1992 Los Angeles uprising. Riots in Los Angeles (1992)

Cousin K.

Indiana University historian P. Gilge, in his book "Unrest in America" (1997), estimates the number of riots and riots in the United States since the 1600s at approximately 4000. In his opinion, "... without understanding the impact of the riots, we will not be able to fully comprehend the history of the American people ... "

Indeed, how many cases of persecution of various minorities does the history of the United States know? Starting with violence against Indians, blacks, Mexican migrants, Asians, and then increasing ... The black riot in Los Angeles is another example of what even in modern American society there is the problem of racial conflicts. In addition, not the last role in this case the disastrous socio-economic situation of the lower strata of the population, caused by economic crisis.

The prologue to these sad events of the year was an incident that occurred in March 1991. On this day, a police patrol detained a car with three passengers, one of whom stubbornly resisted. It was a young man, a representative of the African American population of the United States, Rodney King. For disobedience, Rodney was severely beaten with four police batons by law enforcement officers. Total young man 56 blows were inflicted, as a result of which he was hospitalized with a fracture of the facial bone, a broken leg, numerous bruises and lacerations.

However, despite the obvious abuse of power, the policemen were acquitted (04/29/1992). All sources describing given event, it is pointedly emphasized that the jury did not include a single representative negroid race(10 whites, 1 Hispanic, 1 Asian).

Events began to develop rapidly. On the same day, when the verdict was passed, thousands of blacks poured into the streets of Los Angeles and staged mass demonstrations, which then turned into pogroms and riots. As a result of deliberate arson, 5500 buildings burned down, the city was shrouded in thick smoke. Los Angeles Airport has temporarily suspended its operations. Then the baton was intercepted by the Hispanic population in the southern and central regions cities. 400 people tried to storm the police headquarters. Everywhere there were calls for an uprising of the colored population against white domination. Many, not directly participating in skirmishes, seized the opportunity and robbed stores with electronics, perfumes, clothing. What was happening was reminiscent of a scene from an action-packed action movie (by the way, the action took place very close to Hollywood and the fashionable Beverly Hills district). The main police forces were concentrated in the east of the city, so this part of the city suffered the least. The next day, riots began in San Francisco.

Only on May 2, 1992, did the authorities decide to act. 9,000 police officers, 10,000 national guardsmen, 3,300 army personnel and marines USA, 1000 FBI officers, as well as armored vehicles, combat and police helicopters. Fire was opened to kill, more than 11 thousand people were arrested.

If not for the incident with the beating of Rodney King, this would have resulted internal stress outside? It seems to me that the population needed only an insignificant impulse, which finally undermined the already barely maintained balance system.

"For the first time in American history most of the demos, and most of Violence and crime, especially robberies, were multiracial in nature, involving everyone - blacks, whites, Asians and Latin America- said Willie Brown, representative of the Democratic Party.

The phenomenon of the "black rebellion" caused considerable damage to the state treasury - $ 1 billion. But no less significant damage was done to the pride of those who rejoiced at the collapse of the USSR. After revenge in the political and economic arena (the US economy was recognized as the most efficient), such a tense internal situation and the socio-economic crisis significantly clouded the picture of American comprehensive well-being.

According to the websites:

1) 1992. Riot in Los Angeles //

About the clashes of 1965, I already, now the story of the next major pogroms in Los Angeles, which occurred in 1992, and again it all started with law-breaking blacks who love to fight lawlessness against themselves everywhere.

US military (05/01/1992)

On March 3, 1991, African-Americans Rodney King, Byrant Allen and Freddie Helms ran away from a police patrol at a speed of 115 mph for 8 miles, but were still stopped. Tim Singer - one of the cops - ordered the passengers to get out of the car and lie face down on the ground. During the arrest, the driver King, already on probation, introduced himself very eccentrically and at some point began to put his hand into his belt, but was stopped by officer Melanie Singer - she pointed a gun at him and ordered him to lie on the ground too. The officer approached King, and without taking away her gun, she was preparing to put on handcuffs. At this point, Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Stacey Kuhn ordered Melanie Singer to sheath her gun because, according to the training, police officers should not approach a detainee with a gun drawn.

