This page is for comments on the feature about the 10th Anniversary of the LA Uprising of 1992.

It's an insult to use the euphemism "uprising" when describing the Los Angeles Riots and in the same sentence say that the "uprising" was a defining moment for the Korean-American community. For people with fantasies about smashing the state, smashing the windows of merchants might be an uprising, but for those of us in the Korean community who had to see our shops looted, it is a day of tragedy and should definitely be called a riot. Uprising, my ass.

well maybe you should think about how your economic priveleged community has gone into poor ghettos and controlled all the small buisnesses. and often won't even hire the local people. you should think about how that makes others feel. the korean community was hurt in the LA riots but it dosnt compare to 200 years of the economic exploitation and rape of the black community.

THE LOCAL COMMUNITIES SHOULD CONTROL THE LOCAL BUISNESSES!!! As long as this dosnt happen non-community owned local capitalist buisnesses will always get smashed in riots cuz they are one of the many cuases for the peoples problems.

it was an uprising ..... its just to bad it didn't spread to all working people so that they might take back there work places and communities from the rich.

The Los Angeles riots were a class insurrection with sadly hegemonic racial overtones. The only article one needs to read is here:

http://lists.village.virginia.edu/spoons/aut_html/Aufheben/auf1la.htm

If we are posting statements, then that is my statement.

For Anarchy and class war,

Sphinx

Latasha Harlins was a 15 year old African American girl who was shot in the back of the head by Korean Grocer, Soon Ja Du. The store owner suspected the girl of shoplifting a cartoon of Orange Juice. For that, she was killed.

The incident was the culmination of tensions between the Black and Korean communities that has simmered for years. Cultural differences lead to horrible misunderstandings, but the underpinning to the rift was the history of Black disempowerment in L.A.

Korean immigrants, who moved into poor Black areas to set up shops, could not understand the resentment and hostility of African Americans who did not have the financial means to do the same. The result was predictable... especially after the murder of Harlins, which illustrated the racist insensitivity of Korean shop owners when it came to Black.

Hopefully race relations have improved over 10 years. I have many Korean friends and respect the Korean people. I visited "Korean Town" on Western Blvd. the week after it was burned to the ground. It was the saddest thing I ever saw. Innocent people suffered terrible losses. The class rage and anger of Blacks and other poor folk was misdirected towards the Korean community (with Latasha Harlins still in mind).

It WAS a rebellion... despite the sufferings of innocent people. Innocent people ALWAYS suffer in insurrections, rebellions, and revolutions. I'm not justifying that... it's just a statement of fact.

It was a rebellion (not a riot), against injustice, police brutality, poverty, and the very system of class inequality.

The LA riots were a good sign. Despite the systematic oppression engendered by a system which engenders economic inequality, it's no surprise we saw riots. Especially in Los Angeles. The riots showed us that the community is still alive. Despite the overwhelming concentration, and centralization of counter-production and mass marketing, the community is still capable of responding to the repressive dynamics of the capitalist agenda. We are still capable of taking to the streets when that spark of anger is lit... No matter how complicated, manipulative and deceptive the system may seem, we as people still have the fire of rebellion within us. And we can unleash it at any time.

Los Angeles is a pool of kerosene just waiting for that one spark to come along, and blow it up into flames. The riots were a direct consequence of the economic inequality engendered by the capitalist system. The riots were a direct consequence of the destabability and manipulative social breakdown engendered by the capitalist system. The riots were a direct consequence of the systematic war waged by the state against the people - mostly predominately colored working class - who rose up in the streets in effort to wage their own war against the suppression of freedom and equality. And when it came down to it, that was the root of the situation. Why were people were looting? Why were people burning police cars? It was the feeling of freedom. A feeling never experienced. It was the feeling of anger. One that was kept locked within an individual, just waiting to be unleashed. All this began to violently break out of the chains of society which suppressed such feelings. We saw people take to the streets with riots and fire. Anger and the blood for revenge. It was the expression of that which had been suppressed for too long until something finally happened. It was the human response to repression. And it was completely natural.

The riots were a good sign. Not only did they show us an anger we've always been thought to hide, an emotion we've always been tough to forbid expression of, not only did they display the expression of a freedom never experienced, but also explained to us that we are ALL the victims of this system. We are all the victims of capitalism. And as long as we remain the victims, we as people still can unleash the fire of rebellion at any given time.

Calling the riots an uprising is wishful thinking. Looking at them as a sign that community spirit is alive is also wishful thinking.

They were riots. Expressions of undirected rage.

And they were riots that set back the community considerably. It was anything but a sign of hope for the oppressed peoples of Los Angeles.

