Three years later: violence and absolution
Juan T. Alvarado
Tomorrow is the third anniversary of the Los Angeles "riots,"
"uprising," "civil disturbance," but whatever you call them, it’s
all pretty shitty to me. It’s the third anniversary of the
pointless beating of Reginald Denny and others at the corner of
Florence and Normandie. It’s been three years to the day since the
biased, all-white jury from Simi Valley returned the verdicts of
not guilty for the four Los Angeles police officers charged with
beating Rodney King.
Everybody was expecting those verdicts from day one, but no one
expected the violent backlash they seemed to cause. I sure wasn’t
expecting it, I wasn’t prepared for it, didn’t share in it and I
don’t understand it. I’ve never understood the violent measures
that some people feel are necessary to get their point across. I
suppose that’s why I was oblivious to what was happening around me
that day.
I was at Jefferson and Normandie in the late afternoon, picking
up my friend Stephanie from USC. We had both heard the verdicts
that morning, but like I said,we expected them and didn’t think
much about it. We drove down Jefferson toward Normandie on our way
to Santa Monica for a late lunch.
The first thing we noticed was the helicopters circling
overhead. Then we looked ahead and saw 10 to 20 people running in
the middle of the street toward a building. I slowed down so I
wouldn’t hit anyone.
At Normandie, we stopped for the sirens. Twelve police cars
barreled down the street. On our way to the restaurant, where
Lincoln crosses the freeway, we saw a couple of Guardian Angels in
the middle of the street, shouting at traffic. I guess I was
clueless. I didn’t put the events together and figure out what was
going on. We stayed at the restaurant for hours, never knowing we
had driven near the flash point of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
It was after dark when we decided we should go home. When we got
to my room at the Co-ops, my roommates were unusually glad to see
me, afraid I was either trapped in South Central because of the
curfew, or worse, hurt in the middle of it all. We turned on the TV
to catch up on what we had missed all day and one of the first
things we saw on the news was Steph’s apartment complex  some
guy from her building was talking about someone who had fired a gun
at the residents.
Needless to say, I didn’t take Stephanie back to USC that night.
We called her parents, who were worried sick and my mother and
father, who were glad to hear that UCLA was nowhere near the center
of the activities. We didn’t tell them how close to Florence and
Normandie we were that day  they didn’t need to know. The
next morning, we drove on five different freeways to get to Pomona,
our hometown, and hung out there for the next three days, all the
while watching TV and wondering why.
I’ve had this internal conflict about the whole situation Â
no matter how bad things were at the time, there is no
justification for what happened. I couldn’t understand how the good
people in South Central L.A. could have reacted so violently,
burning down their own stores and businesses to protest the
decisions that were so predictable. Some who defend the actions of
the rioters say that what happened had more to do with Latasha
Harlins and earlier racial tensions than it did with Rodney King,
that the stores and businesses destroyed were Korean, but even
given that, I still don’t understand. I can’t sympathize.
I’ve had three years now to think about the whys, and recent
events have helped me figure some things out.
For two years now I’ve been listening to talk radio, and for the
last two weeks, predictably, the hot topic has been the Oklahoma
City bombing. At first, most callers thought Arab terrorists or
Islamic fundamentalists were responsible for the bombing. Most were
angry and emotional, spouting preventative "solutions" like carpet
bombing the entire Middle East and deporting every Middle Easterner
in the U.S. A small number of callers said you can’t hold the whole
Middle East, much less all Middle Easterners, responsible for the
actions of a few extremists.
As it turns out, Middle Easterners weren’t responsible for the
tragedy. The main suspects are two white males who are members of a
militia, part of a small but growing section of our population, and
when this became known, the calls changed accordingly. Instead of
saying "let’s carpet bomb the militias," however, most of them
argued that the bombing was wrong and horrible, but that you can’t
hold all militia members responsible for the actions of the
extremists. A small percentage of extremists even called and agreed
with the bombing, saying that the Oklahoma City federal building
was the first target in a war with the evil government.
How does all of this relate with the riots? I agree, in a
limited way, with those who say you can’t hold all (fill in the
blank) responsible for the actions of a few extremists. I can’t
hold all South Central citizens responsible for the actions of the
extremists who reacted violently. But the reason my agreement is
limited is because a cause and effect situation is happening that
makes me believe you can’t absolve all (fill in the blank) from
responsibility.
While it is true that only thousands out of millions in
L.A.actually participated in the violence, that doesn’t mean the
rest can be absolved from creating the environment that allowed it
to happen.
Community representatives were and are irresponsible when they
report and react to events in the news. Maxine Waters, the
congresswoman who represents the South Central area, was filmed on
TV saying "No Justice, No Peace." Representatives of the First
African Methodist Episcopal Church talked about the importance of
the verdicts and their effect on the average black Angeleno and how
wrong the verdicts in the Latasha Harlins case were. The media
helped to create an explosive environment when anchors warned the
public to stay indoors on the day of the verdicts to avoid the
violence that "might" ensue.
Please don’t get me wrong  I am not against free speech
and the rights of people to voice their opinions, but I think these
community representatives should share responsibility with the
extremists who used their words as fuel for the fire. Extremists
exist no matter what side of the party line you fall on.
The spectrum goes like this: Extreme Ultra-Left Wing
(eco-terrorists, tree spikers, people who throw blood on
fur-wearers), Ultra-Left Wing (Green Peace, the Black Panthers, the
U.S. Communist party), Left Wing (the Democratic party and
pro-choice movement), Moderates (me and most Americans), Right Wing
(the Republican party and pro-life movement), Ultra-Right Wing
(Ditto Heads, Christian fundamentalists, the Sons and Daughters of
Liberty), Extreme Ultra-Right Wing (militias, neo-nazi
organizations and the KKK).
Most Americans fall in the safe range of moderates, fluctuating
now and then between the left or the right, and there are also
those who are simply right or left.The danger begins with those in
the ultra-left or ultra-right, who at best can be convinced to
become simply right or left. At worst, they are pushed to the
extreme poles of society where they no longer respect the will of
the rest of us, creating situations like the 1992 riots and the
bombing of Oklahoma City.
In order to prevent this danger from happening in the future,
moderates are responsible for watching and allowing our government
to watch the ultra and extreme elements of our society, so the
angry environment is not allowed to grow.
Alvarado is a fifth-year computer science and engineering
student. His columns appear on alternate Fridays.