It is a two way street of ugliness; more white-supremacist organizations are popping up, bringing fascist cargo with its neo-Nazi waybills saying "White men built this country" as if to justify in some heinous way the unjustifiable beating of an innocent black man the year before.It's Friday, the second day of the riots, and I drive home from school with L.A. Woman in my tape deck. That we are all listening to "L.A. Woman" at this point is just a weird resonance, The Doors movie came out last year and a new generation is listening to Jim Morrison.
A black man in his fifties stands on the corner of Euclid and University, tears streaming down his face, holding a sign, "Can't we all just get along!" These are Rodney King's words, spoken in a moving, generous speech on television, his tearful attempt to bring an end to the riots, but the riots aren’t really about him. Listening to the news, I hear constant discussion about what's really going on. The looting and rioting is not limited to blacks in L.A. (or in the grassfire riots springing up throughout the country). It’s a class war, violent, externalized petulance against the haves by the have-nots. They can get by with it, and they will until they are stopped.
At home, several of hours of daylight remaining, I decide to take a dog up to Chollas Lake for a walk. I know the boys will be around at some point, or I imagine so. Jimmy is still living up here in City Heights with his mom, but the others are in Imperial Beach and need to take public transportation (or ride their bikes) through a couple of San Diego's worst neighborhoods (Barrio Logan, Skyline) to get to this one. As strangely lost and ineffective as their mothers are, they are usually glued to the TVs and may not want to let their boys loose on the streets of San Diego this Friday afternoon.
Chollas Lake is a small reservoir, part of San Diego's water department plan to keep enough water in the city for everyone. It is a sweet little park, a magnet for families in the neighborhood, mostly black and Mexican, to jog, fish, picnic, kiss, and host birthday-party piñata suspended carne asadas. I am very often the only white person walking the 1.2-mile loop over and over to cover five miles. I am curious, admittedly, over how it will be on this day. I park, get out of my red truck, let Kelly jump out with me (as a golden retriever she's the least threatening looking of all my dogs, though she's the only one I've known to bite anyone) and hit the trail.
The park is uncharacteristically empty for a Friday afternoon. People walk, run, talk, sit on benches kissing, as always, but the air is heavy with funereal dread, and I am absolutely the one white person there. After one loop, I notice a couple trying to make eye contact with me, black guy about my age and his girlfriend, passing me going the other way. I lift my head, though my ears are filled with The Doors. I can't hear, and I feel no need to speak beyond an easily managed "Hi!" Another loop. Eye contact rises to friendly waves. I take out my earphones. "Nice day!" I say, talking only about the weather. They stop. We look at each other, our eyes filled with words we read in each others faces. We remember the '60's, the riots in Selma and Chicago and Watts; most profoundly we remember Watts.
I see your hair is burnin'
Hills are filled with fire
If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar
Drivin' down your freeways
Midnight alleys roam
Cops in cars, the topless bars
Never saw a woman...
So alone, so alone
We don't want it again. We've worked hard, we simple middle-class people, to live and work together, to put old hurts and damage aside; to live in the moment, to acknowledge that most of never cared what color anyone is. We just want to earn a living and hold our lives and families together. We generally want the best for everyone; we know how hard that is to come by. We continue looking intensely at each other, our eyes saying, clearly, "This is so fucked up."
We stand awkwardly, wanting to reach for the other, to make physical contact, to bridge this whole chasm. My heart aches. I believe world peace, in contrast to world war, is won by small brave gestures between individuals.
"How was it?" I ask, a lame question about their run/walk.
"Well, the doc says I gotta' do it. Had a coronary last year."
"Wow, yeah, well then this is the best thing for you."
"My sweet baby here comes along with me every day," he says, putting his arm around the woman beside him. She's wearing a wine-colored jogging suit, gold earrings, a beautiful watch and a large diamond - and new Reeboks. "Got the blood pressure down."
"Good job," I say. Our words say NOTHING. Our eyes are still locked on each other; his girlfriend's suddenly fill with tears. I reach for her and say, "I'm sorry. It's just sad." She takes my hand.
He reaches his hand out, then arm, for a forearm handshake grab of the other hand. "Our family up there. We don't live there no more 'cause of things like this. I grew up in Watts. She from Compton."
My skin feels prickly and cold. "This is insanity," I say. "Complete and dangerous insanity."
"Color ain't the issue. Them peoples' just greedy and don't care nothin' for life."
"You're right. Is your family OK?"
