Another day, another "peace" protest

To save time, here's my new format:

What/Where/When?
Peace Protest/Hollywood and Vine, Hollywood, CA/earlier today.

Pictures?
Right here.

Numbers?
Around 5000 participants.

What were they fighting for?
This protest was designed to protest against the "biased" war coverage of CNN and other media outlets. It was held in front of CNN's Hollywood headquarters, and several of the signs referred to CNN, cheerleaders for the war, etc. Their choice of CNN indicates, once again, that many of these people are living in the past. Note also that some refer to CNN as the "Communist News Network," so either CNN can't win, or the protesters were practising nuanced misdirection, or both.

Peaceful?
For the most part, with a few problems discussed below.

Wacky Slogans?
"Bush, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!" (It might have been "you're guilty of genocide" or similar). That was followed by something about Baby Bush being a liar like Dad. Or similar. From the pics, "US-UK: Coalition of the Killing" is at least a little creative. See the pics for more. As the crowd dispersed, it was announced over the megaphones that there would be yet another protest tomorrow, the dispersing protesters should take heart in manana. Resulting in several of them saying, "We'll be back." And, they weren't saying it in an ironic fashion. (See Ken Layne link above).

Police Brutality?
Near the end of the protest, about 50 or so protesters sat down in the middle of the world-famous Hollywood and Vine interesection. The cops announced the protest was over; they slowly started advancing after about a half an hour. Several officers on horseback moseyed through the sit-in; whether anyone was hurt by the horsies is unknown. Asked later, one of the adult organizers said the cops did a few things right, but there were reports of them using batons and shoving a few people. Apparently, however, nothing like the recent Westwood protests.

Arrests?
I guess 50-100 from the sit-in. Due to being herded east on Hollywood by the cops, I couldn't get up close to the sit-in after the horse-back cops advanced, but it didn't look like they were resisting arrest.

Evidence of Capitalism/Swapmeetism?
Hot dogs were available for purchase. A few vendors of the non-protester variety were selling T-Shirts; one of them spoke on his cellular phone with his partner on the other side of the protest, complaining about not selling too many at his current location.

Sc!ent*l*gists or Sc!ent*l*gy references?
None. No free personality tests today.

Christina Gonzalez?
Yes, she was there.

Transvestites/Transsexuals/Hustlers/Hollywood Freaks and Weirdos?
One possible TS sighting amongst the protesters. Didn't get a good look at hands or for Adam's Apple.

LaRouche adherents?
Yes, they made a brief appearance with their megaphone. They were hassled by the crowd, one of whom reached in and turned on their megaphone's siren. They soon left.

Can't we all just get along?
The cops were baited with "Bush doesn't care about you, you aren't middle-class, you're blue-collar." Several references were made to racism, only white people [get the good things of life], blah blah blah.

Nudity?
I could see the panties of one of the powder ladies, but other than that, no.

Deja vu?
I saw a couple people from the other day's downtown L.A. protest, and I recognized one of the LaRouchians from the downtown L.A. protest of a couple months back. Another day, another "peace" protest.

Flag Burning?
One instance thereof.

Other incidents?
A sudden loud explosion turned out to be someone slashing a tire or something. A Fox reporter and his cameraman rushed over to see what was happening, when they were swarmed by the "peace"niks, who got into their faces about Fox's "biased" coverage (OK, even I admit the quotes might not be needed). They asked why they were shooting a tire exploding, when they should be shooting the sit-in. Which, of course, is what they had been doing immediately before and after. A couple of the protesters (including one who was old enough to know better) shoved them a bit, until their adult supervisors arrived and told them not to touch the newsies or their camera. Strangely enough, the news reporter refused both of my attempts to get his name.

UPDATE: KNBC says there were 78 arrests.

UPDATE 2: Skippy has another report here. As he points out, at times the crowd was chanting "The whole world was watching." Perhaps not. There were however, at least a few hundred protesters with still and video cameras, and the cops had a few video cameras of their own. Which helps keep both sides honest.

In any case, for some reason a certain very well-known blogger has not linked to my two latest reports from "peace" protests; maybe he wants more pro-war protests. Unfortunately, I still think it's necessary to get these things out there.

Comments

my post is up at my blog.

i'll put a link to your story on mine.