LOS ANGELES -- President George W Bush has visited South Central Los Angeles to mark the 10th anniversary of the worst civil unrest the US had witnessed for decades.

Mr Bush told an audience that "new hope" had come out of the 1992 riots - but on the streets, demonstrators protested that nothing had changed.

The president is using the anniversary to promote an initiative to allow faith-based organisations a share of federal funds available to deliver social services in deprived areas.

The riots were touched off after four LA police officers accused of beating black motorist Rodney King were acquitted by an all-white jury.

But while some held hands and prayed at the epicentre of the riots - the intersection of Florence and Normandy - motorists and passers-by shouted "nothing's changed."

A recent poll found that more than 50% of people responded in the affirmative when asked if they believed another round of riots were possible.

"It's a reflection of the tremendous gap between rich and poor, and black and white in our culture," says Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of Southern California.

"I don't know what the trigger will be for the next riots... but if we haven't dealt with the underlying problems it is just a question of when not whether."

When Rodney King first attacked those white police officers' batons with his face, he had a job; he was employed.

Joblessnes was not at the heart of the despair of south central los angeles then and it ain't now ... what was at the heart of that explosion was a society that devalues certain types of human beings, black human beings being the most devalued.

The verdict in Simi Valley was an affirmation for those police officers by their white, former-, current-, and pro-police neighbors, parents and brothers and sisters, that those cops knew what their jobs were, and that they did it damn well.

As a member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement at that time, we joined in with thousands of justice-seeking people at the demonstrations held at Parker Center, but ours was a different message - Chief of Police Darryl Gates - Satan incarnate - has got to go, but what will he be replaced with? It didn't matter if the next Chief of Police was Black, Mexicano/Latino or a woman, it was not the person that was the problem, but the purpose, functions and structure of the police that was the problem.

Two Black police chiefs later, there are no amateur camera-men who have come forward with videos catching police officers' batons being assaulted by heads and faces, but police terrorism is still real, along with corruption and cover-ups.



Black folks in south los angeles did not [and do not] have any ingrained dislike for Korean people; what we disliked then was the image of us that was imported to the Korean people via the u.s. media; images that made [and still make] them believe we were all criminals and less than human beings, not worthy of respect or life.

Korean store owners not respecting us as customers is trivial. Shooting "suspected" robbers and mysteriously losing the security camera video tapes, or accidentally turning off the security cameras is not. We will remember that.

And the video of Soon Jae Doo grabbing Latasha Harlins by the arm, and Latasha hesitating before she hits Doo in an attempt to be released from Doo's grip - Latasha exercising her right to self-defense - will not be forgotten either. The image of a bottle of orange juice being worth more than the life of a Black child must never be forgotten. That is the price of media portrayals of people of Afrikan descent as less than human in this country. Even today, although not as common as back then, you can still find at least one person who actually believes Latasha was trying to steal that bottle of o.j.

None of these things will ever be forgotten. Nor should they.

They will never be forgotten because we felt then and still feel today that, here we have two groups of people of color, both so-called minorities in this country, and one is treating the other the same way that the dominant white society treats us. It saddened us then, and it saddens us now.

WaterAndThunder

mamiwata1965@yahoo.com

Leimert Park