will be at least 100 years old by the end of this year. Only Amsterdam (62) has more drawbridges than Chicago, McBriarty said.
Russick said the bridges, even the city"s oldest ones, are "essential to ongoing daily life in Chicago."
"They are important and they still do what we need them to do for the city to thrive," Russick said.
Check out photos below of some of the city"s oldest bridges, courtesy of Chicago History Museum:
Kinzie Street Bridge rotated across Chicago River, Chicago, Illinois, November 13, 1899.
View of Jackson Boulevard Bridge looking south down the Chicago River in Chicago, Illinois, 1916.View of the Lake Street bridge, over the South Branch of the Chicago River; Chicago, Illinois; circa March 6, 1916.View of the Kinzie Street Bridge, a bascule bridge over the Chicago River at West Kinzie Street used for foot and wagon traffic. This bridge connected the Near North Side, Near West Side and West Town community areas of Chicago, Illinois.View of a streetcar crossing the Lake Street swing bridge over the Chicago River, Chicago, Illinois; 1909.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:
GameTime: Lakers Name Luke Walton as their New Head Coach | April 30, 2016 | NBA Playoffs
The most obvious move for Luke Walton must befuddle so many. After his run last fall as the temporary head coach of the greatest regular season team in NBA history, Luke Walton was going to get head coaching of his own this spring. He had his pick of almost any opening. And all the other options even the Knicks offered less dysfunction than the only job he wanted. The Los Angeles Lakers.
In returning to the Lakers, with whom he played the first eight and a half years of his career, Walton inherits any number of calamities that could ruin a coach. His point guard just turned 20 and occasionally acts half that age. His two other potential build-around players are barely older and still flawed. The team has no leaders. The club president who hired him may leave in a year, meaning the general manager could be gone too. And the former coach, winner of five Laker titles, looms on the horizon as the new executive ready to wrap his cherished triangle offense around Waltons neck.
The Lakers are the least-stable, least-sane, least-manageable of Waltons options. The chance is much greater that he becomes Randy Pfund than Pat Riley. As a franchise the Lakers are like an expensive sports car, so complicated to drive that only two giant personalities Riley and Phil Jackson have kept them from crashing into the guardrails. And it took rosters filled with the 15 greatest players in history to keep that from happening.
Riley started with Magic and Kareem. Jackson began with Kobe and Shaq. Walton gets the kid who videotaped a team-mate nicknamed Swaggy P talking about cheating on his fiance. The worst of the Clippers never seemed as bad as these Lakers. The team Walton takes over is nothing like the Warriors, who are one of the most cohesive, unselfish teams the NBA has ever seen. Any reasonable person would stay far away from the Lakers
But Walton also played on Lakers teams that won championships. And because of this he understands a truth that made his choice simple. There is nothing better anywhere in sports than to be a Laker when the Lakers are winning. And the coach who brings the winning back to LA, whether next year or in 10 years, will be rewarded with eternal love in a city where popularity runs as far as your last Golden Globe.
Having been handed the chance to try for history it would be foolish for Walton to say no. He may have had choices this spring but he really had no choice.
Related: Not just anyone could lead the Warriors to 20-0. Luke Walton was made for coaching
The Lakers who were last seasons disaster wont be around next fall. That tumble to the bottom of the standings existed to support Kobe Bryants long farewell. Walton gives the Lakers a respectable face to send out in free agency. He will be able to lure better players to Los Angeles even if they dont include Kevin Durant, who would bring instant credibility. And the Lakers could still win the draft lottery and land Ben Simmons or Dukes Brandon Ingram, giving them yet another young star to build upon.
While the Lakers might not be great next year they wont be as terrible as they were in the season just gone. Walton is the perfect coach to build them back. He brings positive experience from Golden State, whose success and popularity is the envy of almost every NBA team. More importantly, he brings an ability to relate to players that many gifted coaches do not possess.
Last December, Waltons friend Josh Pastner, now the coach at Georgia Tech, talked to The Guardian about the first time Walton coached as a volunteer assistant for Pastner at the University of Memphis during the 2011 NBA lockout. Walton, he said, had a natural gift to communicate, something that is essential in professional basketball.
