Rappers and Los Angeles-area natives the Game and Snoop Dogg led a unification march for men of color Friday morning to the Los Angeles Police Department’s graduation of its newest officers, hours after five Dallas police officers were shot and killed and seven others were wounded during a sniper attack.
About 6:30 a.m., the Game posted on his Instagram account a call for black, Mexican and men of all races to march to the Los Angeles Police Department’s headquarters to “make the Californian government & its law branches aware that from today forward, we will be UNIFIED as minorities & we will no longer allow them to hunt us or be hunted by us!!!”
He said women and children should stay away, “THIS IS OUR MISSION FOR THEM,” he wrote.
The Game, a Compton native whose legal name is Jayceon Terrell Taylor, said in his announcement the march had to be peaceful.
“Do not: bring any weapons or anything illegal. Do not come high or belligerent … We don’t need any HOT HEADS or anyone there for the wrong reasons… We will stand as we are, UNIFIED. I’m calling ALL GANGS, ALL RACES, ALL GROWN MEN affiliated or not & we will stand UNIFIED.”
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Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, said organizers didn’t know there was an LAPD recruit graduation scheduled for Friday morning. The point of the march was to reintroduce the Police Department to members of the community it serves, he told reporters at the scene.
About 50 men joined the march to LAPD headquarters.
“The mission is to reintroduce our community to the LAPD… just to get some understanding and dialogue,” he said. “We’re the ones they’re going to be dealing with, we’re the ones that are going to be pulled over. … We’re here on peace.”
The group began planning the march before dawn, the Game said. Organizers spoke with marchers about their unifying, peaceful message so it couldn’t be misconstrued by police, and conversely, so they would listen when law enforcement responded.
“We don’t have to fear each other today,” he said.
The march came amid a growing discussion about law enforcement’s relationship with minorities and was preceded by three days of bloodshed.
HBO is developing a drama series from rapper-actor Snoop Dogg and director-producer Allen Hughes (Broken City, Gang Related). Written by Rodney Barnes (The Boondocks, Everybody Hates Chris) and directed by Hughes, the untitled drama is set in early 1980s Los Angeles and centers on a family whose seemingly idyllic life is turned upside down by the collision of their community and American politics. Snoop Dogg (real name Cordozar Calvin Broadus Jr.) was born in Long Beach and grew up in the port city just south of Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s. He executive produces the potential series with his longtime manager, Ted Chung of Stampede Management, Hughes and Barnes. Snoop Dogg and Barnes previously worked together on the animated family comedy The Boondocks, which Barnes executive produced and on which Snoop Dogg voiced a recurring character.
Decades after hip hop music hit the streets of New York, and later, became an cultural phenomenon enjoyed by listeners around the world, it’s all coming back to the Big Apple, as a Hip Hop Hall of Fame Museum is set to open in 2017.