Conditions that sparked 1992 rebellion still exist
Could Los Angeles erupt again?
Bush visit ignores racism, poverty, police brutality
By Monica Moorehead
President George W. Bush visited South Central Los Angeles
on April 30, the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Los
Angeles rebellion. South Central is home to the highest
concentration of African Americans in Los Angeles County.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the purpose of Bush's
trip was to promote his "faith-based" programs to "combat"
poverty in poor areas like South Central and East Los Angeles,
an area home to a rapidly growing majority of Latinos, mostly
of Mexican descent.
These "faith-based" programs have been exposed as a ploy on
the part of extreme right-wing fundamentalists to replace large
chunks of federal monies with voluntary, private monies,
supposedly in order to fund social services and
programs--particularly for job programs to fight poverty,
especially in inner cities. This is also an effort to
eventually do away with the progressive principle of separation
of church and state.
In reality, Bush's visit to South Central and other parts of
California was a photo opportunity to raise millions of dollars
in campaign funds for Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill
Simon Jr.
Bush could care less about the plight of poor and oppressed
peoples in Los Angeles or elsewhere. His attitude is similar to
the callous attitude of his father--Bush Sr.--who occupied the
White House during the rebellion and made empty promises to
rebuild the South Central neighborhood in hopes of being
reelected.
Underlying factors of 1992 rebellion
The Los Angeles rebellion was a profound, widespread
uprising of the most oppressed in the United States.
The rebellion lasted for several days. It resulted in the
deaths of more than 55 people, more than 8,000 arrests and
property damage estimated at the cost of $1 billion.
The rebellion began in the South Central area but spread to
other oppressed and working-class areas, including Hollywood.
Before the rebellion exhausted itself, about 50,000 people
participated, many of them youths of color.
The spark for the rebellion was an all-white jury's racist
verdict exonerating four white Los Angeles police officers in
the savage 1991 beating of African American motorist Rodney
King. This beating was captured on videotape for the whole
world to see.
There were also some 100 other militant and sympathetic
actions held in solidarity with the Los Angeles rebellion
throughout the country. The oppressed saw no other recourse but
to rise up against an outrageous verdict that clearly gave the
green light to racist profiling and brutality on the part of
the police and the courts.
This rebellion against police brutality helped to unearth an
avalanche of decades-long economic inequality and despair,
especially in the areas of unemployment, poverty, segregation,
sub-standard housing and much more.
At the beginning of the 1990s, the unemployment rate in the
some parts of South Central was 18 percent. This amounted to a
rate more than three times the average unemployment rate
throughout Los Angeles County.
According to 1990 Census data, if 20 percent of a population
lives below the poverty line the area is defined as being high
poverty. This was true of many neighborhoods within South
Central during the rebellion of 1992.
In 1989, three years before the rebellion, the "non-poor"
unemployment rate in Los Angeles was 11 percent. It was 28
percent in Los Angeles County poor areas and 30 percent in the
Los Angeles County areas known as Enterprise Zones. The EZs
were designated for uplifting economically deprived areas.
These proved to be nothing more than a fallacy.
According to the same data, Los Angeles was home to the
largest urban Native population in the U.S., with 31 percent of
pre-school age Native children living in poverty.
Has anything fundamentally changed?
The big-business press has used the 10th anniversary of the
Los Angeles rebellion to examine what changes, if any, have
taken place. Have race relations improved? Has any substantial
economic growth taken place in economically depressed
areas?
Certainly, some important changes have taken place since
April 30, 1992. For instance, the Black population in Los
Angeles has declined from 17-19 percent to 10-13 percent, while
the Latino population has risen considerably. The Asian
population has grown rapidly as well.
Notwithstanding the tragic decline in the Black population,
Los Angeles has evolved more and more into an epicenter of
union organizing by the most exploited and low-paid
workers.
There were some visible displays of Black, Latino and Asian
unity to mark this 10th anniversary. This cannot disguise
tensions that do exist between communities of color. The root
cause of this tension is that the rich white bankers and bosses
who control all the wealth created by foreign-born and
native-born workers are pitting them against each other
economically.
Any economic growth that has taken place in the Los Angeles
inner city has not made any fundamental difference in improving
the social conditions of people of color. An essay entitled
"Gang Life in East Los Angeles" written by Joseph Rodriguez
talks about the 75 percent unemployment rate for Latino youth.
In South Central today, close to one-third of the residents
live below the official poverty line. In some neighborhoods the
rate is 40 percent. Between 39 and 48 percent of children under
18 years old are poor.
The jails are exploding with a majority of jobless Black,
Latino and Native youth.
Hunger is on the rise in these poor areas. This is
especially true for immigrant children and the elderly who have
been affected by the elimination of the federally funded
welfare programs.
"The situation has worsened in the past half-year since the
reductions were implemented," according to California Food
Policy Advocates, which did a more detailed study of Los
Angeles and San Francisco counties. Between one-third and
one-half of the households that lost food stamps experienced
"moderate or severe hunger," the survey found.
A BBC article reported that a recent poll revealed that 50
percent of the people answered "yes" when asked if another
rebellion was possible in Los Angeles.
A more revealing poll, most likely, can be found at the
corner of Florence and Normandy in South Central, the
intersection where the rebellion was ignited. There, many
residents say clearly that for them, nothing has changed for
the better since 1992.
So the real question is not whether another rebellion will
happen in Los Angeles, but rather what will be the spark?
Moorehead was part of a fact-finding delegation that
traveled to Los Angeles shortly after the rebellion to help
build support for a demand for amnesty for the 8,000 people
arrested by police during the community uprising.
Reprinted from the May 9, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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