There are two things he does, Pastner said then. Hes got a great knowledge of the game and thats important because players know when you know what you are talking about or not. But hes also got a great temperament He doesnt get too high or two low. Hes got a competitive desire to him but he keeps it very calm and relaxed.
The coach who rebuilds the Lakers will need an abundance of patience. Someone is going to have to get DAngelo Russell to play together with team-mates and keep Julius Randles development going. Walton brings the voice that might just be able to do that. And if he can, if he create Showtime again then he will be the rarest of stars in the city of stars. The one that everybody loves.
Oklahoma City Thunder vs San Antonio Spurs - Full Game Highlights | Game 1 | 2016 NBA Playoffs 11:57 AM ET
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Who will advance to the conference finals of the NBA playoffs? Our writers start by predicting Spurs-Thunder, which tipped off the second round on April 30.
Imagine signing a "Billion Year Contract" when you"re barely out of elementary school, and pledging your eternal devotion to a religious order - not just for this lifetime, but for all future lifetimes.
That"s what Laura DeCrescenzo did back in 1991. She was twelve years old at the time and that commitment meant she had to move out of her parents" home in New Mexico and into Scientology"s "Pac Base" in Hollywood.
Laura"s parents gave their blessing, despite some concerns. They were both committed Scientologists and encouraged their daughter"s faith at a young age. By the time Laura was twelve, she had already volunteered at the Church"s Orange County "Org," worked on staff at a New Mexico church, and even joined other Scientologists protesting outside a courthouse in Downtown Los Angeles. Strangely enough, it"s at that very same courthouse that Laura is now waging an epic legal battle against the Church of Scientology. In her lawsuit, Laura claims she was falsely imprisoned, isolated from her family at times, subjected to rigid discipline and forced to have an abortion when she became pregnant at age 17.
COURT DOCUMENTS: Lawsuit against Church of ScientologyAttorneys for the Church of Scientology and its Religious Technology Center deny each and every allegation and say it was Laura"s decision to abort the baby -- a decision that was influenced by her then-husband who was upset she had stopped taking birth control pills without telling him.
COURT DOCUMENTS: Church response to lawsuitIn court documents, Laura says she faced days of intense pressure by her Scientology supervisor to abort the baby. Laura says she was threatened - if she did not have an abortion she would lose her position in the Sea Org, her housing and her husband.
"I was told by the commanding officer of my organization that, she immediately started telling me that at this point the baby wasn"t a baby, it was just tissue," Laura said in 2010.
Laura and her attorneys declined our requests for an interview, but she spoke out at a news conference in 2010 in Hollywood alongside other former Scientologists.
Laura says she was "handled" for two days, her supervisor allegedly telling her it was for the "greatest good" to abort the baby. Laura says she eventually gave in, despite her intense longing for a child.
"I never agreed to have an abortion," Laura says. "Did I concede? Yes, I did. Does it kill me every day? Yes, it does."
Journalist Tony Ortega of The Underground Bunker has been reporting on Scientology for two decades, and has followed every twist and turn in Laura"s case since it was filed back in 2009.
"Sea Org workers work around the clock," Ortega tells Eyewitness News. "You can"t work like that if you have small children to take care of."
Scientology acknowledges that Church policy prohibits active members of the Sea Org from having young children. But, they insist Laura was a religious volunteer who could have walked away at any time. She stayed, they say, without any force or coercion on the Church"s part.
"To be clear, defendants do not argue that a church may physically force a woman to have an abortion," wrote Bert Deixler, attorney for the Church of Scientology International, in court papers.
"But that is not the issue here. Under the First Amendment, churches may encourage a minister of a religious order to forego child rearing so she or he may continue a religious life. Courts may not interfere with those efforts," Deixler wrote in court papers.
"COERCIVE PERSUASION" FROM AGE TWELVEAs part of her lawsuit, Laura says she fell under the powerful sway of the Church for more than a decade. She alleges that because she was "recruited to join" the Sea Org at such a young age, she was unable to see a way out of the only world she had ever known and "remained under Defendants" influence and control for years."
Journalist Tony Ortega says he"s spoken to hundreds of former Scientologists who tell him that Sea Org workers are conditioned to believe they can not make it on the outside.
