Today really is a big fucking day in Local Action/History: Riots too, 19 yrs. ago!!
Memory a bit weak, but there was some activity after the verdicts were returned. We nonetheless went to work the next day, only to be let out of work early as revolutionary activity headed north from the most oppressed sections of the city toward downtown.
Thanks to Marcia whose last name we don't remember, who gave us a ride home on her way to the relative safety of the Valley.
We then sat around in our relatively safe, high-on-a-hill residence, watching it on the telly & seeing the columns of smoke rising from behind the next hill over. Also listening to gunfire. The Radio Shack four (or five) blocks from us was looted by people who drove a car through the security gates. The Big Mac liquor store in the same strip mall was defended by its armed Korean owners, however.
Yes, we do regret we didn't go out & get some free stuff. Next time for sure!
(Maybe we should go out & start some fires or something ourself; this would seem to be what the dialectic is advising us to do.)And note today's other Royal Wedding: Adolf & Eva!
4 comments:
I forgot this was the anniversary. We hadn't yet moved here, but lived in Seattle, in the historic Central District, which was the first African-American part of town. We had a nut-case bigoted neighbor who used to refer to the neighborhood as "Fort Apache" - god knows why he moved there. He saw himself as an "urban pioneer."
When the new of the "civil unrest" came over the TV sets, we were commiserating and shaking our heads and tsk-tsking over the fence about it with the church ladies next door at the C.O.G.I.C. storefront church and the Gay Guys across the street. The phone rang, and it was Nutcase Neighbor telling us he had his loaded shotgun and he would allow us (the only other White Family) to refuge at his house.
I almost wanted to Molotov him myself.
Not appendicitis, BTW.
Not a Doctor, An Editor Types:
Don't know if that diagnosis is good or bad, but of course hoping for the best.
Were the Gay Guys default non-White to Nutcase?
In our time in Seattle we lived in Madison Park.
The spawn of the guy who owned the M.P. hardware store regaled us w/ how, whenever African-Americans came into the store, half the staff were hiding out in the back w/ loaded guns, in case, you know.
People. Aaagggh.
I can remember my teacher* saying something about "those people"; never mind the fact that she had two or three of "those people" in her class as students. I can remember feeling uneasy at how the white people around me used the riots as cover to express some racist-ass shit, but I had heard so much veiled racism as a child that it was hard for me to put my finger on it.
The OJ Simpson trial was a nice double-dose of racism and victim-blaming, too. "Why didn't she leave him when he beat her?" Um, she DID, Grandma, and now she's dead. At least I was older then.
*Who was a Reaganite who bragged that her only addiction was a glass of orange juice in the morning and proudly proclaimed that if she were a settler and someone didn't do their part for the community, she'd let them die. My mom said she still asked about me when she saw her, which is a surprise to me, considering the fact that she was kind of a bitch to me.
Editor Declares:
People: Awful!
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