Production on Grey’s Anatomy will shut down Friday as the show’s staff joins in a “National Shutdown” protest against the actions of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in Minneapolis and elsewhere.
The ABC series will be dark the day but is set to resume filming on Saturday. Some members of the Grey’s crew were planning to take part in the protest, and producers on the show decided to pause production. Deadline first reported the news.
The National Shutdown was organized by student groups at the University of Minnesota to protest ICE and Customs and Border Patrol actions, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis and Keith Porter Jr. in Los Angeles. The protest is calling for “no school, no work, no shopping” on Friday and demanding a cutoff of funding for ICE.
Several restaurants and other businesses in Los Angeles are also closing Friday — including Silver Lake’s Untamed Spirits, Canyon Coffee in Echo Park and Village Well Books in Culver City — and protests are slated for L.A. City Hall, Burbank, Santa Clarita and other locations around Southern California.
The stop of production on Grey’s Anatomy coincidentally also comes a day after an episode that dealt in part with the revocation of federal funding for a clinical trial.
The Senate voted down a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (which oversees ICE and CBP) on Wednesday, with seven Republicans joining all Democrats. Voting on five other appropriations bills is set to continue through the weekend, along with a short continuing resolution for Homeland Security while Democrats look for restrictions on ICE as part of a larger budget package. The bill will then have to go back to the House of Representatives for approval.