"They"re told you"ll never get a job, you don"t understand how the world works, and they"re terrified. They really are terrified about leaving," Ortega tells Eyewitness News.
Scientology declined a request by Eyewitness News for an interview, stating by email that, "the Church does not comment on pending litigation." In court, attorneys for Scientology have argued that Laura became a "minister" at age twelve and the First Amendment"s freedom of religion clause shields the Church and its practices from interference by the courts.
"Determination of who is a minister is made by the Church, not a jury," attorney Bert Deixler told L.A. Superior Court Judge John Doyle this week at a hearing in which Scientology attorneys were asking for Laura"s lawsuit be dismissed.
Deixler compared the potential trial to a "religious inquisition." Judge Doyle, however, disagreed and denied the Church"s motion for summary judgment. Judge Doyle determined there is enough evidence to move forward with a trial and asked both sides to return to court in June to set a trial date. Robert Mangels, attorney for the Church"s Religious Technology Center, said he will file papers asking California"s Court of Appeal to reverse Doyle"s ruling and dismiss the case.
LEGAL BATTLE TO THE U.S. SUPREME COURTLaura"s lawsuit against Scientology has been making its way through the court system since 2009.
"They"ve already been the U.S. Supreme Court in this case because the Church of Scientology did not want to give Laura her own files. They claimed it would be a violation of priest-penitent privacy," Ortega tells Eyewitness News.
Laura and her attorneys fought for access to what"s known as "PC files" - thousands of pages of documents compiled by Scientology during her thirteen years in the Sea Org. Ultimately, the Church turned the files over and many of them were entered into the court record.
In handwritten notes, Laura writes that she "missed my family" and "gets griefy" when she"s not able to see or communicate with her family.
Another note, written when Laura was twenty years old, states that she hasn"t seen her mom in almost two years.
Scientology also turned over a document written by Laura"s supervisor that says Laura is "two months pregnant, upset about it and doesn"t want to have an abortion."
REHABILITATION PROJECT FORCEIn 2001, Laura was sent to the "Rehabilitation Project Force" or RPF for having "committed purported wrongs." Scientology describes the RPF as a "voluntary program of spiritual rehabilitation" that, among other things, includes physical labor as a means of "penance and amends."
Laura did agree to go to the RPF, but she says, only after being mentally "beaten down."
She says her three years in the RPF included punishments like "running around the basement or doing push-ups."
"I wasn"t allowed to speak with my family. You"re not allowed to have more than twenty dollars on you at any given time. You"re not allowed to go anywhere without another person. You"re watched 24/7," says DeCrescenzo.
"Was she coerced? Was she held against her will? That"s the kind of thing that Laura"s side wants to get in front of a jury and let the jury decide - is the RPF a reasonable thing," says Ortega.
Scientology attorneys point out that Laura was an adult when she agreed to go on the RPF as part of their "religious practice," and that she was able to leave, and did leave. They say she returned voluntarily on several occasions.
Scientology attorney Bert Deixler told Judge Doyle this week that Laura"s decision to remain in the Sea Org and the RPF was "a matter of faith, not a matter of force."
Laura"s lawsuit also alleges violations of California"s wage and hour laws. Attorney Deixler told the court that state law does not support her allegations.
"She signed a "billion-year contract" and she didn"t fulfill it," Deixler said. "There"s no question about that."
"BROKEN AND FEARFUL"Three years later, and still on the RPF, Laura says she was "broken and fearful." She "could no longer tolerate" the RPF. Laura says she took drastic measures, faking a suicide attempt, believing it would result in her immediate dismissal from the RPF and the Sea Org.
"I actually took a gulp of bleach, because I knew that if I was considered a suicide risk, they would get rid of me immediately," DeCrescenzo says.
"And she couldn"t take it anymore," says Ortega. "And that"s why she drank bleach to pretend she was suicidal because she knew suicide is one thing they don"t want to deal with."
Within days, Laura was dismissed from the RPF. Eyewitness News obtained the video Scientology recorded of Laura signing an affidavit releasing Scientology of any liability or wrongdoing. It"s a document she now challenges.
Laura says she was "emotional and mentally unstable" at the time, and "would have signed anything in order to be able to leave."
