LA, April 30
I’ve lived here, in this idiot airless town, for 17 years and have never for a moment felt the slightest stirring of anything you might call civic pride. Through the goddam Olympics, through winning Laker and Dodger seasons, through all these superimposed film and arts festivals: nothing, never, far from it. Not until yesterday, that is, the second day of the uprising, the “riot,” when suddenly like lightning it hit me: this was its finest hour! The heroes, the martyrs, trashing and torching the town!–taking their wrath beyond the ghetto, from Bullock’s Wilshire to the Farmer’s Market to Beverly Center to Frederick’s of fucking Hollywood, saying loudly, clearly not even just No (which itself would have been a monumental achievement), but a very unambiguous Something: the system doesn’t work . . . even the system of oppression doesn’t–can’t–always do it. Against super-daunting odds: their finest hour. If I had photos of every black and Latino martyr killed by cops, by soon-to-arrive feds, I would put ’em on a T-shirt and wear it every day of my life.
The racism continues–how nasty can these news cretins get?: insulting without letup the ongoing casualties of injustice . . . characterizing the participants as thugs, hooligans, hoodlums, anarchists, animals, bad people–not even, y’know, “suspected bad people”–purveyors of ugliness . . . calling the rebellion “senseless,” i.e., lacking sense (when what could make more sense?), pretending not to understand Why, not even copping to the fact that if you treat people like dogs they eventually BITE–this from the medium, the industry, that gave the world Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
But maybe toughest to swallow was this: that none of these jackjills, opportunity knocking like a migraine from hell, expressed a dust mote of outrage that a document from their own merry medium, an 81-second unfunniest home video–and one unedited at that–I’m talking Rodney and the cops–could have been so discredited as to evidentiary oompah, self-evidence, Truth . . . that, this video’s brutality forever logged in their crania, they could then show a white trucker getting stomped and not utter–scream–the phrase deja vu.
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RODNEY KING THE MAN: the vulnerability, the humanity, of this person . . . as seemingly overwhelmed by events of the previous couple days as by his own beating . . . what courage in appearing at all–Jesus! . . . prob’ly the first guy on TV to that point to evince genuine unrehearsed pain for the dead. Young, shy (which I can relate to, being shy–and once young–myself): shy 25-year-olds have reason to occasionally take drink. Switching channels Friday afternoon, I missed the intro the first time he was on and didn’t even know it was HIM, and yet everything about him, his words, face, bearing, BEING, turned my eyes to fucking oceans. The destruction, the dismantlement, of a human life: Jesus god . . .
We’ve heard quite enough by now, thanks, about “our courageous police officers”–these bastards who (even if on orders, and even if the orders arose from a collective fear of death) (why do you think they get such fantastic pensions, huh?–if they don’t risk death, if that’s not what they’re in fact THERE FOR, who needs their bullyswagger shit?) did nothing for the first two–the first 24–hours. It wasn’t till it all came north and west to the white neighborhoods that the response was worth a hill of beans. Even just judging from TV, every channel zooming hither and yon to get the latest-greatest helicopter shot, you couldn’t miss nohow the LAPD’s abject refusal to come and “aid” the ghetto the first night, and its piss-in-pants rush to secure white districts throughout the second.
The force the swine used on Rodney King would have been excessive if he’d killed their mothers with them as witnesses. Denial of due process is denial of due process–even criminals are protected by the Constitution. Most of the framers had been designated criminals themselves, remember?
