There was a riot twenty years ago. I find it hard to believe that it was actually that damned long ago. So much has happened to this city and planet since that time but nothing quite as ridiculous as the LA Riots. Oh, sorry. Some people refer to it as “The Uprising” which when I first heard I laughed at.
up·ris·ing 1. A sometimes limited popular revolt against a constituted government or its policies; a rebellion. 2. The act or an instance of rising or rising up.
By definition it was an uprising, but so was me telling my mother that I refused to stop calling her by her first name. They say that the Rodney King verdict was the cause of all of the looting, burning, attacks, and killings that occurred. I say it was a bunch, thousands, of people who said “Let’s take advantage of a bad situation!” And by god they did.
At the time of the riots I was living on 84th Street near the border of Inglewood. I had just gotten home and was waiting to watch cartoons and then head to The Western Surplus to buy some cool Malcolm X gear. Hey, don’t judge me. It was the style. The verdict came down where the cops that beat King’s ass got off and minutes later I smelled smoke.
On the TV they showed a truck driver being yanked from his vehicle, kicked, stomped, and hit with a brick while people cheered. They were on Florence & Normandie which I knew well since my aunt lived over there. She actually said she wanted to go help (she was a nurse) but she had just bought a new Mercedes and didn’t want it to get ruined.
So I sat watching my city being burned. Not by aliens or robots, but by the people who lived here. “Why don’t they go to Simi Valley?” I wondered to myself. Not that that would’ve solved anything but the concept of destroying your own house because you’re upset seems pretty goddamn stupid to me.
The riots did nothing to help the city contrary to what an ignorant fucking article from an LA Times blog thinks. To believe that the lack of liquor stores in an area helps is irresponsible. What about the people who go to stores for things other than liquor? Or the jobs the people had? They burned down so much of my neighborhood that it looked like a bomb had hit it.
There are parts of LA where when I see them I almost see the ghosts of what the neighborhood looked like before April 29th, 1992. No, the city wasn’t perfect, but damn it, I loved it. I still love this city. But thinking that the fact that the riots happened as being a good thing is just stutarded.
And people had the nerve, the nerve, to get mad when shops didn’t want to rebuild. As much as I love this city I would’ve been past hesitant to rebuild. Remember when the OJ Simpson verdict was being handed down? The police were ready to take down rioters and looters. Why? Because a Black guy was on trial and it was popular. That sucks.
Twenty years later the relationship between us and the police hasn’t gotten any better. Every week there’s some fucked up story about misconduct. Some woman was just blinded by a cop shooting her point blank in the face with a pepper spray gun. Yes, she was handcuffed. Of course he plead not guilty. But there will not be a riot over this. Laker championships, yes. Attacks on single mother’s, no.
What caused the riots was a perfect storm of bullshit. Bad cops, bad people, innocent people being treated badly, injustices being perpetrated, and most importantly, distrust. We do not trust the police here in LA. They failed the people on so many occasions and the people failed themselves. The riots didn’t need to happen.
Nothing good came from the riots unless you got some free shit. A week later I went back to school and got a tour of just how much damage had occurred. So many places I knew my whole life burned to the ground. Years later they became empty lots before some were replaced not with mom and pop businesses like before, but huge companies like Target, Pic N Save, and CVS. So if you look back on the riots and smile, its likely because you were doing bad or you don’t know what it was like being there in Los Angeles before and after.
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