Kuhn then ordered the rest of the officers—Lawrence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseno, and Rolando Solano—to handcuff King. As soon as the police tried to do this, King began to actively resist - he jumped to his feet and hit Briseno in the chest. Then Sergeant Kun applied a stun gun to King, filling him up, thus, only the second time. However, he began to rise again, lunging towards Powell, who hit him with a club. At this time, the Argentinean George Holliday, who lived near the place where the events unfolded, began to record what was happening on a video camera. Four officers began to beat King with batons for a minute and a half, inflicting 56 blows during this time, which led to a fracture of the facial bone, a broken leg and multiple bruises.

As a result, four officers were charged with excessive violence by the Los Angeles District Attorney. The first judge in the case was replaced, and the second judge changed the venue and composition of the jury. Simi Valley, in neighboring Ventura County, was chosen as the new site of consideration. The court consisted of the inhabitants of this district. The jury consisted of 10 whites, 1 Hispanic, and 1 Asian. Terry White was the prosecutor.

On April 29, 1992, the jury acquitted the three police officers, except for Powell. On the same day, people who disagreed with the verdict began to hold demonstrations that turned into a riot. The blacks started the riots first, but then the Latin neighborhoods of Los Angeles in the southern and central regions of the city picked up the wave. 400 people tried to storm the police headquarters. The next day, riots spread to San Francisco, where looting also began. For the first time, most of the demonstrations were multiracial in nature, involving everyone - blacks, Hispanics and Asians (Korean shopkeepers were among the main victims). Кстати в основных событиях принимал участие и ниггер Тупак Шакур, известный кому-то своими текстами.

Isn't it Will Smith?

The first to suffer was 33-year-old trucker Reginald Denny - a crowd of rioters pulled him out of the cab and beat him half to death. On TV at that time there was a live broadcast of the beating ( video taken from a helicopter). The policemen were ordered to leave this zone, and in general they did nothing for the first days.

Reginald Denny

As a result, Denny lost his speech and the ability to walk, and this did not stop him from shaking hands with his offender at one show, who was identified by a tattoo on his shoulder, filmed by reporters. By the way, this attacker was given a very lenient sentence, and he was not charged with a hate crime at all.

On the morning of May 1, at the request of the 36th Governor of California, Pete Wilson, hummers with guardsmen were already on their way to help, but they had to get there only by Saturday, so 1,700 employees of various law enforcement. On the evening of the same day, President George W. Bush addressed the people, assuring them that justice would prevail.

The city suspended the movement of buses and intercity trains, was closed "Los Angeles International Airport", which violated air traffic over the country. Sports competitions and concerts were postponed to later days. After cultural capital nation, the uprisings spread to several dozen US cities.

On the fourth day of the riots, reinforcements did enter the city: about 10,000 guards, 1,950 sheriffs and their deputies, 3,300 military and Marines, 7300 police officers and 1000 FBI agents. Mass arrests began, 15 rioters were killed by the police. The Justice Department has announced its intention to launch a federal investigation into the Rodney King beating. And some protesters called on the crowd through a megaphone to go to Hollywood and Beverly Hills to rob the rich.

On May 3, Mayor Tom Bradley told the public that the city was practically back under government control. The next day the curfew was lifted, however, Federal troops remained in the city until May 9, and National Guard until the 14th.

Mayor Tom Bradley and Police Chief Daryl Gates during a press conference on the riots

Thus, during the six days of the Los Angeles riot, according to official figures, 55 people died, more than 2,000 were injured, over 5,500 buildings were burned down and damaged, which amounted to a total damage of $ 1,000,0000,000. Insurance companies called it the fifth largest damage natural disaster throughout US history. But the largest mass arrests were the first in the history of the country - there were more than 11,000 (5,000 blacks, 5,500 Hispanics and 600 whites). The total number of participants in the uprising, according to some estimates, approached a six-figure figure. As for Rodney King, who received terms in the future, he was paid compensation of 3,800,000 dollars from Los Angeles. With some of the money, he opened the label "Alta-Pazz Recording Company", where he began to record rap. And April 29 has since been known in the United States as "Rodney King Day".

Causes of riots

Several circumstances and facts from the period of the early 90s of the XX century can be cited as the causes of the riots. Among them:

extremely high percent unemployment in South Central Los Angeles Los Angeles) caused by the economic crisis;
a strong public belief that the LAPD selects people on a national basis and uses excessive force when making arrests;
the beating of an African-American Rodney King by white police;
particular annoyance of the African-American population of Los Angeles over the sentence handed down to a Korean woman American descent who shot 15-year-old African-American girl Latasha Harlins on March 16, 1991 in her own store.

