No on 8 Rally Downtown LA
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008Yeti Jim here liveblogging from downtown LA in Pershing Square at the No on 8 Rally sponsored by Roots of Equality.
1:47p - There are about 300 people at the corners of 6th and Olive. Everyone has a sign and the cars driving by and honking sends the crowd into roaring cheers and “No on 8″ chants.
The crowd is growing as more and more people arrive. There will be speakers soon. The mood is cheerful!
3:47p - The No on 8 Rally spontaneously turned into a march to City Hall where the proponents of Prop 8 have assemled in their own rally. We marched up Broadway with police escort chanting “No on 8, Stop the Hate!”
3:58p - Now we are standing across from city hall assembled on Spring St at 1st. The Yes on 8 rally people are across 1st St in the lawn of city hall. There is a line of police filling the street separating us from them.
5:00p - I’m tired and sore and extremely fulfilled from the rally. We are on the way home and I just took a call from my documentarian friend Mike Skiff who was at the rally taking video footage, as he usually does for all the local political events. I guess we just missed it, but Sasha Baron Cohen showed up on the Yes on 8 side, pranking them and adding to the confusion. Mike started shooting the entire scene and Cohen’s production crew began to assault Mike, thowing him around and shaking him up. Mike got the entire thing on video. He was very upset and unsure what to do next. He is okay and uninjured, which I’m glad for. I’ve encouraged him to post the footage to YouTube and I’ll post it here if he does.
Wow, that was a wacky turn of events!
12:00a - Mike Skiff decided to file a police report about his “Hollywood Mugging” by Sacha Baron Cohen’s crew, saying:
The more I think about it, what really burns me is that Bruno Productions is leaching off a civil rights moment, only to make money off of it much later.
Apparently Mike was the only one there who knew who Sacha Baron Cohen was. Not the Yes on 8 crowd, not the other media and not the police. Mike exposed Bruno, yelling it out to everyone and busted up Bruno’s punking.
