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Looting: My story.
Sep. 2nd, 2005 01:30 pmThe word "looting" is a hot button. Push it and people reliably react with their prejudices about poverty, property, race, violence, and law. Use it on me, and I get a tape replay from the Los Angeles riots of '92. Here's what I saw then, and what I learned.
In 1992 I was living in West Los Angeles and working at home and downtown. I had a small failing DIY medical records business and my best friend Greg had a small failing DIY courier business. I used his courier business to deliver my work to California Hospital, which is in the industrial part of Downtown Los Angeles. I was also working part-time at Good Samaritan Hospital, which is just west of Downtown in the Westlake/Pico-Union district.
On the day of the Rodney King police beating verdict I was at a computer store run by some Iranian friends. When the news came out they shook their heads and said "There will be a riot". I didn't believe them and thought they were exaggerating or misinterpreting an adopted country. I went home that night feeling awful about the miscarriage of justice.
( Good morning. Your city is on fire. )
So, that's what I see when I hear the word "looting". Sad, fucked-up people making life worse for other people who aren't much better off. And civil unrest means theft, and score-settling violence, and opportunistic crimes of all kinds. Exaggeration isn't necessary; excuses cannot excuse.
The questions to be asked, when looting and civil unrest occur, are: How did we get to this point? Who was in charge, and what could they have done better? And what problems, still unsolved, mean that this may happen again? If we can't focus properly on the immediate and long-term causes of communal violence, we'll get ample opportunity in the future to appropriate someone else's misery for our own failed ideologies.
In 1992 I was living in West Los Angeles and working at home and downtown. I had a small failing DIY medical records business and my best friend Greg had a small failing DIY courier business. I used his courier business to deliver my work to California Hospital, which is in the industrial part of Downtown Los Angeles. I was also working part-time at Good Samaritan Hospital, which is just west of Downtown in the Westlake/Pico-Union district.
On the day of the Rodney King police beating verdict I was at a computer store run by some Iranian friends. When the news came out they shook their heads and said "There will be a riot". I didn't believe them and thought they were exaggerating or misinterpreting an adopted country. I went home that night feeling awful about the miscarriage of justice.
( Good morning. Your city is on fire. )
So, that's what I see when I hear the word "looting". Sad, fucked-up people making life worse for other people who aren't much better off. And civil unrest means theft, and score-settling violence, and opportunistic crimes of all kinds. Exaggeration isn't necessary; excuses cannot excuse.
The questions to be asked, when looting and civil unrest occur, are: How did we get to this point? Who was in charge, and what could they have done better? And what problems, still unsolved, mean that this may happen again? If we can't focus properly on the immediate and long-term causes of communal violence, we'll get ample opportunity in the future to appropriate someone else's misery for our own failed ideologies.
