Immigration-reform marchers gather in Los Angeles

By Jacob Adelman
ASSOCIATED PRESS

1:19 p.m. May 1, 2008

LOS ANGELES – Immigration-reform advocates gathered Thursday for downtown demonstrations one year after peaceful marches on the issue ended violently when police officers used batons and fired so-called non-lethal rounds to clear people out of a park during the day's closing rally.
Police officials, who admitted significant command failures last year and retrained officers in crowd control, promised things would be different for this May Day's marches by as many as 100,000 people in Los Angeles.

Hundreds of people gathered at march starting points downtown and to the west at MacArthur Park, scene of last year's trouble. [b]“WELCOME TO THE MARCH,â€