May Day of Oh Six

It's amazing what one man and a camera can capture. Taken March 25, 2006 on an early Saturday morning, it became clear this would be a demonstration unlike any L.A had ever seen. On my way to the bus stop at Sunset Boulevard and Echo Park Avenue, I ran into my neighbor, walking side by side with his wife. Both were dressed in white and wearing baseball caps. We were all headed for the same place. A man of few words, my neighbor is an old-time Mexican gardener with white hair and rough, brown skin.  They seemed excited. They said it was their first time marching in anything.“Even if you have papers,” his wife explained, “you have to do something. If you don’t, who will?” I still remember the conversation explicitly years after. I became very upset a month later when the laptop that contained my entire collection of photos I took that day stopped working. I took nearly a hundred photos and became saddened at the fact that I would never see them again. It wasn't until August that my nephew searching through my old stuff found my broken laptop and managed to retrieve the lost photos. I have several more pictures that are worthy of publication that I'll post in the next few weeks. Politics aside, its nice to enjoy and relieve moments in time, frames and bits of L.A history.