I knew they were gonna be pissed.
Two days I got a letter
and I was …
the letter really pleased me in some way.
It was very respectful.
“You went in and talked to our enemy.”
Gangs are their enemy.
And so
I marched down to Seventy-seventh
and, uh,
I said, “Fuck you,
I can come in here
anytime I want and talk to you.”
Yeah, at roll call.
I said, uh,
“This is a shot I had at talking to these
curious people
about whom I know nothing
and I wanna learn.
Don’t you want me to learn about ’em?”
You know, that kind of thing.
At the same time, I had been on this kick,
as I told you before, of …
of fighting for what’s right for the cops,
because they haven’t gotten what they should.
I mean, this city has abused both sides.
The city has abused the cops.
Don’t ever forget that.
If you want me to give you an hour on that, I’ll give you an hour on
that.
Uh,
and at the end,
uh,
I knew I hadn’t won when they said,
“So which side are you on?”
When I said, I said, it’s …
my answer was
“Why do I have to be on a side?”
Yu, yuh, yeh know.
Why do I have to be on a side?
There’s a problem here.
When I Finally Got My Vision/Nightclothes
Michael Zinzun Representative, Coalition Against Police Abuse
(In his office at Coalition Against Police Abuse. There are very bloody and disturbing photographs of victims of police abuse. The most disturbing one was a man with part of his skull blown off and part of his body in the chest area blown off, so that you can see the organs. There is a large white banner with a black circle and a panther. The black panther is the image from the Black Panther Party. Above the circle is “All Power to the People.” At the bottom is “Support Our Youth, Support the Truce.”)
I witnessed police abuse.
It was
about one o’clock in the morning
and, urn,
I was asleep,
like
so many of the other neighbors,
and I hear this guy calling out for help.
So myself and other people came out in socks
and gowns
and, you know,
nightclothes
and we came out so quickly we saw the police had this brother
handcuffed
and they was beatin’ the shit out of him!
You see,
Eugene Rivers was his name
and, uh,
we had our community center here
and they was doin’ it right across the street from it.
So I went out there ’long with other people and we demanded they stop.
They tried to hide him by draggin’ him away and we followed him
and told him they gonna stop.
They singled me out.
They began Macing the crowd, sayin’ it was hostile.
They began
shootin’ the Mace to get everybody back.
They singled me out.
I was handcuffed.
Um,
when I got Maced I moved back
but as I was goin’ back I didn’t go back to the center,
I ended up goin’ around this …
it was a darkened
unlit area.
And when I finally got my vision
I said I ain’t goin’ this way with them police behind me,
so I turned back around, and when I did,
they Maced me again
and I went down on one knee
and all I could do was feel all these police stompin’ on my back.
(He is smiling)
And I was thinkin … I said
why, sure am glad they got them soft walkin’ shoes on,
because when the patrolmen, you know, they have them
cushions,
so every stomp,
it wasn’t a direct hard old …
yeah
type thing.
So
then they handcuffed me.
I said they …
well,
I can take this,
we’ll deal with this tamarr [sic],
and they handcuffed me.
And then one of them lifted my
head up—
I was on my stomach—
he lifted me from behind
and hit me with a billy club
and struck me in the
side of the head,
which give me about forty stitches—
the straight billy club,
it wasn’t a
P-28, the one with the side handle.
Now, I thought in my mind, said hunh,
they couldn’t even knock me out,
they in trouble now.
You see what I’m sayin’?
’Cause I knew what we were gonna do,
’cause I dealt with police abuse
and I knew how to organize.
I say they couldn’t even knock me out,
and so as I was layin’ there
they was all standin’ around me.
They still was Macing, the crowd was gettin’ larger and larger and
larger
and more police was comin’.
One these pigs stepped outta the crowd with his flashlight,
caught me right in my eye,
and you can still see the stitches (He lowers his lid and shows it)
and
exploded the optic nerve to the brain,
ya see,
and boom (He snaps his fingers)
that was it.
I couldn’t see no more since then.