Got a tip? Email ABC7 Eyewitness News Investigative Producer Lisa.Bartley@abc.com
RELATED STORIES FROM ABC7:Parents buy billboard to reach children in Church of ScientologyScientology founder"s great-grandson explores family religion in monologueInside a Scientology marriage - Tanja Castle tells her storyFormer Scientology executive claims abusive treatment from church leader; church denies her claims
Access Sportsnet Lakers: AC Green on Luke Walton as Lakers New Head Coach (4/29/16)
The most obvious move for Luke Walton must befuddle so many. After his run last fall as the temporary head coach of the greatest regular season team in NBA history, Luke Walton was going to get head coaching of his own this spring. He had his pick of almost any opening. And all the other options even the Knicks offered less dysfunction than the only job he wanted. The Los Angeles Lakers.
In returning to the Lakers, with whom he played the first eight and a half years of his career, Walton inherits any number of calamities that could ruin a coach. His point guard just turned 20 and occasionally acts half that age. His two other potential build-around players are barely older and still flawed. The team has no leaders. The club president who hired him may leave in a year, meaning the general manager could be gone too. And the former coach, winner of five Laker titles, looms on the horizon as the new executive ready to wrap his cherished triangle offense around Waltons neck.
The Lakers are the least-stable, least-sane, least-manageable of Waltons options. The chance is much greater that he becomes Randy Pfund than Pat Riley. As a franchise the Lakers are like an expensive sports car, so complicated to drive that only two giant personalities Riley and Phil Jackson have kept them from crashing into the guardrails. And it took rosters filled with the 15 greatest players in history to keep that from happening.
Riley started with Magic and Kareem. Jackson began with Kobe and Shaq. Walton gets the kid who videotaped a team-mate nicknamed Swaggy P talking about cheating on his fiance. The worst of the Clippers never seemed as bad as these Lakers. The team Walton takes over is nothing like the Warriors, who are one of the most cohesive, unselfish teams the NBA has ever seen. Any reasonable person would stay far away from the Lakers
But Walton also played on Lakers teams that won championships. And because of this he understands a truth that made his choice simple. There is nothing better anywhere in sports than to be a Laker when the Lakers are winning. And the coach who brings the winning back to LA, whether next year or in 10 years, will be rewarded with eternal love in a city where popularity runs as far as your last Golden Globe.
Having been handed the chance to try for history it would be foolish for Walton to say no. He may have had choices this spring but he really had no choice.
Related: Not just anyone could lead the Warriors to 20-0. Luke Walton was made for coaching
The Lakers who were last seasons disaster wont be around next fall. That tumble to the bottom of the standings existed to support Kobe Bryants long farewell. Walton gives the Lakers a respectable face to send out in free agency. He will be able to lure better players to Los Angeles even if they dont include Kevin Durant, who would bring instant credibility. And the Lakers could still win the draft lottery and land Ben Simmons or Dukes Brandon Ingram, giving them yet another young star to build upon.
While the Lakers might not be great next year they wont be as terrible as they were in the season just gone. Walton is the perfect coach to build them back. He brings positive experience from Golden State, whose success and popularity is the envy of almost every NBA team. More importantly, he brings an ability to relate to players that many gifted coaches do not possess.
Last December, Waltons friend Josh Pastner, now the coach at Georgia Tech, talked to The Guardian about the first time Walton coached as a volunteer assistant for Pastner at the University of Memphis during the 2011 NBA lockout. Walton, he said, had a natural gift to communicate, something that is essential in professional basketball.
There are two things he does, Pastner said then. Hes got a great knowledge of the game and thats important because players know when you know what you are talking about or not. But hes also got a great temperament He doesnt get too high or two low. Hes got a competitive desire to him but he keeps it very calm and relaxed.
The coach who rebuilds the Lakers will need an abundance of patience. Someone is going to have to get DAngelo Russell to play together with team-mates and keep Julius Randles development going. Walton brings the voice that might just be able to do that. And if he can, if he create Showtime again then he will be the rarest of stars in the city of stars. The one that everybody loves.
LIVE: French capital faces new wave of protests on May Day over labour reforms
May your May Day not be filled with distressing maydays!