I feel eviscerated by the time I get back in the truck. It's been a long and disorienting day. I don't want to watch the news; I've had all the news I can handle. I am not there; I am in City Heights which is enough. So far things have remained pretty quiet in San Diego but there are extra cops around the bad parts of town. Most of our violence is gang driven, but any imitation of what's happening in South Central LA would break those borders. I feed the dogs, make a tuna sandwich and sit down in front of the TV having changed my mind about the news. I haven't seen any of the boys so figure they're not coming. Usually they arrive by 6 o'clock.
"...the day here is winding to a close the dusk to dawn curfew is in effect. US military troops, army, national guard, and marines have been called in... LAPD will take any extra help they can get. The National Guard were deployed, and that allows the police to make arrests while the Guard sets up perimeters of protection for the troops...LAPD is highly outnumbered; to restore calm and make it last they need all the help they can get from the military and the national guard...It's Friday night, not a work night. They are afraid the riots could turn really deadly. Because many gun shops and sporting goods shops were looted and all the guns and ammunition were stolen, a lot of folks think that because it's a Friday night if you introduce alcohol into any kind of situation w/guns involved it could become very volatile."
Jimmy shows up about 7. "Martha," he calls through the screen door. Molly and Kelly get up and stretch.
"Hey. Did you eat?" My refrigerator is open to them; I buy extra cold meat and bread and cheese every week and they empty it.
"Yeah. Mom got a pizza." Her welfare check would have arrived that day, right. The news had just said that the postal service in LA stopped and people were waiting in line at the post offices for their checks.
"Cool."
Jimmy sits down in front of the TV and watches silently for a while. "This is awful, Martha."
"I know, Jimmy."
"What's gonna' happen?"
"They'll stop it. With the military in there it can't go on much longer. There is enough manpower to make it impossible now. They might be able to get the fires out."
"Why did they beat up that guy?"
"They were assholes." Jimmy wants social justice. He has lived and grown up in neighborhoods where Section 8 housing is a major fixture of the landscape. His classes are so mixed that his green-eyed freckled whiteness is the diversity. He believes in tolerance. This boy is absolutely egalitarian. He has tried to interest the black kids on our street -- notably Darris, Donald and Andre -- in riding BMX by helping them build bikes in my garage. He's had limited success; it's a white sport and he has not realized that. Blacks play team sports; and the individualistic wild-cowboy focus of BMX is more likely to be white than black.
"Yeah. Makes me ashamed."
"You didn't do it. Don't take on someone else’s shame, Jimmy. That's crazy."
"Yeah, but white people?" He's been raised to believe that white guys should be good guys. "Why would they kick that poor guy like that? They were cops. How come they let the cops go?"
"I don't know, Jimmy. Look, a lot of stuff that happens in life doesn't make any sense and you can't force it to make sense; it just doesn't. So what's going on?"
"Well, maybe tomorrow Jason and Craig'll come up, if their moms let them. Otherwise I'll just hang with you and whoever's at the jumps."
"OK," I nod. It's not the best time for those guys to be riding around down there. "I'm going hiking so, yeah, if we get an early start, we can go down and get Craig, Jason and Greg." I sometimes go down to Imperial Beach to get the boys. The news is reporting sporadic outbursts of violence and looting in Barrio Logan where the boys catch the trolley. Nothing much came of it, and it may not even have happened, but we couldn't know that at the time.
"I gotta' go get milk for the twins," says Jimmy, getting up. "I'll come back after, OK?"
"Sure." The front door slams behind him. It is two weeks before I see him again.
Jimmy rides to the liquor/convenience store on the corner for milk. For the first time he has a bike that came with all its original pieces. His mom, aunts, uncles got together the money they could to get this bike for Jimmy for his fifteenth birthday. It isn't a new bike, and it isn't a great bike, but it is the best bike Jimmy has ever had. He is proud of it and maintains it as perfectly as possible; replacing what breaks with the best parts he can. The frame is intact, true, and safe, shiny and silver. He locks it to one of the phone booths by the street, under the light. When he comes out with the milk, the lock has been hammered apart, and the bike is in the hands of a black guy twice Jimmy's age and size. In blind fury Jimmy drops the gallon of milk and runs at the guy, who tosses the bike to a friend, plows Jimmy in the face and knocks him to the asphalt. Jimmy tries to get up, and another black guy kicks him in the ribs. When the ambulance comes for Jimmy he is unconscious with a broken arm and two cracked ribs. It doesn't really matter that the police arrive. They don't catch the thieves or get the bike back and they can't fix anything. Jimmy never lives in City Heights again. I make many more trips to Imperial Beach after he moves in with his uncle, but most of the time after this, he and the others ride their bikes from Imperial Beach to City Heights, to be with Jimmy's mom and to ride the jumps at Mission Trails.
