Antiwar rally blocks Oscar traffic
About a thousand protesters converge on Hollywood to call for a Gaza cease-fire.
About a thousand protesters converged on Hollywood on Sunday ahead of the Academy Awards ceremony to call for an immediate cease-fire in the IsraelHamas war.
Their presence frustrated Oscars organizers and traffic control. Shortly before the ceremony was set to begin at 4 p.m., dozens of black vans carrying attendees stood at a standstill on Highland Avenue.
“Go, go, go!” one organizer yelled as he frantically waved at cars to move through the intersection at Sunset Boulevard and Highland near the Dolby Theatre, where the ceremony was set to start. Some Oscargoers ditched their cars and walked toward the venue. By the time the ceremony began, police had cleared access routes.
Three hours earlier, demonstrators began gathering by the hundreds at Sunset Boulevard and Ivar Avenue, about a mile east of the theater on Hollywood Boulevard.
The demonstrators then spilled out to Sunset Boulevard, waving Palestinian flags and occupying the eastbound side of the street.
“Let’s shut it down!” protesters chanted as they swarmed Sunset. The crowd began moving westward on the boulevard, led by a white van with half a dozen people on top chanting into a microphone and megaphone.
About 40 police officers in riot gear stood vigilant at Sunset Boulevard and Las Palmas Avenue, one block west of the approaching crowd.
“Free free Palestine!” the crowd chanted to a drumbeat — waving posters showing a movie slate painted in black, white, green and red, the colors of the Palestinian flag — with a message addressed to the Oscar audience: “While you’re watching, bombs are dropping.”
Demonstrators also gathered earlier around the Hollywood Boulevard exit off the 101 Freeway and at Sunset and Vine. Still others rallied on La Brea and Franklin avenues, near the Dolby Theatre, waving signs saying “Cease-fire now.”
Security was tight in and around the theater. Los Angeles Police Department officers had bolstered patrols in the area in anticipation of protests, and ticketholders for the ceremony and after-party events were required to pass through three checkpoints and a number of steel barriers before approaching the red carpet.
Miguel Camnitzer, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace of Los Angeles, said he recently joined the proPalestinian cause. The grandson of Jews who fled Germany during the Holocaust, the 44-year-old said he could not stand by while Palestinians are killed.
“I just can’t sit home today watching an awards show when a genocide is going on in the name of my people and with a previous genocide having happened to my people,” he said. “I was raised believing it’s a collective responsibility from preventing that from anyone else.”
For Sarah Jacobus, a mentor for young writers, protesting the Israel-Hamas war is more about getting food, water and other necessities to her mentees, some of whom are in southern Gaza.
“They’re hanging on for dear life,” Jacobus, 72, said. “Two are in Rafah, one in a tent with his family and another in a room with about 50 people.” She said one of her mentees needs diapers for his 2-month-old, but “what they need more than anything is freedom.”
Joining the demonstration on Sunset, several members of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television Radio Artists showed their support for Palestinians and a cease-fire, holding up a large SAG-AFTRA poster at the front of the crowd.
One of the protesters was a 35-year-old actress whose aunt and uncle are sheltering in a church in Gaza, she said. She requested anonymity for fear of retaliation against her family in Gaza and herself in the entertainment industry.
“Hollywood is complicit,” she said as she marched west toward the Dolby Theatre. “There is this racist ideology running rampant inside [SAG], and there is no punishment for it.”
She said Palestinian Americans who voiced support for those in Gaza had been retaliated against in the entertainment industry, citing the case of a fellow actor who was dropped by their manager after posting pro-Palestinian messages to social media.
“We are feeling the effects of speaking up against genocide and for humanity,” she said. She urged the union to make a statement in support of a cease-fire.
Rallies and marches around the world in recent months have called for an end to the war.