Detention of Rodney King

On March 3, 1991, after an 8-mile chase, a police patrol stopped Rodney King's car, in which, in addition to King, there were two more African Americans - Byrant Allen (Byrant Allen) and Freddie Helms (Freddie Helms). The first five police officers to be at the scene were Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseno and Rolando Solano. Patrolman Tim Singer ordered King and two of his passengers to get out of the car and lie face down on the ground. The passengers obeyed the order and were arrested, while King remained in the car. When he finally left the cabin, he began to behave rather eccentrically: he giggled, stamped his feet on the ground and pointed with his hand at a police helicopter circling over the place of detention. He then began to tuck his hand into his belt, which led Patrol Officer Melanie Singer to believe that King was about to draw his . Then Melanie Singer took out her gun and pointed it at King, ordering him to lie down on the ground. King complied. The officer approached King, her gun still on him, preparing to handcuff him. At this point, Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Stacey Kuhn ordered Melanie Singer to sheath her gun because, according to the training, police officers should not approach a detainee with a pistol drawn from a holster. Sergeant Kuhn decided that Melanie Singer's actions posed a threat to the safety of King, Kuhn herself, and the rest of the officers. Kuhn then ordered the other four police department officers - Powell, Windu, Briceno and Solano - to handcuff King. As soon as the police tried to do this, King began to actively resist - he jumped to his feet, throwing Powell and Briceno off his back. Further, according to the case, King hit Briseno in the chest. Seeing this, Kun ordered all the officers to step back. Officers later confirmed that King acted as if he were under the influence of phencyclidine, a synthetic narcotic drug developed as an anesthetic for veterinary medicine, however, the results of a toxicological examination showed that there was no phencyclidine in King's blood. Sergeant Kuhn then used a stun gun on King. King groaned and immediately fell to the ground, but then got back on his feet. Then Kun fired her stun gun again, and King fell again. However, he began to rise again, lunging towards Powell, who hit him with a police baton, knocking King to the ground. At this time, what was happening began to record on a video camera a citizen of Argentina, George Holliday, who lived near the intersection near which King was beaten (the recording begins from the moment when King makes an attack towards Powell). Holliday later made the video available to the media.

Powell and three other officers took turns beating King with batons for a minute and a half.

King at the time was on parole on robbery charges and had already been charged with assault, battery and robbery. Therefore, as he later explained in court his unwillingness to obey the demands of the patrol, he was afraid of returning to prison.

In total, the police hit King 56 times with batons. He was hospitalized with a fractured facial bone, a broken leg, multiple bruises, and lacerations.

Trial of the police

The Los Angeles District Attorney charged four officers with excessive violence. The first judge in the case was replaced, and the second judge changed the venue and jury, citing media claims that the jury needed to be challenged. Simi Valley, in neighboring Ventura County, was chosen as the new site of consideration. The court consisted of the inhabitants of this district. Racial composition the jury was: 10 whites, 1 Hispanic and 1 Asian. The prosecutor was Terry White, an African American.

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley said:

"The jury's verdict won't hide from us what we saw on that videotape. The people who beat Rodney King don't deserve to wear LAPD uniforms."

Mass riots

Demonstrations to acquit police juries quickly turned into a riot. Systematic arsons of buildings began - more than 5,500 buildings burned down. People shot at the police and journalists. Several government buildings were vandalized, and the Los Angeles Times newspaper was attacked.

Planes were canceled from the Los Angeles airport, as the city was shrouded in thick smoke.

The blacks were the first to start the riots, but then they spread to the Latin neighborhoods of Los Angeles in the southern and central districts of the city. In the eastern part of the city were concentrated big forces police, and therefore the uprising did not reach her. 400 people tried to storm the police headquarters. The riots in Los Angeles continued for another 2 days.

The next day, the unrest spread to San Francisco. Over a hundred stores were looted there.

