JCC On this date in 1992...

the Rodney King/'92 riots began here in La La Land.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/la-riots



I was only 5 1/2 years old at the time, and only remember seeing the news coverage of all of that, not being able to comprehend what was going on. Asked my mother earlier this morning how it was like during this chaos (as he worked at the time in Koreatown), and she told me she vividly remembers the shop keepers around here old American Red Cross building (which is now based in Pomona) standing atop their businesses with shotguns. I suppose if I were my age now at that time I'd be completely either freaked out or just filled with anger/shame with what was going on... nevertheless I wasn't, and what time it was then to be a kid here in La La Land (with the fires, big quake & O.J. to follow after the riots).

I watched the first one, and I'll watch the other ones later on today... but man, even just seeing a couple minutes of that floored me. I was too young and all the way in the Midwest for it to mean much to me then. Being an LA person now and knowing the city and its people, this is just like something out of a movie.

Despite all the current ills of this city/region, I still very much love living here... I don't know if I would feel the same if I was in my 20's in '92. I also talked to my mother some more about this, and I found out that after the 29th, she didn't return to work for a few days (she forgets exactly when she went back), but still had a harrowing experience on the 29th: she/her co-workers were put in a auditorium when the LAPD mentioned (over the building's speaker system) that it was unsafe for them to leave the building. When they eventually were allowed to leave, my mom had a co-worker follow her home to just to be safe, and she remembers seeing people running in & out of stores all around her on the drive to the freeway.

I just found out that a bunch of this stuff happened in my neighborhood!

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I was in college and editing the opinion section of the campus newspaper. We're across the country so most opinions were formed based on clips on the news as opposed to it being "close to home", but we heard a lot of outrage on King's behalf.

I remember my now-father-in-law telling me I could filter my opinions since I wasn't there.

I think I remember seeing footage of the shop owners with shotguns and Reginald Denny getting hauled out of his truck and beaten almost to death. Those are the two things that stand out.

We were discussing the riots at the volunteer firedept. I had joined it only a month ago.

And firefighters, medics and police-officers are today often at the receiving end of hooligans.
I had two broken ribs after New years celebrations in 1996 when a mob tried to prevent our work and began throwing bricks torn from the pavement.
Only a week ago one of our police officers was in hospital after being beaten up by four 15 and 17 year old kids. His ankle was fractured and needed surgery.

And today L.A. doesn't have any problems with race, poverty, or police misconduct.

That's because now everyone has a cell phone with a camera.

Oh, I remember that. It was in Nomad #8.

I was twelve when everything happened and I remember watching all the coverage and being absolutely horrified, from the verdict (because it was just so clear that it was police brutality and well WELL over the line) to the riots themselves and seeing in real time Reginald Denny being beaten. I was absolutely convinced he was dead when I watched that happen.

I also remember that was the first time being annoyed by the talking heads of TV as some of them were going on about "Oh my, what if the last episode of The Cosby Show isn't aired because of this?" (because that was the same week it was going to have it's series finale) I was glaring at my TV going "Really? People are robbing and killing other people and all you can talk about is how this will affect a TV Show?"

As much as the Riots were a lesson in race relations, it was also a lesson in TV execs priorities.

The Cosby Show sucked by that time anyway. It was only good through 1987 or so.

These 2 photos coming from an MSNBC.com article on the riots... these being 2 areas of Koreatown during/after (obviously) the riots. These 2 photos represent an area that was literally a doorstep away from my mother's old workplace, and thus this was the area she had navigate through on this night in 1992 to get back home (whether the 2 photos depicting the area during the riots were taken on the 29th wasn't made clear in the article, but the point is made anyway).

At the time of the riots I was about 2 1/2, so I don't remember a thing. Nor have my parents ever spoken about it, so I don't think I even had a very goo idea of what it was until at least 1- years after the fact. Even now the details are hazy to me (this is the first time I've heard Koreatown mentioned in relation to it, and I always forget Reginald Denny's name- or that he existed at all). I don't know, it's just never been something that's been of much interest to me, even though I love history. I've always had the theory that the closer it gets to being something current and close to home, the less interesting it is for me, which is why I know far less about current events than I do about the Civil War or classical mythology.

So this has never really impacted me in a way I've cared to think about, and I've always been ambivalent to it. Is this unusual for someone living here?

Well, in terms of death, injury and destruction the 1992 riots were worse than the Watts riots and Northridge was worse than Sylmar (though slightly more did die in the latter). In addition to being more recent, like you said.