I mean, they …
they took me to the hospital
and the doctor said, “Well, we can sew this eyelid up and these
stitches here
but
I don’t think we can do nothin’ for that eye.”
So when I got out I got a CAT scan,
you know,
and
they said,
“It’s gone.”
So I still didn’t understand it but I said
well,
I’m just gonna keep strugglin’.
We mobilized
to the point where we were able
to get two officers fired,
two officers had to go to trial,
and
the city on an eye
had to cough up one point two million dollars
and so
that’s why
I am able to be here every day,
because that money’s bein’ used to further the struggle.
I ain’t got no big Cadillac,
I ain’t got no gold …
I ain’t got no
expensive shoes or clothes.
What we do have
is an opportunity to keep struggling and to do research and to
organize.
They
Jason Sanford Actor
(A rainstorm in February 1993. Saturday afternoon. We are in an office at the Mark Taper Forum. Lamplight. A handsome white man in his late twenties wearing blue jeans and a plaid shirt and Timberland boots. He played tennis in competition for years and looks like a tennis player.)
Who’s they?
That’s interesting,
’cause the they is
a combination of a lot of things.
Being brought up in Santa Barbara,
it’s a little bit different saying “they” th
an being brought up in,
um,
LA,
I think,
’cause
being brought up in Santa Barbara
you don’t see a lot of blacks.
You see Mexicans,
you see some Chinese,
but you don’t see blacks.
There was maybe two black people in my school.
I don’t know, you don’t say
black
or you don’t say
Negro
or,
no,
yeah,
you really don’t.
I work with one.
Um,
because
of what I look like
I don’t know if I’d been beaten.
I sure the hell would have been arrested
and pushed down on the ground.
I don’t think it would have gone as far.
It wouldn’t have.
Even the times that I have been arrested
they always make comments
about God, you look like Mr.,
uh,
all-American white boy.
That has actually been said to me
by a … by a
cop.
Ya know,
“Why do you have so many warrants?”
Ya know …
“Shouldn’t you be takin’ care of this?”
Ya know …
“You look like an all-American white boy.
You look responsible.”
And
I remember being arrested in Santa Barbara one time
and
driving back
in the cop car
and having a conversation about tennis
with the cops.
So,
ah,
I’m sure I’m seen by the police totally different
than a black man.
Broad Daylight
Anonymous Young Man Former gang member
(Saturday, fall, sunny. He is wearing black pants and an oversized tee shirt. He is living with his mother after having recently gotten out of jail. His mother lives in a fancy apartment building, with pool, recreation room, etc. We are in one of the lounges. He has a goatee and wears his hair pulled back in a ponytail. He is black but looks Latino.)
They kind of respected their elders,
as far as,
not robbing them,
but then a lot of …
as I got older I noticed,
like the younger ones,
the lot of the
respect,
it
just like
disappeared,
’cause I … when I was younger it was like
if the police had
me and a couple other guys in the middle of the street
on our knees,
the older people would
come out and question.
They like …
“Take ’em to jail,”
because of that loss of respect,
you know,
of the elders
by the younger ones,
losing the respect of the elders.
When I went to the Valley
I felt more respect,
because when
I was in the
Valley
I was right there with rivals.
It’s like I could walk right over
and it was rivals
and the way I felt was like
strong,
’cause when I moved out there
I didn’t bring
all my homeboys
with me
and it’s like I used to tell them,
my rivals,
I used to tell ’em, “Man,
I’m a one-man army.”
I would joke about it.
I say,
“I don’t need my homeboys
and everything.”
Me and my brother,
we used to call ourselves the Blues Brothers,
because it was two of us
and we
would go and we either have our blue rags hanging and go right up
there in their neighborhood where there are
Bloods
and go right up in the apartments
and there could be a crowd of ’em
and we would pass by—
“What’s up, cuz?”—
and keep goin’
and every now and then
they might say
something
but the majority of ’em
knew that I keep a gun on me
and every now and then
there would be broad daylight like this.
Some of ’em
would try and test me and say,
“well, he ain’t fixin’ ta shoot me in this broad daylight,”
you know,
and then
when they do
then you know
I either end up chasin’ ’em,
shootin’ at ’em or shootin’
whatever.
