International Socialists

Elizabeth Schulte

April 29 marked the fifth anniversary of the Los Angeles Rebellion, the biggest urban uprising in US history.

The rebellion began in response to the acquittal of four police officers who beat motorist Rodney King within an inch of his life. During the march 3, 1991 beating, which was captured on videotape and broadcast around the world, cops shocked King with a Taser gun and then hit him with batons 56 times.

When they were done, the cops had shattered one of King's eye sockets, fractured a cheekbone and broken one of his legs. The broadcast of the beating exposed the limitless racism and brutality of the LA Police Department. Minutes before the beating, one of the officers had referred to a Black family's domestic dispute as "Gorillas in the mist" on the police radio.

The officers' case was tried before an almost all-white jury in the almost all-white suburb of Simi Valley, which is known for racist attacks. The beating and the officers' acquittal hit home with working class Blacks and Latinos who are regularly harassed by police in cities all over the US.

The rebellion drove police off the streets for a day. It took 6,000 National Guard troops and 4,500 federal troops to retake LA.

Yet the explosion in LA was not only about anger at police brutality and racism but also about years of crippling poverty in inner cities while the bosses became fabulously rich at the expense of workers.

The media portrayed the events in LA as a "race riot." They counterposed the beating during the riots of white truck driver Reginald Denny to the images of the King beating, reinforcing the idea that the conflict was between Blacks and whites. However, the targets of violence were for the most part not whites but police and private property.

The exception to this was the conscious and misdirected damage done to Korean-owned stores. As author Mike Davis puts it, Korean shopowners play the role of "the middleman community between people in the ghetto - Black and Mexican - and big capital." The truth is that Koreans themselves face discrimination on a daily basis. Many shopowners complained that police abandoned their stores during the riots to protect downtown office buildings and the more posh neighbourhoods.

The main characteristic of the riots was not the race of the looters but class. Of those arrested, 51 percent were Latino, 36 percent African-American and 13 percent white.

"In cities across the country, all kinds of people led protests against the Rodney King verdict, an issue most Americans agree with regardless of colour," Los Angeles journalist Luis Rodriguez wrote. "Although 'race' continues to be rammed down our throats, the issue here is class." Around the country, millions of people - white and Black - sympathised with the rioters.

A USA Today survey taken right after the rebellion showed that 47 percent of whites and 63 percent of Blacks thought the riots were "wrong, but understandable." The LA rebellion brought the issues of racism and poverty back  onto the front pages. A Time poll at the same time showed that 43 percent of whites and 84 percent of Blacks said the legal system favours whites over Blacks.

And 61 percent of those surveyed said the government spent "too little" on programmes to improve the living conditions of Blacks. Last month, LA Mayor Richard Riordan told a conference of the city's top business moguls, "Today, Los Angeles is not just back [from the rebellion], it's better. It's looking toward the next century with more going for it than any city in the world."

But the reality is different. Although racist Police Chief Daryl Gates was forced out, the Los Angeles Police Department remains notoriously brutal. The money promised by big business to repair South Central never materialised. In Hollywood, all of the buildings that were damaged or destroyed have been replaced, but in LA as a whole, one in three buildings destroyed or damaged are still unrepaired, most of them in South Central.

"They say it takes a village to raise a child," said Brenda Shockley of Youth Fair Chance. "But this village is on its own."

The kind of conditions that led to the LA Rebellion five years ago still exist today. When those explosions take place, even more people will conclude that without justice, there will be no peace.