On August 11, 1965, police in Los Angeles arrested a man named Marquette Fry, along with his brother and his mother, sparking the infamous Watts riots. The violence lasted six days, leaving 34 dead and 1,000 injured.
The divisions in Los Angeles — in our nation — are such that there is still disagreement about what happened that summer and what the causes were. Even the label is in dispute — what the world has agreed to call a riot, local activists call a revolt.
The arresting officer says the traffic stop was routine and he didn’t do anything wrong. Witnesses say the arrest was violent and that Marquette Fry’s mother was roughly treated.
Locals say the National Guard who were called in were brutal, that they shot first and asked questions later. The National Guard says they did everything by the book.
According to conventional wisdom, there were and are problems in Watts, but the riots are generally treated as a mystery, almost an act of nature. It was an unnaturally hot summer they say. Some violent youths started the whole thing and it took on a life of its own the story goes. Someone spit, someone threw a rock.
No one understands the violence, the looting, the burning — they’re only hurting themselves, they say, it doesn’t make any sense.
And it still didn’t make any sense when the LA riots broke out in 1992. Again there was an arrest. Again there was the violence, the looting and burning. Again the excuses and bewilderment.
Again the litany repeated in the news — they’re only hurting themselves can’t they see it’s all so senseless.
The violence doesn’t make any sense to the newscasters, the reporters, the politicians, and the concerned citizens when it happens every day in Watts, in South Central, in Compton — all the same area, year after year, none of it making any sense at all to the experts, all this senseless violence.
And the residents of the area, they tell us each time — police brutality, harassment, injustice, inequity. They tell us of a system that hasn’t just failed, but is preying on the community. They tell us of their sons and daughters being arrested for no reason, brutalized for no reason.
They tell us of businesses that sell inferior goods at inflated prices. Schools that can’t teach. No jobs. No opportunity. And after the violence, we shake our heads and conduct studies and give more funding to the schools and the police, and things stay the same.
When the studies show that the charges are accurate, that the businesses are indeed selling rotten food and clothes that fall apart and we have video of the police beating the crap out of American citizens and we don’t do anything and we still don’t understand, then our system is called racist and we wonder why.
It’s been 40 years since the Watts riots and we’re still calling the violence in Los Angeles senseless and saying we don’t understand. After 40 years, it’s not a lack of understanding, it’s a refusal to understand.
Perhaps as individuals, we’re each doing the best we can, but clearly as a group, as a nation, something is broken. We won’t be able to fix it until we admit that it makes sense.
(cross-posted from Unbossed)
Last week marked 40 years since the riots. The Guardian article that’s linked also has a link to their original coverage. It’s quite interesting.
Also, an article in the LA Weekly mentioned two documentaries — has anyone seen them?
SALIM MUWAKKIL from “In These Times” magazine had a good editorial that makes much the same observations you do:
Good piece Izzy. Not seeing much about this anniversary on the blogs.
Thanks for the link, Madman. I haven’t seen much about it on the blogs either.
A whole two-minute piece on NPR this week. I was in high school in No. Cal. when the riot started. [Anarchy reigned]. Not much noted until afterward was the lack of coordination between law enforcement agencies and the Guard [who were not equipped to handle the situation]. Seems all operated radios on different frequencies.
I remember this. Well, sort of. I was only about 6 or 7 at the time. We didnt live in Watts… probably a couple of communities over, but you could see the smoke and the glow from the fires at night. Plus, all Black and Latino communities in LA were pretty tense at the time.
My mom packed us all up and we got on a plane for Chicago and one of my clearest memories is sitting in the backseat of the car as it raced through the dark streets, staring out the windows at what I know now were National Guardsmen standing in various areas, all armored up and holding what looked to me like cannons. My mom was terrified of them, and so were we.
I’ve been reading, off and on, some of the commentary of the ‘lessons from the Watts Riots’ – seems most of the right wingers feel the lesson is that Black people need to get married. Others, as you say, see it as a revolt against the injustices, many of which are still going on.
I think the one that resonated most with me, however, was an editorial written for the LA Times by Walter Mosely, What we forget about Watts. Here’s a part.
That’s all good and true and important to know. But I think the next part is of the most vital importance:
It’s my belief that it is imperative that we learn this lesson. And also that it’s pretty much impossible that we ever will. Well, learn it in time, that is. There is a sort of collective blindness that seems to feel that situations like this that have gone on for what seems like forever, will continue to do so, with little or no blowback. Me, I’m not so confident of that.
Thanks for sharing your memories and also for the link. Walter Mosely is one of my favorite writers and the editorial is beautiful.
I don’t remember the riots, I was too little, but as you say conditions were tense and I saw a lot of that. Also, as the editorial points out, lessons were taught but not learned.
So things were pretty much that way still when I went to high school on the border of Long Beach and Compton. Somehow there’s no money for the stuff people need, things that might actually help, but they’d found the money to build a twelve-foot fence around the school and hire armed guards.