Twilght

by Anna Deavere Smith

  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