Los
Angeles
In the early nineties, with
the country neck-deep in a recession, a city within a city called South Central
Los Angles cried a rebel’s yell and it echoed throughout the country. Every weekend the body count grew higher in
a war between two rival gangs, the Bloods and the Crypts. LAPD cracked down on anyone who might look
like they are in a gang, feeding fuel to the fire. No premonition could have foreseen what was about to explode in
the heart of LA.
April 29th 1992: The LA Uprising
A white homie of mine says his folks
honestly believe in this country everybody has a fair chance. It may be true
for him, but that is not my reality. I'm on the honor role at school, and
had to give up my spot on the basketball team to get a second job to help
out financially. Mom lost her job because when the aerospace industry was
laying people off.. Mom says times
are tough; people are losing their jobs all over the hood. But I'm not 'bout
all that, that's not what I'm trying to say.
This country is not made for me. In the Constitution where it says
all men are equal, it should say all white men are equal.
If I were to drive in Manhattan
Beach late at night wit my homies in a proper ride, you think Jake's (the
police) gonna let me roll on through? Naw
dog he's gonna stop me dead in my tracks, throw me on the curb, drop twenty
questions on me and shit like I was out jacking car stereos all night or something.
All he saw was just another niggah rollin' in a nice ride, shit I must
of stole it, right?
Burnin', lootn', riots, that all
the media's terminology, I call it revolt, uprising against a government that
sees African Americans as suspect. I
can’t chill with my friends with out getting rolled on by the police. The
first time I wanted to believe there has been some sort of mistake, but the
third and forth time it happened, I knew it there was no mistake. We are guilty
until proven innocent.
Yeah our people were burning our
own stores and stealing from our own hood. Does that sound like rational thinking
from a people who live in an equal society? The whole thing was irrational, it was rage, pure rage. It was a
cry for change.
We are a people who have tried the
system and it has failed us repeatedly. Did you know that the little girl,
Latasha Harlins, who was shot in the liquor store by the shop owner, was the
same age as my sister? She was shot
in the back over a bottle of orange juice that cost less than two dollars. The shop owner, Ms. Du, was let off on probation
and finned 500 dollars not even enough to cover the funeral expenses. Man
that’s cold. It's not just about Rodney King, Latasha Harlins, or police brutality.
It’s about this fucked up situation.
I know not all cops beat on niggahs,
just like not all black men are cop killers and dope pushers. But I say if
there’s no justice, there’s no peace.
The media showed people jackin' television
sets, VCR's, DVD's and couches, and bottles of liquor. You wanna know what I saw? I saw mothers grabbing diapers and baby formula
for their children. Families coming
out of stores with big brown bags of groceries and the basic necessities they
could hardly afford. The media made
us look like thieves, and anarchists. To me it looked more like severance
pay. And you know what? It wasn't
enough…it wasn't worth it.
Like all history lessons I’ve learned,
this has happened before. The Watts riots of ‘65 erupted because of police
brutality, those riots lasted six days. Then
that December the McCone Commission came out, no jobs for blacks, no decent
schooling for black children, and police oppression. From that report and the Christopher Commission
it seems like not much has changed in thirty years. There looks like some good is commin from all
this. It looks as if the Bloods and the Crypts are gonna call a truce. But I'll tell ya it's not gonna change the
big picture. Somebody once told me
if you do the same thing over and over, and expect a different outcome, that's
the definition of insanity. No justice,
no peace. It's not a call to war;
it's a call to action, a call for change.