that was seeing it as a riot and an uprising.
There’s both horror and rage and a sense of extreme impotence,
and saying, “What are we gonna do?”
So,
I got together with a group of people
and we organized a press conference on
the Warner Brothers lot
on
Wednesday,
um,
with
the entertainment industry people,
and it was
really quite an extraordinary event
because
some people objected,
even as late as Wednesday,
to the fact that our press release
said …
calling it an uprising
and decrying the verdict.
And
some
powerful people in Hollywood
called up, having looked at our press release,
and saying,
“Well we agree with everything but how can you decry the verdict?”
(She laughs)
And we said, You can’t, you know.
This is not gonna happen
if people in the entertainment industry are gonna get up and speak
out.
The truths gotta be told.
We’re not gonna, like,
pretend to be parents here,
and it was such an obvious
paternalistic
response.
And there was a lot of
discomfort,
I felt,
not amongst the young actors,
not amongst
some of the young directors,
but amongst the older
group,
that were more established,
that there should be
a response saying,
“Stop the violence.”
But not one that was prepared to say,
“This verdict is out of the question
and we don’t blame you.”
And it was a funny thing
because
we did this press conference on
twenty-four-hour notice,
again
because Hollywood is a little bit about putting on a show.
People were worried and saying,
“Gee, what happens if the news media don’t show up,
or the wrong people show up and you fail?”
There is a sense
of, “If we’re going to go out
we have to make sure that we don’t fail,”
which has come from
twenty years of Republican and
Democratic
party politics—
as opposed to street politics—
where it isn’t about failing,
it’s about
struggle
and telling the truth
and being angry
and
so what if only three people show up?
You’ve done something.
And then there was …
Our house became,
it was,
there were about fourteen kids
who live in West Hollywood
and
who work at Warner Brothers or at our company
who came
to live at our house.
Well, they feel like kids—
early twenties
to mid twenties—
and they all moved in
because they felt their houses weren’t safe.
Yeah,
their houses weren’t safe.
And they had come to our company
because of our politics
and known it was a place to come and talk,
so we said come back to our house and stay with us, and
it became
Camp Rosenberg for the next five days.
(she listens)
In Brentwood,
I think was the most interesting thing for me,
which was taking
all these kids
who’d grown up
hearing about the sixties,
who were political,
who had no place to put it—
white kids,
black middle-class kids
who were living at our house—
and for them,
being glued to the television,
they had a kind of Jungian collective unconscious
connection,
as political kids,
now, with what happened before,
but no place to put it.
I was organizing this press conference and on the phone all night
going down with the food.
I’m sure you’ve heard from everybody what those weeks were like.
People who had lived in Los Angeles all their lives,
had never been to South Central,
I mean, went in caravans with me.
I mean, that’s pretty scary.
I don’t know any other city that would happen in.
I’m in Chicago now,
people are in the South Side all the time,
you can’t avoid it,
and everyone knows Harlem,
and it isn’t true
in Los Angeles.
A lot of people who have lived there for twenty-five years
had never ever gone.
And these kids had never gone.
It’s as if it is a different
country,
and that’s the view—
and that’s the horror of Los Angeles.
So it was an extraordinary time.
First I went to the AME,
and from there I went to Diane Watson’s headquarters,
and
first we went
throughout Beverly Hills and West L.A.
and made everybody give us food
and talk about feeling like I was back in SDS,
trashing someplace,
going in and saying you’ve got to give us food
and stopping everybody who was on the line out
for money
and everybody on every aisle—
“Give me a buck, give me this”—
and watching their reactions to it
was also fabulous for these kids.
It was like street theater.
There they were going up
to managers—
they watched
me do it a couple of times—
and going up to the people and organizing
people in Mrs. Gooch’s in Beverly Hills,
and at one point we had run out of stuff
and we kept going down,
and in the early—
in the morning, when we went,
it was …
there were lots of people in clean-up and all of that
by
late
Saturday afternoon.
You got there
and
and the line
of people distributing food
into Diane Watson’s,
right behind her headquarters,
into the warehouse there,
was now a completely
multiracial
and multicultural line of people.
Young people in their twenties
passing food
and everybody …
everytime someone came up
in a Mercedes or a station wagon or whatever
with food, who had never been there before,
everybody was applauding,
and there was a sense
of
a community here,
and you
felt the possibility,
you believed
that it actually could change,
and of course
here we are a year later,
(seven-second pause)
; didn’t change.
All,
all
the
language
was there,
and all the big gestures
were there,
and,
and,
I guess
what disturbed me,
which I really … what I would wanna talk about the most
about that week,
was watching rich white people guard
their houses
and send their children
out of L.A.
as if
the devil was coming after them.
And
it wasn’t realistic.
It was,
I think, a media fest
of making white people
scared
of the African-American community,
and, and
nothing had changed.
Nothing.
And everybody—
people who were well-intentioned and understood that nothing had
changed …
The degree to which
the city—
the white community—
went into a sense of real terror,
and, and
an inward looking self-protectiveness,
as opposed to standing up and saying,
“We are gonna stand by whatever,
if the verdict is this,
and
these people are found not guilty,
it will be unjust and we will stand together.”
It was as if nothing,
no connection, had been made,
because it can’t be made
in four days.
It’s a fake …
It was a fake
euphoria we all felt.
It was the euphoria of,
“Look at what’s possible not what’s real.”
Uhm,
and, and
everything
retreated,
and the most—
the heightened example of it being retreated was …
of the retreating was the way
the media treated
the last week
and the way
the white community reacted to it
and the rich white community reacted to it.
