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The Screen Actors Guild Awards were Sunday night, but another gathering over the weekend proved to be an even bigger draw for A-list Hollywood types: the second annual Women’s March.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters and activists marched across the state on Saturday. In Los Angeles alone, an estimated half-million people gathered downtown wearing pink hats and bright costumes; participants chanted, delivered rousing speeches and warned against political apathy.
The marches this year were marked indelibly by the #MeToo movement, with Hollywood celebrities and activists taking the stage in Los Angeles to urge a social reckoning on sexual harassment and assault.
The Academy Award winner Viola Davis gave a stirring speech about the intersection of racial discrimination and women’s rights, denouncing the disproportionately high levels of sexual assault against women of color. She urged attendees not to forget women who do not have a voice.
“I am always introduced as an award-winning actor. But my testimony is one of poverty,” she told the crowd. “My testimony is one of being sexually assaulted and very much seeing a childhood that was robbed from me.
Continue reading the main story“The trauma of those events are still with me today. And that’s what drives me to the voting booth. That’s what allows me to listen to the women who are still in silence.”
Natalie Portman, also an Academy Award winner, described being sexually harassed during her early years in the industry and spoke of feeling the need to cover her body and create a public persona emphasizing “bookishness” to deflect unwanted comments about her body. She pushed back against critics who have said the #MeToo moment seeks a “puritanical” view of sex.
“Maybe men can say and do whatever they want, but women cannot,” she said. “The current system inhibits women from expressing our desires, wants and needs, from seeking our pleasure.
“I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually I would feel unsafe, and that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body, to my great discomfort.”
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The actress Scarlett Johansson described a mix of feelings brought on by the #MeToo conversation, including sadness, anger and guilt. “I’ve had many relationships both personal and professional where the power dynamic was so off that I had to create a narrative in which I was the cool girl who could hang in and hang out,” she said. “And that sometimes meant compromising what felt right for me.”
The program brought together the A-list actresses with lifelong activists. Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, urged those in the crowd to seize on the energy behind #MeToo to move forward other progressive causes.
“We refuse to be invisible,” she said. “We refuse to be harmed by Trump’s anti-immigration policies. We will fight back, we will stand up, and we will make sure that our families remain together.
“Sisters, brothers, we need you now more than ever,” she added. “In Washington, D.C., they don’t want us to have dreams or to have a future.”
More coverage:
• The view from the ground in Los Angeles.
• Colorful displays in the Bay Area, and some of the funniest signs.
• Twenty-thousand marchers in Santa Ana. Another 35,000 in Sacramento. Nearly 40,000 in San Diego. And even in Modesto, more than 1,200 gathered.
• In L.A.’s Chinatown, anti-abortion marchers gathered on the same day as the Women’s March.
California Online
(Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.)
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• The stretch of the 101 Highway that closed after the catastrophic mudslides in Santa Barbara has reopened. [Los Angeles Times]
• The mudslides in Montecito have taken a particularly heavy toll on the area’s immigrant communities. [Associated Press]
• Ross Levinsohn, the publisher and chief executive of The Los Angeles Times, was placed on unpaid leave Friday amid allegations of past “frat boy” behavior. [Associated Press]
• Even as workers were building the Oroville Dam spillway in 1966, they warned in construction reports of “very little solid rock.” [The Sacramento Bee]
• Senators failed on Sunday to reach an agreement to end the government shutdown, ensuring that hundreds of thousands of federal employees would be furloughed Monday morning. But the outlines of a potential compromise were coming into focus. [The New York Times]
• President Trump is a big problem for Republicans fighting to keep California House seats. [The New York Times]
• Year in review: How Mr. Trump has reshaped politics in California. [San Francisco Chronicle]
• Profile: Chief Charlie Beck of the Los Angeles Police Department, who announced on Friday he will retire this summer, sat down to discuss his four decades with the L.A.P.D. [Los Angeles Times]
• Neighbors in Texas were suspicious of the Turpin family’s lifestyle long before they moved to California, where they were arrested this month for child abuse and neglect. [Los Angeles Times]
• In the last 20 years, only three Hispanic actors have won Academy Awards. Now Latinos are trying to create their own bullhorn moment. [New York Times]
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• The Look: On Sunset Boulevard, the real Los Angeles and the one on the screen collide. [The New York Times]
• “Rap’s Main Street”: The L.A. Times dives into decades of hip-hop featuring Rosecrans Avenue in South Los Angeles. [Los Angeles Times]
• Sacramento’s entertainment scene has been reborn after the development of a new downtown sports complex. Across the country, other cities are moving their sports stadiums downtown as well. [The New York Times]
• High-speed rail in California is at an existential inflection point, as rising costs threaten the imagined system that could connect Northern and Southern California. [Los Angeles Times]
• The long-awaited Frank Gehry project on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles is moving forward, with construction set to begin this fall. [The Los Angeles Times]
• San Francisco may decide Tuesday to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day. [San Francisco Examiner]
Coming Up This Week
• Los Angeles’s restaurant week, dineL.A., lasts through Friday. More than 300 restaurants are offering special menus.
• Many cities across California are having their own restaurant week, too. See a full listing here.
• The California Historical Society in San Francisco is hosting a screening of an episode of “Lost L.A.” this Wednesday that explores the state’s colonial history. The screening will be followed by remarks and a question-and-answer session with the show’s host and producer, Nathan Masters.
• A new exhibit showcasing work by Rico Lebrun opens this week at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts in Los Angeles. The exhibit focuses on his impact on Mexican art and artists.
• The Professional Bull Riders Invitational in Sacramento kicks off this Friday, and runs until Sunday.
And Finally ...
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A new study released last week brings some bitter clarity to an old mystery as California suffers one of the worst flu seasons on record: The flu can be transmitted simply by breathing, according to a team of researchers that included Sheryl Ehrman, an expert in aerosol science and droplets and the dean of engineering at San Jose State University.
Researchers invited students at the University of Maryland who were suffering from cold symptoms to breathe normally into a cone. Nearly 40 percent of the samples they collected had infectious virus.
“The findings suggest that if you just keep the surfaces around you clean and you wash your hands all the time and you avoid having people cough on you — that may not provide you complete protection,” Professor Ehrman said in an interview.
“It’s really important for people who are sick to stay home,” Professor Ehrman said. “If they are really sick they should go to the hospital. Please don’t come to work. Please don’t get on public transportation. Please don’t go to the grocery store.”
California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com.
California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.
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