’Cause they thought ain’t nobody that stupid
to shoot people in broad daylight.
And I was the opposite.
My theory was when you shoot somebody in broad daylight
people gonna be mostly scared,
they not gonna just sit there and look at you,
you know, to identify you.
I figure there’s gonna be like
“I gotta run”
and I figure they just gonna be too scared to see who you are to
identify you.
That’s where the reputation
came,
’cause they didn’t know when I was comin,
broad daylight
or at night.
My favorite song?
I like oldies.
My favorite song is by Atlantic Star.
It’s called
“Am I Dreamin’?”
Surfer’s Desert
Mike Davis LA-based writer and urban critic
(Sunday, May 1993. The day after the verdict in the second federal trial against Koon, Powell, Wind, Briseno. The entire city is sighing in relief. He is less impressed with it all, and said he thought it was all a hoax. He is wearing a red shirt. He is of Irish descent. Looks kind of like Robert Redford. Prematurely white hair, light eyes. He is with his daughter, who is about nine years old and is visiting him from Ireland. She is very disciplined. We are having lunch in a restaurant in the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Opulent. He is eating a hamburger and drinking coffee.)
But I mean …
For all the talk about the civil rights movement, I mean, we need it
today like we need sunshine
and, and, and, and fresh air, because
the price of it is the self-destruction
of a generation of kids who are
so hip and so smart
but who in some way,
so susceptible to despair across, you know, across
the board.
And the other thing that nobody’s talking about
in the city is the gang
truce has been something of a miracle, you know.
It’s the sign of
a generation
that won’t commit suicide.
It’s
it’s a reestablishment of contact with …
with traditions, you know,
you know of
you know of pride and struggle.
But at the same time, on the East Side we have the worst Latino gang
war in history.
One weekend, we have seventeen, um, Latino kids killed in gang-related
stuff.
New immigrants’ kids, who couple of years ago wouldn’t be in gangs
at all, are now joining in in large numbers.
And nobody’s kind of gettin’ up and sayin’, “Look, this
is an
emergency.
Let’s put the resources out to at least reestablish
contact with,
with, with the kids.”
The fear in this city of talking to gang members,
talking to kids.
In the last instance, if you peel away words like, you
know, “gang-banger” and “looter” and stuff,
this is a city at war with
its own children,
and it refuses to talk to those children,
And the city doesn’t want to face these kids,
or talk to its kids,
And I think,
I think it’s the same thing probably with the white
middle class,
but I guess for me to sound like a bit of a sop,
for I’ve come to realize what we’ve lost.
’Cause everything I’ve come to like about Southern California growing
up here as, as, as a kid.
It’s when I joined the civil rights movement in the early sixties.
I mean, the vision was like,
yeah, I mean what the civil rights movement was about …
is that black kids can be surfers too.
I mean, there were a core of freedoms
and opportunities and pleasures that have been established,
again like, you know,
working-class white kids in my generation.
My parents hitchhiked out here from Ohio.
You know, I grew up with, with, with,
you know, Okies and Dust Bowl refugees
and we got free junior college education.
There were plenty—
there were more jobs than
you could imagine out there.
We could go to the beach,
we could race our cars.
I’m not saying that, you know, it was utopia or
happiness
but it was …
it was something incredibly important.
And the whole ethos of the civil rights struggle and movement for
equality in California’s history
was to make this available to everyone.
The irony now is that even white privileged kids
are losing these things.
I mean, there is no freedom of movement or right of assembly for
youth.
I mean,
the only permitted legal activity anymore
is, is being in a mall shopping.
I mean, cruising has been
totally eliminated because it’s …
it leads to gang warfare or some other crazy notion.
The beaches are patrolled by helicopters
and, and police dune buggies.
It’s illegal to sleep on the, the beach anymore.
So the very things that are defined, you know, our kind of populace,
Southern California, kind of working-class Southern California,
have been destroyed.
People go to the desert to live in armed compounds
Twilght Page 3
