The second civil war
MORE than 60 dead, 2,100 seriously wounded, more than
4,000 arrests and about $600m in material losses; this was the official balance sheet of the four days of rioting in Los
Angeles and its knock-on effects in other cities such as
San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Omaha, Dallas, Atlanta,
Beneath these cold figures lies the simmering volcano of what in 1969 the National Commission on the Causes and
Prevention of Violence called the Second Civil War.
USA
T HE straw which broke the back of
the American Dream is well-known; a jury of 14, all white except for one Hispanic-American and one Asian, acquitted the four white officers of the Los Angeles police department responsible for the savage beating of Rodney King, a 24-year old Black, which the whole country had been able to watch on television thanks to a video made by a passer-by.
But how did a video lead to a social eruption? According to President Bush: "the verdict produced in all of us a profound feeling of frustration and anguish. Respect for law and for legal procedures remains important." Meanwhile the Democratic front-runner for his party's presidential candidacy, Bill Clinton insisted that "North Americans must today appeal for tolerance, justice and mutual respect for all the victims of society's crimes. At a time of misfortunes and injustices, the United States must stay united or run the risk of further division." For Jesse Jackson "we Blacks, we feel humiliated". The young Blacks and Hispanics who took to the streets were simply out for vengeance.
The American Dream
During the Second World War Southern California, with Los Angeles at its centre, was transformed into the last frontier of the American Dream. The rapid construction of a war industry to back up the attacks on Japan created millions of jobs and large-scale immigration of white industrial workers from the East Coast and of Blacks fleeing the ghettos, in an overall climate of national endeavor, racial integration and equality of opportunity. However, when the war ended the wind 14 changed direction.
The first to notice the change was LA International Viewpoint # 229 • May 25, 1992 police chief Parker, who, at the start of the 1950s, modernized and reformed the LAPD to prepare it for its new task: "It is estimated that by 1970 45% of the metropolitan zone of Los Angeles will be inhabited by Blacks. If you want your houses and families to be protected... you will need a powerful Police Department. If this is not the case, you will will have to put your trust in God".
Unbridled racism was added on to the witch hunt against trade unionists and Reds. An alliance was formed between industrial and farming interests to build a new port on the West Coast to compete with San Francisco, where the unions were strong. At the same time the old Anglo-Saxon bourgeoisie, led by General Otis and the Los Angeles Times, engaged in a financial battle with the new Jewish bourgeoisie for control of the property growth sectors. These were situated along the Wildshire and Santa Monica Boulevards to the center-south and east of the city where the Black and Hispanic minorities were concentrated, and they became transformed into happy hunting grounds for the LAPD.
The Saved and the Damned
Parker's basic idea was that, while there were (white) delinquents who could be reformed using shock therapy, there were other (Black and Hispanic) criminals destined in the best of cases to pass their lives in prison. When the first signs of a radicalization of Blacks appeared, expressed through the Nation of Islam, Chief Parker did not hesitate to attack a mosque in April 1962, leaving one dead and six wounded. This was the first step towards the Watts rebellion.
After the postwar restructuring, unemployment among Blacks had reached 30% in 1964, while civil rights activists were and Philadelphia. GUSTAVO BUSTER attacked in the streets by young whites. On August 11, 1965, the LAPD arrested and beat up a Black driver. Chief Parker then ordered a state of emergency in the Watts neighbourhood. There followed a social explosion with generalized resistance by the Black population, who, at the cost of 33 lives, for the first time drove the LAPD out of their neighbourhood.
In the course of this struggle, a solid alliance was formed between several urban gangs and tribes who are still remembered to this day. The legendary Slausons, Gladiators and Parking Lot provided many of the leaders for the Black Panthers and a whole generation of militant Black Power activists who came to the fore during the "long hot summers" of the late 1960s, which blazed from Detroit and Chicago in 1967 to the murder of Martin Luther King and the Washington conflagration of 1968.
From Vietnam to Robocop
At the start of the 1970s the anti-public disorder division of the LAPD and the FBI's Operation Cointelpro wiped out the leaders of the Black Panthers, using for the first time in their assault on the Panthers' central-south office special police commando units (SWAT), formed on the basis of experience in the Vietnam War. This was the height of the conflict on the streets between the LAPD and the minorities.
The void which appeared after the defeat of the Black movement was filled by the Crips (whose name means, apparently, "Continuing Revolution in Progress") a federation of Black gangs founded by Raymond Washington, an admirer of the Black Panthers who had been too young to join them.
During the Monrovia revolt of 1972, and during the struggle for school integra-
May 25, 1992 tion in 1977-78, the Crips played a social role, but with the appearance of crack and the struggle for control over its supply, they turned into a mafia opposed to the
Bloods, another defensive alliance of
Black gangs in the neighbourhoods of the central south periphery of the city.
The defeat of the radical wing of the Black liberation movement took place at the same time as the emergence of a broad reformist alliance of Black civil rights leaders, white liberals with a background in the anti-Vietnam War movement and the city's Jewish bourgeoisie, which carried Tom Bradley into the mayor's office. Meanwhile the recession of the 1970s saw the restructuring of the Californian economy, which became integrated into the Pacific region; much of industry disappeared to be replaced by a huge service and research sector.
The social map became even more complex with the development of a "bourgeoisie of color" and a layer of Blacks on the municipal payroll, at a time when 50% of Blacks and Hispanics were unemployed. These latter were left out of the credit boom of the 1980s since property speculation never reached their neighbourhoods, isolated from the white belt by segregationist rules and LAPD harassment.
The two thirds society
This permanent social and economic degradation, aggravated under Reagan, has been revealed to the world in recent days by a press which has suddenly rediscovered the Black ghettos and Hispanic neighbourhoods where 40% of the population lives below the poverty line. The theory of the "two thirds society" becomes quite tangible when you realize that there are three times as many Blacks in prison as at university and that one in five dies violently before the age of 25.
Like thousands of Latin American peasants, the Crips and the Bloods of Los Angeles have discovered that their only role in the new international division of labour is participation in the drugs traffic. Between 1985 and 1987 the monetary mass of the local branch of the federal reserve went up by 2,300%, reaching $3.8bn, almost all of it attributable to
This immense underground economy represents the only hope of escaping poverty for many thousands of young people, who are organized into some 230 Black and Hispanic gangs and some 81 Asiatic gangs.
In response to the social decomposition and general criminalization of ethnic minorities — who will become the majority in the city by the start of the 21st century - the LAPD underwent a new reorganization in the 1980s under Chief Gates, former driver to Chief Parker. Thus, if the