Demonstrations Los Angeles

On March 6, 1968, more than 1,000 high school students in East Los Angeles marched out of their classrooms and into the streets, setting off a chain of events they hoped would change their schools forever. So began the East Los Angeles "blowouts," a series of student walkouts to expose substandard education for Latinos in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

A group of donors picketed the North Hollywood studios of KPFK-FM (90.7) on Thursday and pledged to withhold their usual contributions until the station's parent--the liberal Pacifica Foundation--settles lawsuits with disgruntled listeners and board members.

Several activists who have been pushing for the creation of a Chicano studies department at UCLA began a hunger strike on campus Tuesday. Six students and one professor, who began their protest fast near the administration building, vowed to stay until they extract a promise to create the department. "This is not a symbolic act, this is not a political statement.

Hundreds of people peacefully demonstrated Saturday against the U.S. war in Afghanistan during a rally at Pershing Square and a march through downtown Los Angeles. The protest was organized by the LA/Orange County Coalition to Stop the War and the Coalition for World Peace, said James Lafferty, one of the leaders.

Closed-circuit cameras, electronic highway sensors, and real-time computers normally used for traffic control will be Big Brother-like observers as events unfold during the Democratic National Convention.

The battle over abortion moved Wednesday to a Los Angeles fast-food restaurant--a Carl's Jr. outlet--where 100 pro-choice picketers protested the financial support that the founder of the Orange County-based chain has given to anti-abortion efforts. The picketers described the late-afternoon action as part of a national strategy to fight back against major funders of anti-abortion organizations, including Carl's Jr. founder Carl Karcher and Domino's Pizza magnate Thomas S. Monaghan.

Long before the Democrats settled on the site of next week's national convention, LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks had decided whom he wanted to oversee security, if Los Angeles won the right to host the event. The chief's man had spent seven years running the Police Department's Special Weapons and Tactics unit, an elite group known more for confronting--and sometimes shooting--armed suspects than for community relations. This is a man who has coordinated about 500 local crises.

In what Hollywood preservationists are calling a "classic" mistake, Coca-Cola USA has removed its flashing red and white neon sign from Hollywood Boulevard, leaving only a washed-out red billboard in the spot where its trademark had blinked for half a century. Coke executives say finances forced them to retire the sign, which was one of about 50 neon displays the soft drink company maintains around the world. The price of leasing the billboard atop the J.J.

Declaring that "creativity will be the currency of the 21st Century," the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts said Monday it is appropriate for the federal government to fund potentially offensive artworks. John E. Frohnmayer, the NEA chairman, made the remarks before a hearing conducted by the postsecondary education subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony on Saturday took part in a statewide "prayer vigil" aimed at stopping legalized abortion, praising anti-abortion activists for their efforts in Los Angeles and pleading with them to continue to expose what he called "the power of evil, of Satan, of darkness." In a mostly upbeat address to about 300 people at Pasadena's First Nazarene Church, Mahony drew an analogy between the battle over abortion and a televised effort to save a beached whale in Australia on Saturday.

Richard Selby's room was the haven where Garfield High School students with severe personal problems trickled in for unusual group counseling sessions with one another and the school psychologist. They were the young women who were raped, the young men and women with scars on their wrists, the gay teenagers with no one to tell their secret to.

From college students and grandmothers to businessmen and toddlers, thousands protested America's war on terrorism Saturday, a day originally marked for massive demonstrations against the policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Following the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the two financial organizations canceled their annual meetings here because of security concerns.

A religious solidarity march in West Hills splintered into two groups Sunday afternoon after a handful of marchers refused to walk behind people carrying the Israeli flag. The event was organized by the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council and members of Em Habanim Jewish temple, apparently with different goals in mind.

About 350 people gathered outside the Federal Building in Westwood at noon Saturday to protest the Bush administration's planned military response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Waving placards and chanting "Stop the violence and the hate," the peaceful but passionate crowd stretched along Wilshire Boulevard, where some in passing vehicles honked in sympathy or made obscene gestures.

"GOD BLESS AMERICA" is all the handwritten sign says in its black marker on confiscated white poster board. It is held aloft by a right arm fatigued from the sign's weight and a lifetime shaped by war. The woman who holds it is a striking demonstrator, a former banker elegantly dressed in white, wearing diamond earrings and carrying a leather purse with her initials monogrammed on one side.

Scattered, politically quiescent and far smaller than its counterpart in Miami, Los Angeles' Cuban American community faces an uphill struggle to organize a protest outside this year's Latin Grammy awards Tuesday night. Activists opposed to participation by artists from Fidel Castro's Cuba so easily mobilized forces to protest staging the event in Miami that organizers, citing the fear of disruption, decided to hold it in Los Angeles again this year.

Four Los Angeles police officers won acquittals Wednesday in their trial for the beating of black motorist Rodney G. King, igniting renewed outrage over a racially charged case that had triggered a national debate on police brutality. Hours after the verdicts were announced, angry demonstrators torched buildings, looted stores and assaulted passersby as civic leaders pleaded for calm. Gov.

An estimated 30,000 people--some wearing white headbands of mourning, some carrying brooms and plastic garbage bags--marched through Los Angeles' Koreatown on Saturday in a massive show of support for beleaguered merchants. "It hurts right here," said marcher Joyce Kim of Diamond Bar, putting her hand over her heart to show anguish over the Korean-owned stores that were looted or set afire since the Rodney G. King verdict. "Koreatown is all our family."

A new group dubbed "Mothers for Justice" marched outside the Los Angeles Criminal Courts Building in downtown Friday against what members termed an unfair justice system that is railroading children into jail. The group of 40 demonstrators says a combination of overzealous prosecutors and inept defense attorneys is responsible for wrongfully convicting many young people and overemphasizing minor offenses.

The protesters were so quiet and peaceful, it was hard to believe that they were actually demonstrating. About 50 local members of the Falun Gong spiritual group, the target of a crackdown by the Chinese government, gathered Tuesday outside the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, where China's ambassador to the United States was appearing.