Los Angeles joined the nationwide March Against Mainstream Media on Saturday, April 20, 2014 outside CNN’s Los Angeles bureau on Sunset Blvd. Up to 50 people joined this local wave of action and rallied throughout the afternoon bearing messages such as “OBEY CONSUME CONFORM SLEEP” and “Thanks, Corporate News! We couldn’t control the people without you!” in one of many Saturday #WaveOfAction actions around the globe.
Rally organizer Jet Barnett called for the #MAMSM “world-wide rally to expose mainstream media outlets such as FOX news, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, and others for their proven practices of lying to, distracting, and manipulating the general public.” Events were held in Colorado Springs, CO; Cincinnati, OH, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; New Orleans, LA; Albany, NY; and numerous other cities around the nation.
In Hollywood, MSM media outlets CNN, Fox, NBC, CBS were called out as “weapons of mass distraction” by one woman who brought her sign-waving son to the protest. Another student revealed, “A mere 6 corporations own 90% of U.S. media!” A woman explained the event served to “raise awareness of the privatization, corporatization, and monopolization of the mainstream media and the corruption of our fifth estate. The corporate networks have allowed for rampant corruption of all social and economic justice.”
A man in a cowboy hat painted a sign quoting two great thinkers. One side read “Dictators use force to control... A democracy uses propaganda” (Noam Chomsky paraphrase) and the reverse said “Kill your TV” (Frank Zappa quote). When asked if he owned a television, the gentleman said that he hadn’t owned one for years. “It’s lying to you!”
One particularly moving sign held by a lone woman in the pedestrian crowd across Cahuenga Blvd. from the CNN building read “When will YOU care? What are YOU waiting for?”
A report from Occupy Los Angeles #OccupyLA revealed, “Lots of passerby, both tourists and locals, inquired about the event… 100% of passerby agreed with the anti-mainstream media aspect of the event.”
As the saying goes, "When they're showing you the right hand, pay attention to the left." Jet Barnett asked supporters to think about the distraction tactics that mainstream media uses on its viewers. Remember when Miley Cyrus at the MTV awards show was all over the television and newspapers at the same time the U.S. was aiding/funding/arming Syrian Rebels in Syria? Corporate war profiteers were suppressing that the rebels were actually members of Al-Qaeda, who used those weapons and funding to kill innocent civilians and children.
Over a dozen people from the “No Bombs For Syria” group protested in the same Hollywood location to demand President Obama stop funding and training foreign terrorists in Syria. One sign read, “They lied about Iraq; they are lying about Syria. Syria is fighting TERRORISM, not a ‘Revolution.’” Several people hand-wrote signs on site bearing the message “CNN, tell the truth about Syria.”
As Jet Barnett explained, “For years, mainstream media outlets have fabricated details of events, and even ignored crucial events all together…often [due to] the political agendas of governments, such as gaining the support of their countrymen in invading other countries (for all of the wrong reasons).” The mainstream media are “covering up and even attempting to justify inhumane war crimes, keeping the mass public in the dark about what's REALLY going on in the world.”
The Los Angeles march was restricted to the sidewalks and crosswalks of Sunset Blvd. and Cahuenga Blvd. Protestors were friendly and peaceful, engaging in only one brief filmed conversation with police. The LAPD observed the protest on foot in the shade across Sunset Blvd.
Anyone interested in finding more actions like these in Los Angeles is encouraged to check out
Los Angeles People’s Media,
Occupy Los Angeles OWS, and
Los Angeles Wave of Action on facebook. Let’s awaken the masses and pressure all media into giving us the news that we deserve to know.
