April 29th, 1992

I've had a love affair with Sublime for many, many years. This was always one of my favorite songs, even though they DID get the date wrong. So I sat down this morning and watched vidos of the carnage and mayhem that actually took place in Los Angeles on this particular day 15 years ago.

I was twelve years old. Twelve. I vaguely remember something about a man who had been beaten by the police, and I don't remember the riots at all. Why would they? I was unaffected, living in white suburbia land.

So I took these few moments - not that I have any to spare, but I made myself - to educate myself about this event. Huge. Historic. I can't fathom the depth of the frustration that would lead to something like this. Over and over, you hear people explaining their actions after the fact by saying, "We just got caught up in the moment.. we never meant for - " {insert problem here}. These range from "him to die," "him to be brain damaged," "the building to burn," and a million other crimes.

Los Angeles was a war zone - literally. The footage from this week looks eerily like something you would see in Darfur or Somalia - burned out buildings, shells of vehicles, people using barricades and positioning themselves behind piles of ANYTHING to avoid gunfire. Through all of it, there are videos of looters laughing and waving as they carry merchandise from stores.

This is not like the riots of the 60's - those were more "organized," if you could call it that. Even here in Kansas City, it was contained to a small "black" area, but the Panthers were determined that black-owned businesses and homes weren't destroyed. They focused their aggression on whites who were profiting off of them and exploiting their poverty. They burned credit accounts at white-owned grocery stores. They broke windows and burned white-owned cafes.

The Los Angeles riots were nothing like this. No one was safe. No one was excluded. I can't imagine the terror these people felt just trying to drive home from work that afternoon - teenagers throwing bricks and cinder blocks at their car windows.

Fifty three people died. One billion dollars in damages occurred. I wonder if we've learned anything? My father-in-law quotes Rodney King at least once a week - "Can't we all just get along?"