If it had been an "uprising," the rioters would have burned the buildings of the oppressors, not their neighbors. Not a single business in Simi Valley or Bel Air got torched. No, it was all other working-class businesses, Korean-owned businesses, and the community itself. It was a victory for the System -- the rich lost nothing, and the poor had their neighborhoods further degraded. Furthermore, the System now has more "proof" that the inner city can't be trusted.

(I put up the center column feature, in case anyone has major complaints.)

I chose the term "uprising" and not "riot" or "rebellion" because it was the preferred term on what I thought were the better written pages about the event. It was all those things and more, at the same time, and I think it's restrictive to limit how the event is named. It was a "riot", because there was chaos and people looting and rioting. It was also a "rebellion" for (some of) the reasons stated above.

It's been stated, above, that the Korean shopowners were "privileged". I disagree with that assertion completely. Immigrants tended to engage in businesses in poor communities for a number of reasons, but the main motivators were language barriers and lack of access to "good jobs". Due to immigration law restrictions, the first waves of immigrants tended to be educated middle class people. Due to language barriers, the need to become re-certified in their trade, and general societal racism against them, they found themselves excluded from participation in the middle class. So, what happened was, they ended up in the working class, and lived in the ghetto.

Dissatisfied with their condition, some became business owners. They raised their income, and moved out of the neighborhood. They were racial outsiders when they were living there, and became economic outsiders when they left. If they made a lot of money, they expand into other ghettos. Alienated from the local community by race, class, and geography, they became a "middleman minority".

The middleman minority is a class that exists to buffer the upper class from the violence from the working class and "under class" (unemployed, underground economy, homeless, etc.). All poor people occasionally riot. Sometimes, the middle classes will riot against the ruling classes. It's just a fact of urban living under inequality, an uprising of the powerless against the powerful. (It's a tradition in American, Africa, and Korea!)

Always, the ruling class (media) says it's immoral and wrong and "the fault of the poor", because they're always the targets of violence, whether it's directly against them, or indirectly through violence directed at the middlemen. They never look at it historically and say, "this mass violence is similar to this incident in this other city, five years ago, which was similar to Watts, which was similar to..." They call it "chaos" and deliberately overlook the long term patterns of small and large scale conflict (i.e. Soon Da Ju and Daryl Gates).

(This idea of the middleman would seem to parallel the role of Israel in US-Middle East relations. It's not the same thing, but, there are some parallels.)

So, the middleman in this situation is the Korean shop owner, and the comparitively powerless are the Blacks and the Latins who live in the neighborhoods. It's been said above that the problem is that there aren't enough Black owned businesses. I agree, but, I don't think it's the fault of Koreans that they aren't Black (just joking! [I know there are Black Korean Americans!] ).

The reason there aren't more Black owned businesses is due partly to "Black flight", of African Americans leaving the areas where they were once forced to live, to move out to the west side, or to the Inland Empire. Unlike the Koreans, the rising middle class of Blacks face no language barriers, and I think in some situations, less racism than Koreans. Given that they can make their $50,000 a year working a "regular job", why would a Black person operate a tiny shop in the ghetto? The glass ceiling for male African Americans (and Asian Americans) is around the lower VP level, so it's not like owning a liquor store is a compelling option! Store hours are long, and you have to deal with shoplifting, extortion, physical labor, etc. So, what you're seeing a significant Black brain drain, and that creates a vacuum into which other minorities enter.

That's how I see it.

Now, that all said, I feel I need to state that not all Koreans are shop owners. They're more likely to become shopowners than other ethnicities, but the shopowners are still a small minority. There exists a Korean underclass, and they work in sweatshops, as illegal immigrant laborers, in massage parlors. As a nation, they suffered a horrible racist occupation by Japan, forms of slavery, and were pawns for the US and China in the Korean War. So, at some level, they are not that alien to the Black experience in America.

What I wonder is: "how do we prevent April 29 from happening again?" and "how might we mobilize to stop fighting within the working class, and direct that energy against the people at the top?"

a couple of people have told me that W. is showing up in LA today to speak with "black leaders" We should not let W show his face anywhere in the US without a protest presence. We live in the belly of the beast and we cannot let the europeans and people in other countries outdo us in protesting this oil tyrant who was not elected and should step down. Is he coming? Are we protesting?

Though I am not a big fan of John Zerzan, he has some interesting things to say in Elements of Refusal about "riots." In particular, he talks about the looting that took place in NYC during the power outages and the way that people took advantage of the situation to get what they wanted from the system, and if I remember correctly, he waxes poetic on the burning yearning of breaking glass in storefronts and the underlying pulse for change (?). You can see by my (?) that I dont remember the crux of the argument so well, but what is memorable is the way in which he managed to talk about the looting as a spontaneous element of refusal to go along with the repressive social order.