Notes

Links

The L.A. Riots: 15 Years after Rodney King from Time.com
Military operations during the 1992 Los Angeles riots - by a participating guardsman
Lessons in command and control from the L.A. riots - Parameters, journal of the Army War College
Flawed Emergency Response during the L.A. riots-professional article
The L.A. 53 - full listing of 53 known deaths during the riots, from the L.A. Weekly
L.A.'s darkest days Christian Science Monitor retrospective and interviews with victims and participants
Charting The Hours of Chaos - a Los Angeles Times article
The LA Riots 1992 - An anarchist perspective focusing on riots, characterizes riots as political uprising.
The Rebellion in Los Angeles - analysis of the LA riots as a proletarian revolt, by libertarian Marxist journal Aufheben.

Cousin K.

Indeed, how many cases of persecution of various minorities does the history of the United States know? Starting with violence against Indians, blacks, Mexican migrants, Asians, and so on increasing ... The black riot in Los Angeles is another example that even in modern American society there is a problem of racial conflicts. In addition, the disastrous socio-economic situation of the lower strata of the population, caused by the economic crisis, played an important role in this case.

The prologue to these sad events of the year was an incident that occurred in March 1991. On this day, a police patrol detained a car with three passengers, one of whom stubbornly resisted. It was a young man, a representative of the African American population of the United States, Rodney King. For disobedience, Rodney was severely beaten with four police batons by law enforcement officers. In total, the young man received 56 blows, as a result of which he was hospitalized with a fracture of the facial bone, a broken leg, numerous bruises and lacerations.

However, despite the obvious abuse of power, the policemen were acquitted (04/29/1992). In all sources describing this event, it is pointedly emphasized that the jury did not include a single representative of the Negroid race (10 whites, 1 Hispanic, 1 Asian).

Events began to develop rapidly. On the same day, when the verdict was passed, thousands of blacks poured into the streets of Los Angeles and staged mass demonstrations, which then turned into pogroms and riots. As a result of deliberate arson, 5500 buildings burned down, the city was shrouded in thick smoke. Los Angeles Airport has temporarily suspended its operations. Then the baton was intercepted by the Hispanic population in the southern and central regions of the city. 400 people tried to storm the police headquarters. Everywhere there were calls for an uprising of the colored population against white domination. Many, not directly participating in skirmishes, seized the opportunity and robbed stores with electronics, perfumes, clothing. What was happening was reminiscent of a scene from an action-packed action movie (by the way, the action took place very close to Hollywood and the fashionable Beverly Hills area). The main police forces were concentrated in the east of the city, so this part of the city suffered the least. The next day, riots began in San Francisco.

Only on May 2, 1992, did the authorities decide to act. 9,000 police officers, 10,000 National Guardsmen, 3,300 US Army and Marines, 1,000 FBI officers were brought into action, as well as armored vehicles, combat and police helicopters. Fire was opened to kill, more than 11 thousand people were arrested.

If not for the incident with the beating of Rodney King, would this internal tension have poured out? It seems to me that the population needed only an insignificant impulse, which completely undermined the already barely maintained balance system.

"For the first time in American history, most of the demonstrations, as well as most of the violence and crime, especially looting, were multiracial in nature, involving everyone - blacks, whites, Asians and Hispanics," said Willie Brown, representative of the Democratic Party.

According to the websites:

1) 1992. Riot in Los Angeles //

December 19th, 2012

The city was clouded with the smoke of fires. Shots rang out in the streets. More than five and a half thousand buildings and structures blazed. Cars on fire choke. The streets were littered with pieces of broken glass. Passenger airliners did not dare to approach the huge metropolis because of the thick smoke and shots from the ground: drugged rebels, seizing rifled weapons, fired at everything that moves. Gangs of blacks and Hispanics engaged in a shootout with shopkeepers. The Koreans especially fought for their own. And someone fled in a panic, throwing property at the mercy of the raging crowd. People of all ages and skin colors enthusiastically robbed supermarkets, taking armfuls of goods out of them. Many drove up to rob in cars. Trunks and cabs stuffed household appliances and electronics, food and auto parts, perfumes and weapons. The police at the beginning of the riots simply retreated and hardly intervened in what was happening. Calls were heard in the streets for colored people to rise up against white domination.

No, this is not a retelling of the content of a Hollywood thriller about the near future of the United States. Not fiction. This is a description of the actual riots that rocked Los Angeles, California, April 29-May 2, 1992.

April 29 of this year marked the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the uprising of blacks and Hispanics in Los Angeles. It lasted 8 days. About 140 people were killed during the uprising. The city's Korean community managed to contain it, and only then the FBI and the National Guard completed the job.

