Thousands Expected at LA's Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day March
Thousands of Armenians and their supporters will gather at 10 a.m. near Hollywood and Hobart boulevards for a march sponsored by Unified Young Armenians. The group will march in a rectangular route east on Hollywood Boulevard, south on Normandie Avenue, west on Sunset Boulevard then north on Hobart Boulevard.
More than 200,000 people of Armenian descent live in Los Angeles County, making the Southland home to the largest Armenian community outside of Armenia.
At 1 p.m., the Armenian National Committee of America Western Region and a variety of other groups will stage a march outside the Turkish Consulate at 6300 Wilshire Blvd. Organizers said the event is staged "to demand justice for the Armenian Genocide" by "bringing Armenian demands directly to Turkey's official government representative in Los Angeles."
Drivers should anticipate street closures and delays throughout the day in both areas.
Turkey has refused to recognize the killings of 1.5 million Armenians beginning in 1915 as a genocide. Americans presidents have also declined to do so, calling the deaths at the hands of the Ottoman Empire an atrocity, but not a genocide.
The Armenian genocide began in 1915 and resulted in the deaths of as many as 1.5 million Armenians in a campaign blamed on Turkey's Ottomam government. While the genocide has been chronicled by historians, who often view it as having been ethnic cleansing, Turkey has denied it occurred, saying the deaths of Armenians was a function of the chaos of World War I, which also claimed Turkish lives.
Despite calls by some legislators -- most notably Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank -- for the federal government to formally recognize the genocide, U.S. presidents have long refused to do so. President Donald Trump last year denounced the deaths as "one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th Century" but failed to use the term "genocide."
Former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, also failed to recognize the genocide during his eight years in office, despite indications during his original campaign that he would do so.