They are so contradictory, these two twin names.
When I realized the rarity of this Sunday missive appearing on the first day of May, I began researching May Day. Those of us of a certain age remember dancing with ribbons around a school maypole, or perhaps receiving a basket of spring flowers.
May Day, like so many celebrations worldwide, is steeped in ancient history and folklore. It"s appearance at the halfway mark between the spring equinox and summer solstice makes this calendar date a target for celebrating warmer weather, renewed life and the promises of sprouting green things. As the Bard himself observed in his Henry IV play, "As full of spirit as the month of May..."
Ancient origins of May Day festivities are linked to Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers. I lived briefly in Ireland and remember well the bonfires of Beltane, the Celtic version of May Day, which is undergoing a modern cultural revival there.
Early editions of this 131-year-old newspaper are filled with local stories of May Day parties, maypole dances, songfests, May Queens and the like. Articles about special programs celebrating American laborers sometimes shared the news space, a direct link to May 1, 1886, when 300,000 workers in about 13,000 U.S. businesses walked off their jobs to make a point.
Chicago that year became the flashpoint for supporters of the eight-hour work day, something badly needed in the 1880s when many American industrialists showed little concern for the overworked, underpaid laborers who made them rich. May Day labor celebrations gave even more meaning to the ancient holiday.
Another kind of mayday
But that"s enough about May Day. What I really want to dissect is mayday. It may sound the same as our spring holiday, but they are miles apart in meaning.
Mayday! is a universal distress call familiar to all who have learned how to fly a plane or maneuver a boat. Those who don"t will likely recognize the word from action movies or books. Rumor has it that Hollywood has "Mayday 109" in the works, a take-off on PT-109, the World War II Navy boat captained by future president John F. Kennedy when it was sunk by a Japanese destroyer.
Again, I turned to old editions of this newspaper to learn how mayday became a distress call, and my research was rewarded. But this one is not an American story and it is rather young, at least when compared to the ancient May Day.
The distress call was created because of the growing trend of commercial air flights and the possibilities of crashes that might strand pilots and passengers in water. The year was 1923, not long after the ending of World War I. Air flight was novel and exciting, opening up new worlds of travel and exploration, although it was not as safe as we think of it today.
The Mississippi Coast didn"t yet have an airport but cross-country pilots regularly flew the beachline and sometimes landed in fields for demonstrations.
A necessity of its time
Commercial flights from major cities had started several years earlier, so it"s not surprising that the Herald editor published a March 1, 1923, wire story datelined London and sub-headed, "Convenient Craft to be Hurried to any Plane that May Fall in Water":
"Air trips between London and Paris are being made safer all the time, and before long passengers will almost be denied the thrill of taking a chance. Even if the airplane is forced down upon the waters of the channel, the passengers may be rescued so quickly that they will have to use their imaginations in order to interest their friends with an account of the experience when they get back home.
"Arrangements for hurrying channel craft to the aid of a plane that falls in the water have just been completed and successfully tested. As all the trans-Channel fliers are equipped with wireless telephones, the authorities have adopted a new international distress word for aircraft. It is "May Day," the phonetic equivalent of "m"aidez," the french for "Help me.""
And mayday was born. It became one word instead of two and broadened in rescue definition to include all pilots, be they water, air, train, etc. The advent of radios, which the 1923 news writer called "wireless telephones," made it possible.
Today"s histories credit a senior radio officer at Croydon Airport in London with choosing the in international distress word. When Frederick Stanley Mockford was asked to come up with a word easily understood by pilots and emergency rescuers, he proposed mayday from the French word m"aidez, translated "help me."
Much of Mockford"s air traffic in 1923 was between Croydon and a Paris airport, so m"aidez was a natural. Off course, it was Anglicized, and the powers that be dictated that it must be repeated three times to prevent mistaking the distress call for similar sounding phrases.
Kat Bergeron, a veteran feature writer specializing in Gulf Coast history and sense of place, is retired from the Sun Herald. She writes the Coast Chronicles column as a freelance correspondent. Reach her at BergeronKat@gmail.com or c/o Sun Herald Newsroom, P.O. Box 4567, Biloxi, MS 39535-4567.