(five-second pause)
(much lower volume, much less intention)
Everybody’s scared in L.A.
Application of the Laws
Bill Bradley Senator, D-New Jersey
(His office in the Senate Building. A Sunday in February 1993. A well-lit office with wonderful art on the wall. He is dressed in jeans but is wearing very elegant English shoes. His daughter is in the other part of the empty office doing her homework. They are on their way to a basketball practice for her.)
I mean, you know, it’s still …
there are people who are, uh,
who the law treats in different ways.
I mean, you know, one of the things that strike me about,
uh, the events of Los Angeles, for example, was, um, the following:
I have a friend,
an African-American,
uh, was, uhhh,
I think a second-year Harvard Law School student.
And he was interning
a summer in the late seventies
out in LA, at a big law firm,
and every Sunday
the … the different partners would …
would invite the interns to their home
for tea or brunch or whatever.
And this was a particular Sunday and he was on his way driving
to one of the partners’ homes.
There’s a white woman in the car with him.
I think she was an intern.
I’m not positive of that.
They were driving and they were in the very …
just about the neighborhood of the,
uh, partner, obviously well-to-do neighborhood in Los Angeles.
Suddenly he looks in the rearview mirror.
There is a, uh, police car,
red light.
He pulls over.
Police car pulls in front of him,
pull … police car pulls behind him,
police car pulls beside of him.
Police jump out,
guns, pull him out of the car,
throw him to the floor,
put a handcuff on him behind his back.
All the while pointing a gun at him.
Run around to the woman on the other side. “You’re being held
against your will, aren’t you, being held against your will.”
She gets hysterical
and they keep their guns pointed.
Takes them fifteen or twenty minutes to convince them.
“No, no, I’m not, uh, I’m not, uh, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m an intern, law firm,
I’m on my way to a meeting, partner’s brunch.”
And after that, he convinces them of that, while his head is down in
the ground, right?
They take the handcuff off.
They say, “Okay, go ahead.”
They put their hats on, flip their sunglasses down, get in their police
cars, and drive away, as if nothing happened.
So my first reaction
to that is, um …
The events of April aren’t new
or the Rodney King
episode isn’t news in Los Angeles
or in many other places.
My second thought is: What did the partner of that law firm do on
Monday?
Did the partner call the police commissioner?
Did the partner call anybody?
The answer is no.
And it gets to, well,
who’s got responsibility here?
I mean, all of us have responsibility
to try to improve the circumstances
among the races of this country.
I mean, you know, uh, a teenage mother’s got a responsibility
to realize that if she has more children the life chances of those
children are gonna be less;
the gang member’s gotta be held accountable for his finger on a gun.
Right?
The corporate executive has gotta be responsible for hiring and
promoting diverse talent
and the head of the law firms gotta be responsible for that as well,
but
both the corporate executive and the law firm have to use their moral power.
It’s not a total contradiction.
I don’t think it is. The moral power of the law firm
or corporation when
moments arise such as my friend’s face in the ground with the gun
pointed at his head because he was in the wrong neighborhood and
black
and the moral power of those institutions have to be brought to bear
in the public institutions, which in many places are not
fair.
To put it mildly.
Right? And the application of the law
before which we are all in theory equal.
Something Cooking Here
Otis Chandler A director of the Times Mirror Company
(Former editor of the Los Angeles Times. An elegant man, thoughtful and soft-spoken. We are in an office at the Times. He is drinking iced tea.)
I think
if you think about America and you think about the families
that have had the opportunities
by accumulation of wealth, whether it be newspapers or mining
or
whatever, and you think about
who … what families
have really made a contribution over many generations, there aren’t
many.
I can think of the
(He counts his fingers)
&nbs
p; Kennedys,
the Rockefellers,
maybe the Mellons in Pittsburgh,
hopefully,
immodestly, the Chandlers
in Los Angeles,
but there aren’t very many.
Most of ’em
just sat around and piddled the wealth away,
became alcoholics or whatever. They couldn’t … couldn’t take the
notoriety
and the open door.
They didn’t go for it.
But
I don’t want you to go away
from this
visit thinking that I’m …
that I
feel it’s hopeless
or that it can never be made right
or that we should just throw money at it
or we should just make speeches.
It’s going to have to be a lot of things
and a lot of people participating,
but there has to be that commitment
for the long term.
It can’t be
well, let’s just
do a couple things
for a few years and it will go away.
I think, Anna,
we’re talking about
a long time
to get a handle on this.
We’re talking about a lot of things
that are gonna be tried
and fail.
We’re going to have to be patient,
we’re going to have to be resolute,
that this is all going to … someday,
whether
it’s five years or ten years,
but this is going to be a safe,
pleasant city
for everybody,
regardless of where they live
or what they do
or what the color of their skin is.
Somehow we have to make
that wonderful …
Somehow we have to make
that dream
come true
and I’m not going to give up.
Somehow this whole thing cannot be allowed to lapse
back into business as usual.
There’s nothing to stop …
within another year or two …
I wish I could answer your question
and provide hope.
There’s hope but there’s no easy answer.
I’ve thought a lot about that
and I’ll give you a few thoughts.
We mustn’t …
we,
the whole community,
political leadership,
private leadership,
we can’t allow
again
the situation to be …
to deteriorate
again
after a year or two years of hope and building
and new alliances, promises,
political speeches,
a new mayor, all of the things that are going on now,
and then
be diverted.
Inevitably
other things creep on the agenda
and pretty soon,
human nature being what it is,
and
that
can’t happen again
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