Strike Drama Where the Sidewalk Ends
A week after the Writers Guild called its strike against the studios, portions of the sidewalk immediately outside the NBCUniversal lot, where picketers had begun marching, were fenced off and torn up. Now several blocks of that footpath along busy Lankershim Blvd. are gone and WGA members are crying foul. Some are suspicious of the timing, and many believe that the situation is a threat to their safety and an infringement on their right to protest.
Jan Kimbrough, a Guild member since 1992 walking with an injured hip, recalls no trouble during her 2007 picketing of the same studio. This time, she contends she’s dubious of the literal barriers to dissent. (Behind tarped fencing, asbestos and other materials are being unearthed.) “Whoever thought this up is a nasty little Machiavellian,” Kimbrough says.
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Union officials are more measured. “It’s hard to tell if it’s purposeful,” says WGA counsel Jeremy Bennie. “What’s clear is that steps haven’t been taken to protect the picketers.”
NBCUniversal denies foul play, pointing to plans it filed for a multiphase campus improvement project as early as 2019 and permits it began receiving in 2021, as well as noting that initial prep — including tree removal — had been done prior to the Guild’s strike order at the beginning of May.
The company had previously made public broader renovation plans (designed by James Corner, the noted architect behind the High Line in Manhattan and Tongva Park in Santa Monica) for its nearly 400-acre property, including improved landscaping and hardscaping at its western edge. The affected entrance gates serve corporate employees, while theme park staff and visitors utilize accessways at other points along the periphery.
“We support the WGA’s right to demonstrate safely,” an NBCUniversal spokesperson said in a statement. “While we understand that the timing of our multi-year construction project has created unintended challenges for demonstrators, the work occurring on and at the perimeter of our property and gates has been planned and permitted for many months.”
Many of the picketers — there are typically several hundred hoisting their signs and chanting each day — have been under the impression that this stretch of Lankershim Blvd. is within the purview of progressive City Council member Nithya Raman, a vocal supporter of the Guild’s strike who herself picketed during the 2007 WGA work stoppage. (Her husband is TV writer Vali Chandrasekaran, whose credits include Modern Family and 30 Rock.)
However, due to recent redistricting, her gerrymandered domain now only includes a southerly patch of the campus which abuts one of several targeted gates. Neighboring City Council member Paul Krekorian oversees the expanse immediately west of NBCUniversal — Lankershim Blvd. itself is the boundary — as well as its Telemundo property, while the vast remainder of the company’s grounds are on unincorporated county land under the authority of Supervisor Kathryn Barger. As for that portion of the Lankershim sidewalk in question, according to the county, it’s private property owned by the company. Observes a Krekorian aide: “You’ve walked into jurisdiction hell.”
Other nearby picketed studio lots — Warner Bros. and Disney in the Valley, Paramount in the city — have seen no similar tensions since the beginning of the strike. Yet at the outset of the work stoppage, an agitated motorist reportedly struck two protestors at the crosswalk outside the Telemundo gate. City traffic officers, whistles in hand, have since been dispatched to assist at crosswalks where protestors march.
The WGA asked the LAPD’s Labor Relations Unit to investigate the sidewalk issue. The department tells The Hollywood Reporter that, following a site visit on June 6, it suggested the implementation of a temporary concrete barrier, known as a K-rail, “to facilitate the safe movement of pedestrians and picketers along Lankershim,” encouraging Krekorian’s office to take the lead. The Councilmember sent a letter to the L.A. County Department of Public Works on June 8, deeming the matter “urgent,” requesting that the agency install the K-rail, “so pedestrians may safely walk and striking workers exercise their legal rights.”
The County Department of Public Works tells THR that the “City of Los Angeles boundary begins at the curbline,” so the city’s Bureau of Engineering “would have to make any determination regarding any incursion into their Lankershim right-of-way.” Responds the Krekorian aide: “You see what I mean about jurisdiction hell.” (The NBCUniversal spokesperson notes that the company’s Lankershim project, approved by Los Angeles city and county, “did not require a temporary pedestrian pathway in front of our property.”)
As the picketers await a remedy, they march on. “Regardless of the intent or the bureaucratic rationale, the effects are the same,” says writer Mike Moore. He’s a coordinator of the Guild’s organizing effort at the NBCUniversal lot. Two of his lot-organizing colleagues feel the same. “We have to roll with the punches,” sighs Erin Conley. Adds Kristine Huntley: “We want this fixed, but it also doesn’t matter. We’re not going anywhere.”
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