Indeed, how many cases of persecution of various minorities does the history of the United States know? Starting with violence against Indians, blacks, Mexican migrants, Asians, and so on increasing ... The black riot in Los Angeles is another example that even in modern American society there is a problem of racial conflicts. In addition, the disastrous socio-economic situation of the lower strata of the population, caused by the economic crisis, played an important role in this case.

The Colored Revolt of 1992 was caused by two events. First, on April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted 3 police officers (another received only a symbolic penalty) accused of beating a Negro Rodney King. Four police officers tried to detain King and two of his comrades on March 3, 1991. If his friends immediately obeyed the demand of the police, got out of the car and meekly lay down on the ground, hands clasped behind their heads, then King resisted. Later, he justified his behavior by saying that he was on parole (he was in jail for robbery), and was afraid that he would be put back behind bars. The police ended up beating him severely, breaking his nose and leg.

The second event - in the same days, the court actually acquitted an American of Korean origin, Sunn Ya Du, who shot 15-year-old black woman Latasha Harlins in her own store while trying to rob it. The court gave Sunn Ya Du only 5 years probation.

It is worth adding that the jury that considered the Rodney King case consisted of 10 whites, 1 Hispanic and 1 Chinese.

All this together gave occasion to the Negroes to declare that " white america» is still racist. They were particularly hated by the Koreans and the Chinese, whom the Negroes declared "traitors to the colored world" and servants of the "white killers."

The first hours of the performance of the Negroes were peaceful in nature - their political asset, including several Baptist pastors, went out into the street with posters:

But in the evening Negro youth appeared on the streets. She began to stone whites and Asians. These photos show what this barbarity looks like:

America does not like to remember these events. After all, they did not happen sometime, but immediately after the fall Soviet Union. Then, when the rulers of the United States were reveling in victory, when the American market-capitalist system was declared best achievement humanity. But it turned out that in the United States itself there are millions of beggars ready to destroy and break. That the rule of conservative marketers, which lasted from 1981, managed to get many Americans to the very liver.

(Negroes beat a Korean they come across)

The systematic arson of commercial enterprises began. In total, more than 5,500 buildings burned down. People fired at police officers and at police and journalistic helicopters. 17 government buildings were destroyed. The premises of the Los Angeles Times were also attacked and partially looted. A huge cloud of smoke from the fires covered the city.

Flights departing from Los Angeles International Airport were canceled and arriving planes were forced to change course due to smoke and sniper fire. Following the cultural capital of the nation, spontaneous uprisings spread to several dozen cities in the United States.

As Willie Brown told the San Francisco Examiner, famous representative Democratic Party in the California State Legislature:
"For the first time in American history, most of the demonstrations, as well as much of the violence and crime, especially looting, were multiracial in nature, involving everyone - blacks, whites, Asians and Hispanics."

At the very beginning of the riots, the police were outnumbered and quickly retreated. Troops did not appear until the unrest subsided. Some rioters with megaphones tried to turn the performance into a war against the rich. “We should burn their quarters, not ours. We should go to Hollywood and Beverly Hills,” one man shouted through a bullhorn (London Independent, May 2, 1992.). Burnt shops just two blocks from the homes of the wealthy show how close the riots came to the lair of the ruling class.

Houses and shops were lit up at night. The epicenter of the uprising was the South Central Los Angeles area. Looking ahead, let's say that during the uprising, about 5.5 thousand buildings were burned. Negroes also broke into residential buildings where whites lived - raped, robbed them.

A day later, on the evening of April 30, the uprising began in the central neighborhoods of Los Angeles, inhabited by Hispanics. The city was on fire. These photos show the fires in Los Angeles:

The rebellion began among blacks, but soon spread to the Latin neighborhoods of South and Central Los Angeles and Pico Union, and then to the unemployed whites in the area from Hollywood in the north to Long Beach in the south and Venice in the west. East Los Angeles was spared only because of the mass concentration of forces of order there. Everyone went outside. There was an unprecedented sense of togetherness.

Before setting fire to stores, people took fire hoses to protect their homes from the spreading fires. The old people were evacuated, it was a family affair. Cars, full of people, showed up at the knitting factory, loaded up and drove away. Massive looting continued for two days. The police were nowhere to be seen. Consumer goods were redistributed, otherwise some people would not have got anything.

