Can We All Just Get Along?
Good morning, it’s the first day of May. In the late 1880s, after Chicago police shot six striking workers to death, the date became associated with the international labor movement. When Labor Day was officially designated a U.S. federal holiday in 1894, the more neutral month of September was chosen. But May Day is still observed around the world, most dutifully in communist countries.
For the past two decades, May Day has also been the anniversary of a brief and eloquent appeal intended to quell another historic episode of police misconduct. On May 1, 1992, Rodney King, beseeched his city for calm.
King was an ex-con beaten by Los Angeles police officers after an 8-mile car chase. A portion of his arrest had been videotaped, and the L.A.P.D. officers seen hitting King with metal batons and kicking him while he was on the ground were charged criminally. The officers’ acquittal a year later prompted three days of mayhem in South-Central Los Angeles.
Clearly shaken by the rioting, Rodney King implored, “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along?”
It’s a question that lingers even after Rodney King himself has passed away.
The 1992 Los Angeles riots did not take place because of a single example of excessive force on the part of a handful of police officers. In some ways, this was a labor story, too.
Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and other Southern California civic leaders were convinced that their region was recession proof, and was at the cutting edge of successful multiculturalism. The city, Bradley proclaimed, was “at the brink of a great destiny.”
Actually, as author Lou Cannon detailed in his seminal book on the root causes of the riots, the city’s fiscal and economic circumstances were perched perilously on a canyon ledge – and the working-class blacks and Latinos crowded together in South-Central were trying hard to not fall off.
Economists and elected officials had misjudged just how much the state’s prosperity depended on its disproportionate share of military spending. In the Cold War years, California received up to $100 billion annually in federal defense spending. By 1992, it was half that much.
The end of the Cold War meant a diminishment of associated industries, too. In the five years preceding the riots, California lost some 140,000 aerospace jobs -- at a time the state was growing so rapidly it needed to create 200,000 new jobs a year just to stay even.
“The aerospace collapse sent an enormous ripple through the economy, as housing construction nose-dived and the thinly stretched real estate bubble burst,” Lou Cannon wrote in Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD.
“While relatively few poor blacks or Latinos were directly employed by aerospace companies, they held jobs in the markets, shops, restaurants, and service stations along the Los Angeles County coast and into Orange County," he added "Many of these jobs vanished. One economist put the California employment loss over seven years at 300,000, including jobs from military-base closings.”
Other manufacturing jobs were disappearing, too. In the 15 years before the riots, 10 of the 12 largest non-aerospace plants closed their doors, including a General Motors factory, which employed many African Americans from South-Central.
The unexpected economic downturn deprived residents of the Golden State of their famously sunny outlook, noted pollster Mervin Field. In his surveys, Field found unprecedented levels of pessimism among Californians of all demographic descriptions.
A diminished tax base exacerbated the problems localities had in raising money after the restrictions of Proposition 13. Sacramento cut its payments to the cities and counties, which in turn cut services to the citizens. During the riots, the LAPD responded to emergencies in unreliable cars with 100,000 miles while fielding calls over radios that often didn’t work.
None of that was an excuse for Rodney King to drink and drive; or to race his car through the streets to avoid arrest; it doesn’t explain why he charged officers after seeming to be subdued; or why one of those officers kicked him when he was on the ground.
It doesn’t explain why KTLA edited out the 3-second section of the famous videotape showing King’s charge; it certainly doesn’t explain the racially motivated violence by blacks who attacked white truck driver Reginald Denny and others. Nor does it explain the brave actions of black South-Central residents who interceded in the beating of Denny, saving his life.
Instead of going back to prison, Rodney King was awarded a $3.8 million settlement from the city of Los Angeles. He continued to have run-ins with the law, invariably due to his abuse of booze and drugs.
When sober, King was uncommonly insightful. “Some people feel like I'm some kind of hero,” he said. “Others hate me. They say I deserved it. Other people, I can hear them mocking me for when I called for an end to the destruction, like I’m a fool for believing in peace.”
Rodney King was not a fool, but he was an addict, and peace was something he found only sporadically in his own life, which ended last year when he drowned in his swimming pool. Although his death was ruled an accident, alcohol, cocaine, and marijuana were found in his blood. He was 47.
But King’s ordeal was not vain. The lessons of the case were taken to heart by Los Angeles authorities, and other police departments across the country, which altered their training methods.
“What happened on that cool March night over two decades ago forever changed me and the organization I love,” said current LAPD chief Charlie Beck after Rodney King died. “His legacy should not be the struggles and troubles of his personal life but the immensely positive change his existence wrought on this city and its police department.”
