HOLLYWOOD

We drove into Hollywood on Melrose to look for the large planned protest march.  Seeing the evidence of earlier looting and boarded up buildings I decided to stop several places on Melrose so I could photograph.  At the time I wasn’t sure what the march route was and figured we could find it by following the police and news helicopters.  I photographed a combined LAPD and National Guard tactical unit which left Westbound on Melrose so I naturally figured the march was West of us.  What I did not know at this point was the march was actually three separate groups of marches.  The groups were being coordinated to change directions to avoid police and eventually enable all three groups to converge in strength on Hollywood Boulevard at the same time. 

I figured the march was headed toward Hollywood Boulevard, so I had my son park on Lexington at Highland.  It seemed to be a safe place to park the car outside any area which might have conflicts and close enough to walk North up to Hollywood Boulevard.  We had walked a blocked when we ran in to a guy headed South on Highland who told us march was coming up Highland.  We moved South and met the march at the intersection of Lexington, literally right where we had parked.   

A guy on a yellow motorcycle was leading the group and stopped in the intersection to direct the march West on Lexington.  I got into the middle of the march and began photographing.  The vast majority of the people in this march were peaceful and I didn’t see any vandalism or other problems.  Going through my photographs later I did see a few people who were out of place for the crowd, who I suspect may have been ANTIFA members, but they weren’t doing anything but walking when I photographed them.  

I saw several people who were organizing the marches.  One woman at a bus stop at Highland and Sunset was clearing giving instructions to several OG types and I saw she had bright orange anti Trump and Pence business cards and flyers which I recognized as having seen on a newscast covering earlier anti Trump protests on the East Coast.  I also saw the vehicles the organizers were using, at least one truck was from Arizona and the one motorcycle leading the march had a license plate with 2007 registration, so I assume the plate was not for that motorcycle.  The separate marches eventually converged at Hollywood and Vine but by then we had already moved on to photograph a protest over at LA City Hall.