As for the beating of truck driver Reginald Denny, the men who attacked him shortly before defended a fifteen-year-old boy from police beating him. This, of course, was not reported in the means mass media. In an article dated the first of May, Harry Cleaver wrote: “Remarkable in regard to the dynamics of the uprising was the defeat of the means of suppression. When the verdict was announced on the evening of Wednesday, April 29, all self-respecting "community leaders" in Los Angeles, including the black police chief Major Bradley, tried to prevent a clash by channeling people's outrage into a controlled channel. Meetings were organized in churches where impassioned pleas were mixed with equally passionate indignant speeches designed to provide a helpless, purifying outlet for emotions.

At the largest such gathering, broadcast on local television, a desperate mayor went too far, pleading for complete inaction. Just as good trade unions working with employers make it their mission to reach agreements and keep the peace among workers, community leaders see it as their main goal maintaining order."

They didn't succeed. The May Day edition of The New York Times, a newspaper that claims to represent the interests of the U.S. ruling class, noted with dismay that “in some neighborhoods a wild street party atmosphere prevails, blacks, whites, Hispanics and Asians united in a carnival of plunder.” . As countless policemen watched in silence, people of all ages, men and women, some with small children in their arms, entered and left the supermarkets, large bags in their hands and armfuls of shoes, bottles, radios, vegetables, wigs, auto parts and weapons. Some patiently stood in line, waiting for their time to come.”

The liberal-entrepreneurial humor magazine Spy wrote that people who drove up to the supermarket in a large parking lot deliberately opened the doors for the disabled. An anarchist one-day newspaper in Minneapolis that borrowed its design from USA Today and was called L.A. Today (Tomorrow… The World)” (“Today Los Angeles, tomorrow… the whole world”) wrote: “Los Angeles is celebrating…” An eyewitness who was in Los Angeles exclaimed: “These people do not look like robbers. They are exactly the winners of the quiz show.

The United States is a monstrously racist society. Fifty years of total mass disinformation has destroyed the class consciousness of the poor and successfully divided the working class along the lines of race. That is why some participants in the riot expressed their hatred for the constant robbery of the poor in racial terms. The media buried the analysis of the causes of the uprising under a pile of superficial remarks about racism in the United States.

By limiting the riots to the issue of racial relations between "whites" as such and "blacks" as such, the media tried to hide the multiracial nature of the riots and present them as the exclusive expression of "black crime". The white workers and the poor, no matter how poor and how they are exploited, and no matter how they resisted the police and commodity relations, are associated in this propaganda scheme with wealthy whites on the basis of skin color alone.

It must be emphasized here that we are not liberals or racists: we do not pity the looted or burned enterprises, the owners of whatever race and nationality they belonged to, but the fact that the participants in the unrest chose some targets and left others untouched, mistakenly looking at their oppressors with race point of view.

But the main goal of the rebels was robbery. Hundreds of shops and even houses were looted. They took out everything, up to diapers (you can see it in the first photo above). AT total goods worth up to 100 million dollars were taken out. The total material damage from the uprising amounted to about 1.2 billion dollars:

On May 2, 5,000 Los Angeles police officers, 1,950 sheriffs and their deputies, 2,300 patrol officers, 9,975 National Guardsmen, 3,300 military and marines in armored cars, and 1,000 FBI agents and border guards entered the city to restore order and secure shops. Hundreds of people were injured. Most of those who died during the clashes were killed precisely during the suppression of the uprising and were not participants in the riots.

Those killed were mostly bystanders who became victims of the police. So, in Compton, two natives of Samoa were killed during arrest, when they were already dutifully on their knees. The police also tried in every possible way to end the truce between the various gangs. They wanted the residents of Central and South Los Angeles to start shooting at each other.

"Revolutionary Worker" wrote that one elderly woman told young people, nodding at the policemen: "You need to stop killing each other and start killing these fuckers." More than 11,000 people were arrested in Los Angeles. These were the largest mass arrests in the history of the United States. Insurance companies, assessing the damage caused by the uprising in Los Angeles, called it the fifth largest natural disaster in US history.

