On Sunday, hundreds of women and men thronged at the Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles and rent the air with chants like “Harvey Weinstein is a joke – women workers just got woke!” and “Not in pots, not in plants, keep your junk inside your pants.”
The California street was the site of two protest rallies organised to protest sexual harassment: The Take Back the Workplace march and the #MeToo Survivors March.
The marches were organised after a slew of rape and sexual misconduct allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein were reported in October, prompting thousands of women to speak up about their personal experiences of harassment through the #MeToo social media campaign.
The Take Back the Workplace march, organised by comedian Tess Rafferty with the help of the women rights organisations Feminist Majority Foundation, Civican and We for She, was aimed at bringing attention to workplace harassment in the entertainment industry. After the allegations against Weinstein came out, several Hollywood personalities have been accused of sexual misconduct, including Kevin Spacey, Louis CK, Steven Seagal, Robert Knepper and James Toback.
“As marchers made their way to the CNN building on Sunset Boulevard, they chanted in unison, ‘Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to see you masturbate’ and ‘Your junk is not my job’ and, simply, ‘Harvey Weinstein sucks,’” The Hollywood Reporter said.
Addressing the crowd during Sunday’s march, journalist Lauren Sivan, one of the women who accused Weinstein of harassment, said, “This is 2017, and the time is ripe of a reordering of power,” Sivan said. “You will no longer keep us quiet or label us ‘gold-diggers’ or ‘psychos.’ We want our daughters and sons to be able to go to a workplace and never have to take a meeting with a dude in a bathrobe. They will never have to choose to put out or keep their job.”
Tarana Burke, who had created the “Me Too” movement which recently became a social media campaign after actor Alyssa Milano promoted it last month, also addressed the crowd at the march.
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