Much in a way like how certain writers talked about the wildcat gas-tax strikes last year in Europe by truckers and such that almost paralyzed the continent. coming from my eco-background, I was thinking- "you selfish fucks just want your money." But I think I was reading some situationist folks, they said along the same lines of that post who said "there are good things that came out of the rebelion, it showed that the community can respond to oppression." And though the gas tax thing may or may not be "progressive" it is grounds to build upon. And I think many situationists would say that these times of "unorganized" uprisings where people rise up chaotically without leaders are the true times of revolutionary potential.

And while I agree with calling the LA Riots as an uprising (If you havent guessed by my tone, I was living in Maine at the time) it also seems like a riot- a riot in the best and worst sense of the word. Also, uprising here seems at best little more then a poetic sense unless community groups were organizing to actually work for change on an institutional level. Community groups with grassroots cred that actually meant things to people, or that were spontaneously organized to create change.

I, in truth think that uprisings and "revolutions" in the way that they have been romanticized are based on left over paris commune ideas of the 19th century that though very exciting are a. highly unrealistic b. incredibly undemocratic.

Not that I am not a fan of temporary autonomous zones, but long-term uprisings made of violence have as much the ability to empower those with guns as they do to empower those who are interested in creating fair and equitable society.

Long term lowlevel cultural and political resistance tied with long term cultural creation and grassroots neighborhood building seems to be the real revolution.

I think the importance placed on race regarding the riots (there is a great tradition of riots as vehicles for social change) is excessive and out of line to what I experienced. The Korean stores were attacked because that's all there is in the inner city, over-priced, Korean-owned stores, they are the face of capitalism. There were shitloads of Black and Latino owned shops that were also ransacked.
All the coverage that's been happening lately in the mainstream media has focused almost exclusively on the racial aspect when what's necessary is looking into it as a modern Bread riot.
The Aufheben article (mentioned above) is absolutely the best thing I've ever read on the subject. Later.

Bleecch! The news media is just falling over itself with positive goody-goddy coverage of how great things are in Los Angeles, 10 years later. If I hear one more interview with a reverend or store owner, I think I'll vomit!
Why aren't the folks who actually participated in the streets ever interviewed? Are they not deemed articulate or academic enough? I'm even dissapointed with KPFK. Their retrospective piece on the morning show was full of the same claptrap religious officials, community "leaders" and super moral residents (looting is bad, bad...). I'm not saying these people should be left out of the discussion but a real critical understanding of the events of ten years ago can only be had by taking into account the experiences of the folks who were there in the streets. I've heard many first hand accounts through the years of friends who were involved in the riots and from what it seems, they had lots of fun! There was a carnival atmosphere, lots of friendly helpfulness and a feeling of taking back one's life. History often forgets these stories...

The riots were just that...riots. If they were aimed at destroying an opressive or unjust force(like the perceived infiltration of poor black communities by priveledged Korean shop owners) then it would be an uprising or revolt. This was a riot. An all out bloody riot where everyone was a target first and racially aligned later. Are we forgetting that there was intraracial violence as well? Pretty good indication that it was not split into the clear racial lines everyone seems to believe. Everyone seems so intent on aligning themselves with every statement of 'opression' that it is becoming ridiculous.

where is the Aufheben article which is mentioned on this page??

An interesting perspective to take on this is to look at the riots as a site of "identity reclamation". Whether you looted overpriced consumer goods (hey, might as well take the best you can get), or became some kind of "community healer", you were using the moment of social unrest to make a concrete claim to an identity.

But, also viewed from that perspective, the event was a mess. In order to get at some goods, people destroyed buildings. People had to die so others could be peacemakers. There's better ways to form identities than to trade on people's tragedies.

Maybe people talk about it in racial terms because race is so uncomfortable to deal with, outside of the context of acute violence. Or, they're avoiding the class aspects of it.

Race and class are intertwined. I guess there's a tendency to say it's one or the other, depending on whether you're feeling Marxist or not at any given moment.

just the link

Simi business owners are just as much working class as the Korean business owners of LA. Class and power status are not always most accurately judged by skin color.

Its the invisibility of American apartheid that is responsible for that misdirected rage. Its part of the system and no one community can be held responsible.

After Carlo Giuliani was murdered by police, people started burning banks. They also smashed telephone booths, traffic lights, gas stations, and businesses, burned cars, and looted shops (both big and small.) The looters did not really get anything -- just gathered the stuff that had been private and put it on the street to make it public. It was grassroots property redistribution. The locals joined in. It was a very surreal atmosphere; terrible and beautiful and completely disconnected all at the same time. A cop might beat you senseless one minute just for being there, chase you with a tank, and then politely check your ID when he sees you later.

