(Screen Cap from KABC-7's coverage of the start of the Riots.
Courtesy World News.com)
It seems like a lifetime ago, when the City of Los Angeles erupted into three days of riots after four LAPD officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. Three days as the anger and long-simmering rage of many people in the city who felt they were ignored and discriminated against by everyone who didn't look like them.
I remember it well, I was enrolled at Cal State LA at the time, while working a TA post at Griffith Jr. High. I was at my other job on campus when my boss said that the school administration was closing the campus and the school was to be evacuated. I was still a few years away from becoming part of the school's newspaper staff so rather than stick around and reporting on it, I got in my car and headed back to Montebello. the Next day, I remember the sky the most, there was a prominent curl of black smoke rising out of the west, where South Central was burning to the ground.
Even though it was going on, East LA seemed to be a world away from the violence occurring on the other side of the LA River. But it wasn't out of the mind of the kids on the playground at the school. I remember one boy, his name escapes me at the moment, he seemed to be all smiles over the rioting. He was of the opinion that the riots were "his chance to get free things" and not have to think about the consequences.
I turned to him and said, "So your idea is to burn everything down, right?" He smiled back and said, "Yeah, let it burn."
I looked at him in the eye and asked a simple question, "Okay, then what?"
He looked at me like i was an RCA Phonograph and he was the dog, "What do you mean?"
"You've burned down everything in the neighborhood, then what happens? You want to get food from teh makret, but you can't, you burned it down.. You want to get something at the local McDonald's, but guess what? It's gone you burned it down. and don't even think about taking your parents' car, because the rioters overturned it and set fire to it. So Now what?"
He got a look of terror on his face, the first realization of the consequences the actions he endorsed had on him, "Why are they doing this?"
I put an arm around him, "I couldn't tell you, my friend."
I grew up hearing the stories about the Chicano Moratorium riots in East LA, my grandmother, who passed in 1997, was prominent is organizing community councils in the 60's but at the time of the riots was just starting her battle with brain cancer, which she would lose five years later. I remember her saying, "Every time this happens, the ones who let their rage out this way have nothing else to show for it, then complain they have nothing for themselves." She was right in that observation, and in some places, those scars remain open and unhealed.
It would be easy to say we've evolved since that time, but have we really? When we have people on TV and the radio bringing out the worst in humanity, using every name in the book to demonize people they disagree with while also calling for the very programs that would end up sparking a worse riot.
Have we really learned these lessons or will there be another, harsher lesson still to come?
