you call this a riot?

When basketball legend Kareem Abdul Jabbar, born and raised in the Harlem district of New York City, visited the Watts area of South Central L.A. while being recruited by UCLA, he allegedly said “You call this a ghetto?” I can’t find any solid verification that he did, but it will serve well enough for this post.

It’s true that L.A. has indeed seen considerable unrest the past few days and nights due to protests over ICE raids. There has been looting and a demonstration briefly shut down a freeway. Five Waymo self-driving cars were torched. Anything that involves vehicles in Southern California is important.

But, in his trademark hysteria, Trump has posted “Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!” He has deployed 300 National Guardspeople, with 500 Marines at the ready. To protect some electric cars? Whitey, please.

In 1992 I was working in Torrance, not far from the current turmoil, when the Rodney King riots exploded. They were sparked by the acquittal of four LAPD officers for repeatedly hitting King after a high speed chase. Nothing would have come of it if it hadn’t been videotaped. It’s on You Tube. The trial was a joke, and the cops were acquitted. Everyone in town knew the place was gonna blow.

Six days later, 63 people were dead, 2383 were injured and 12,000 arrested. About 3600 fires were set and 1100 buildings destroyed, causing $1,000,000,000 in damage. Looting was widespread and a popular T-shirt afterwards read “My mom looted Wal-Mart and all I got was this lousy shirt”.

The psych hospital I was working at had a unit for sex addicts, the first such in the U.S. We got patients from all over the nation. The day the riots broke out, I drove to LAX three times to pick up new admissions. The first two times I used the freeway, skirting the hot spots. When the shit really hit the fan, I took a slower route along the beaches, further from the action.

When I picked up the third patient, who was from New Jersey, I told him, “You’ve been in the air all day, so you may not have heard that L.A. has broken out in riots. We’re going to take the scenic route back, away from the action.”

His response was priceless. He said, “Oh, man! And I was worried about earthquakes.”