In the most radical and consistent episodes of class warfare, there have always been and always will be instances of the thoughtless use of violence. (This is not a class war at all - the poor have rebelled in response to racial oppression and policies aimed at mass creation of social outcasts. - P-O)

The recent riots also involved not angels, but living people of flesh and blood, with all the vices and limitations imposed on them by horrendous poverty and exploitation, reflecting the daily violence of this early society with all its horrors and hoaxes.

None of them can count on a fair trial, but even if they could, we must nevertheless adhere to a strategy of unconditional support for all hostages taken by the state during the May Day events.

Max Enger

The first two days - April 29-30 - the police practically did not intervene in the riot. The maximum that was enough for the local police was to protect the place of the uprising so that it would not spread to other quarters where wealthy whites lived, as well as to the business part of the city. In fact, for two days, a third of Los Angeles was in the hands of the rebel colored people. Moreover, the blacks even tried to storm the headquarters of the Los Angeles police, but the guards withstood the siege. The crowd also smashed the editorial office of the well-known newspaper Los Angeles Times, justifying this by saying that it is a "stronghold of white lies."

Whites fled in fear from the captured quarters and from the surrounding ones. Only the Asians remained. They were the first to repulse the blacks and Latinos. The Koreans were especially distinguished. They rallied into about 10-12 mobile groups, each of 10-15 people, and began to methodically shoot the colored people. The rest of the Koreans stood guard over houses, shops and other buildings. In fact, it was the Koreans who then saved the city, preventing the uprising from spreading to other quarters and holding back the brutal crowds of people of color:

After the uprising, young people who were previously unable to walk down the neighboring street because it was under the control of a hostile group are now able to do so. One Los Angeles resident told us that after the riots, as a woman, she feels safer on the street. Welfare-receiving mothers of many children from four districts have banded together to fight against impending cuts in benefits.

When these women picket the offices involved in social security, ruling class knows that more than a hundred thousand rioters are behind them. Conservatives estimate that this is the number of poor people in and around Los Angeles who have acquired the collective experience of arson, robbery and clashes with the police, the experience of the intelligent use of collective violence as a weapon of political struggle.

The number of participants in the uprising, obviously, was still approaching a six-figure figure. This can be judged at least by the fact that more than 11 thousand people were arrested (5,000 blacks, 5,500 Hispanics and 600 whites). The vast majority of the rebels and robbers managed to get away unpunished. The significance of the Los Angeles uprising is perhaps best measured by comparison with the San Francisco riot, the second largest riot in the country (or maybe third if you count the armed clashes in Las Vegas). If the San Francisco riot had happened on its own, independent of the events in Los Angeles, it would have been the largest in California since the sixties.

On April 30, more than a hundred stores were looted in San Francisco in the central Market Street area. Numerous high-end stores in financial center the cities that rebelled invaded the lair of the wealthy Nob Hill and beat up a fair amount of luxury cars. In one of the luxury hotels, a group of young people, chanting "Death to the rich!", broke all the windows.

Max Enger

(Cop interrogates a wounded Korean who killed three colored raiders)

Only by the evening of May 1, 9,900 national guardsmen, 3,300 military and marines in armored cars, as well as 1,000 FBI agents and 1,000 border guards were pulled into Los Angeles. These security forces cleared the city until May 3. But in fact, the uprising was suppressed only on May 6.

The security forces did not stand on ceremony with the colored people. According to various sources, they killed from 50 to 143 people (there was no autopsy of most of the corpses, and it remains unclear who killed whom). About 1,100 people received gunshot wounds. Quite often, as witnesses later testified, the security forces killed the unarmed - "for warning" others. On several occasions, for example, they shot Negroes who were searched by them and forced to their knees. Either the security forces shot at the hands and feet of those caught (hence the big number non-mortally wounded).

The civilian militia, made up of whites, completed the job. The police assisted the security forces in finding and detaining colored people. Later, she took part in the removal of rubble, the search for corpses, the provision of assistance to the victims, and other volunteering.

More than 11,000 rioters were arrested. Of these, Negroes made up 5,500 people, Hispanics - 5,000 people, whites only 600 people. There were no Asians at all. About 500 of the detainees are still serving sentences in prisons - they received from 25 years to life imprisonment.

(Asian woman thanks national guardsmen for saving her)

sources
http://ttolk.ru
http://www.usinfo.ru/1992losangeles.htm
http://www.ushistory.ru/esse/481-chyornyj-bunt-1992-goda.html

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