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Rapper YG called his own rally in the heart of Hollywood and an hour earlier he decided to cancel it for security reasons. It was late to stop the procession. The meeting was attended by a sea of ​​people, forming the most massive of all the marches that Los Angeles has seen since the protests began for the cruel death of George Floyd. Thousands of people peacefully toured the most touristic area of ​​Los Angeles without more incidents than the arrests - about 200 at 8 at night - of those who decided not to respect the curfew imposed for the third consecutive day. The total accumulated since Friday is overwhelming: 2,700 detainees.

The Compton artist, whose acronym stands for Young Gangster, asked that there be no looting of shops and people, a very young crowd mostly, complied strictly after three days of vandalism in Fairfax, Santa Monica and Hollywood itself. For more than six hours, the various groups of protesters who converged between Sunset and Hollywood Boulevard dedicated themselves to marching between cars, posters, marijuana and screams of anger and rage at what happened, but without causing the intervention of the deployed police and military forces. in the zone.

There was even a hug between the parties, that of a protester with a police chief , emulating scenes in other parts of the country such as Portland, New York or Miami, of agents kneeling down in solidarity with the collective pain . The gestures of sympathy were not lacking either. Anthony, a young Latino from South Los Angeles, was distributing bottles of water altruistically right outside the Dolby Theater, where the Oscars are awarded every year. He did not forget the National Guard soldiers deployed between Highland and Orange, in an unusual panorama for a block accustomed to the invasion of furious hordes of tourists. "You have to be peaceful," he said, full of energy and enthusiasm. "You cannot fight violence with more violence." One of the soldiers, surnamed Condogno and born in Northern California, appreciated the gesture. "Everything has been pretty peaceful so far."

Rolando, a 27-year-old African American born in Detroit, said he did not miss looters at all, even though he understood their motivations for decades of racism and discrimination. "We are in 2020 and today's society teaches us that violence is not the way, but the United States is built with blood. The Europeans killed the American Indians and brought the slaves to progress, so what we are doing now is not it is nothing more than what the police do with us, respond with the violence they inherited . "

Employed in a catering company, Rolando has already had four days of protests in tow. He witnessed looting of businesses and the burning of a police car Saturday in Downtown Los Angeles. "Those who loot and destroy shops are not protesters or give a damn about the Black Lives Matter - the movement in defense of the rights of blacks in the US. They are only opportunists. Those who are here are tired and sick of this . All we ask for is respect and justice against these heinous acts. "

T., a young woman from Belize, believes that a small stroke of compassion would have been enough to have saved Floyd's life. She just had him with a white girl, legs painted in black marker pen, battered by drugs, apparently, and crying inconsolably sitting on the sidewalk. He tries to comfort her without much success. "I am a black woman helping a white woman. If the Minnesota police officer had had a moment of compassion for a black man, this would not be happening ."

"Nothing will change," says Jamaica Elliot, a 27-year-old African American at her side. "In Long Beach, where I'm from, the police put a pistol to the head of a black protester on Monday. This will never change," blaming Donald Trump. "That guy is not our president, the only thing that matters to him is him, his children and his family. He doesn't give a shit about us," he ends with a bitter gesture.

In these protests, peaceful or not, few are spared the fury unleashed by the murder of police officer Dereck Chauvin on May 25, according to two different autopsies. The marches also passed through the home of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti . A crowd gathered outside his Hancock Park home. Hours before, the alderman had the gesture of putting his knee on the ground before the protesters concentrated in front of the City Hall. It was not enough. Anger can still take days to die down.

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