La Brea and Wilshire Street Closures on Friday for Armenian Centennial

Traffic across the city is likely to be affected by the Armenian Genocide Centennial March for Justice planned for Friday, April 24, 2015. The march will start at Western and Sunset Blvd at 10am and travel west on Sunset Blvd, then south on La Brea where marchers will go west on Wilshire Blvd ending at the Turkish Consulate at 6300 Wilshire Blvd.

To avoid further congestion, the city is advising drivers to avoid the following areas:

• Hollywood Boulevard between Western Avenue and Serrano Ave (8:45-10am)
• Sunset Boulevard from Western Avenue to La Brea Avenue
• La Brea Avenue from Sunset Boulevard to Wilshire Boulevard
• Wilshire Boulevard from La Brea Avenue to 6300 Wilshire Boulevard, next to S Crescent Heights Boulevard

All areas will be closed starting at 8 am, with only limited traffic allowed to pass through the following intersections:

Wilton Pl/Sunset Blvd
Gower St/Sunset Blvd
Cahuenga Blvd/Sunset Blvd
Highland Ave/Sunset Blvd
Santa Monica Blvd/La Brea Ave
Melrose Ave/La Brea Ave
Beverly Blvd/La Brea Ave
3rd St/La Brea Ave
6th St/La Brea Ave
Hauser Blvd/Wilshire Blvd
Fairfax Ave/Wilshire Blvd
Streets will reopen on a rolling basis as marchers pass through.

In addition, city bus routes will be altered. Riders should contact the MTA or the Los Angeles Department of Transportation for any alternate locations. For parking locations or shuttles to/from the march, please visit www.March4Justice.org.

The Armenian Genocide is the term used to describe the atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire during WWI (1915-1923) against of its minority population of Christian Armenian subjects inside their historic homeland, whose western reaches now lie within the territory constituting the present-day Republic of Turkey. The total number of people killed as a result has been estimated at between 1 and 1.5 million.

Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, denies the word genocide is an accurate term for the mass killings of Armenians. To date, twenty-three countries have officially recognized the mass killings as genocide, a view which is shared by most genocide scholars and historians. The Armenian population in Los Angeles, which Wikipedia estimates to be about 40% of the Glendale’s population of 200,000,  is the largest outside of Armenia itself.