Human beings used as dogs -- that's what cops are; human weapons of the state, shot full of drugs and propaganda, denied food and sleep, kept just barely at bay and then turned loose on innocent civilians like rabid pit bulls. I can not believe that cops are sane; it must be something about their uniform, something about the role that their jobs put them in, something about carrying those batons and those guns that makes them feel they can rape and beat and massacre our children, our husbands and wives, our brothers and our sisters again and again and again and still get away with it -- and they do. The LAPD taught the Genoa cops everything they knew. The Genoa cops bought their lead-filled batons (illegal in Europe) and 200 body bags from the USA. The Italian military police were complaining that the LAPD trainers were too "militaristic"!

Police are an occupying force on society, put there to enforce "order," the status quo, and protect the privilege and false morality of the ruling class. You cannot destroy police brutality until you destroy the systems of profit-driven oppression that give them their orders. Carlo Giuliani was murdered because he was an anarchist and lived in a squat. Carlo Giuliani was murdered because a 20-year-old boy was drafted into the Italian military and sent out into a riot situation with a big gun but without proper training. Carlo Giuliani was murdered because the cop was scared out of his mind. Carlo Giuliani was murdered because of a boy with a gun who took his orders from a powerful person, who took his orders from another powerful person, who took his orders from another powerful person -- and on and on, until it ceases to be people who give the orders, but Empire itself.

Capitalism itself killed Carlo Giuliani, because it was against class revolt that the police were deployed. Burning property does not smash capitalism, but it does establish standards; if you murder our people, riots will ensue. Until we live in a society in which justice is mediated by a truly fair system of law and retribution, until we live in a society in which poor people are no longer punished for the theft and massacres perpetrated by the ruling class -- riots will always be the natural consequence of murder. L.A. blacks and Latinos weren't going to put on their suits and ties and petition Congress nicely to please stop occuppying their city and murdering their little girls and beating their men; to strike back at the vestiges of capitalism was the only means to deconstruct the symbols of the system that caused the murder of Latasha Harlins and the beating of Rodney King... and in so doing, to rob the system of its psychological power.

As Jacques Prevert writes, "Sardines protected by boxes. Boxes protected by glass windows. Glass windows protected by cops. Cops protected by fear. So many barricades protecting 6 miserable sardines against the hungry man!" Beating and murder by police, let alone hunger and misery, are so commonplace, I'm surprised there are not riots every day, all over the world. That's why they need drugs, and schools, and voting, and churches, and economic "empowerment zones" to keep us docile. The L.A. riots were a sign, which has been largely ignored by the global justice community. The Korean shopowners were not to blame, but they suffered. The Latino and Black communities were not to blame, but they suffered. Simi Valley was to blame, and did not suffer. It was a race riot, it was a class rebellion, it was a carnival, it was beautiful, it was traumatic... ultimately, it hurt the neighborhoods that were already suffering.

L.A. 1992 a mass act of non-cooperation with the system of ownership of private property. It was a breakdown of respect for "law," "order," and the status quo. It is possible to noncooperate without burning and breaking, but this is one way. The world needs more mass acts of non-cooperation. The world will have them, before too long.

re: the terms "riot" and "uprising": a riot is a form of uprising, a way of carrying out an uprising. calling it uprising is just calling it what it is.

the cops beating rodney king--now that was more just a riot than anything else. chaotic, sadistic violence.

marching in nice little roped off lines surrounded by cops and helicopters hovering overhead, and watching the shit going down right now, I feel more and more frustrated and ready to move this shit forward fast. I feel like it's time to start agitating for another uprising. johnk is right above that we have to figure a way to get the oppressed to stop infighting and direct it at the top. I propose that everyone starts thinking in these terms--talk to people, raise the level of urgency and excitement, sticker the city, poster the city, flyer the city, call for uprising and unity, call for change, make the Power nervous and edgy, make the people excited and ready.

The city is ready to play again and let it loose.

10,000 people march on the federal building and you know the most beautiful thing I saw about it was the feeling of festivity and play, people joking and laughing and horsing around ("what do we want?" "TO EAT, WE'RE HUNGRY!!!"). This is the energy we need to mobilize and agitate to action. I propose everybody start the play in motion in your communities and families and circles of friends, with strangers on the bus, on the streets, everywhere, so when the flashpoint comes, which it will soon enough, we will all be ready to make it happen, and this time, for reals. Load up the carpool and head to Rodeo, Century City, Downtown business district, Hancock Park, Beverly Hills, the racist beach cities.

It's time to rise up again. It's time to unify. It's time to play, LA. Get ready.