[Mb-civic] Walter Mosley: What we forget about Watts

Thu Aug 11 18:02:56 PDT 2005

If you are not familiar with Walter Mosley, he is an African-American man 
who is a great writer of detective novels  (I don't read those type of books but 
I read one of his and it was really good) and a man with powerful 
political/social insight...

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0810-25.htm

Los Angeles Times

What we forget about Watts
The riot was spontaneous, leaderless and fueled by a long-smoldering rage
that is still burning.

By Walter Mosley

WALTER MOSLEY is the author, most recently, of "Little Scarlet" (Little,
Brown, 2005), a mystery featuring Easy Rawlins and set five days after the
Watts riots.

August 9, 2005

WHAT WE remember about Watts and its environs that hot summer is not
nearly as important as what we forget. Many of us remember a young man
arrested for a crime he may or may not have committed, and the way the
streets of Los Angeles became a war zone. Whole blocks went up in flames.
Dozens died. The National Guard was called out. Five days of violence
blazed and the whole nation, the whole world, took notice.

What we don't remember, what many of us never really considered, was that
this was a mass political action that had no leaders, no apologists, no
internal critics. The Watts riot was a spontaneous act of a people who had
been oppressed, emasculated and impoverished for too long. It didn't
matter if the man being arrested was guilty or not. It didn't matter if
the police stood out in the street and said to go home. Who cared what
they said or what their laws said? Who cared about property that would
never be ours?

The riot was a rebellion, a naturally formed revolution, an unconscious
expression of a people who had lived entire lives, many generations, in a
state of enforced unconsciousness. It was about people who were poor and
undereducated, people who had no motherland or mother tongue or even a
history as far as most of them knew.

I was 12 years old that summer. My parents had moved west by then, over
near Fairfax and Pico. But on the third night of the riot, I found myself
being driven through parts of town that were rife with burning, looting
and violence. One might think that this would provide me with an
interesting memory of that time. But I don't find it particularly
enlightening. Violence is merely a symptom of a deeper malady.

The citizens of Watts understood that if a black son was arrested, he was
likely to get brutalized, railroaded, blindsided, humiliated. And that it
didn't have much to do with whether he was innocent or guilty.

And so young people (and some old) poured gasoline into beer bottles,
added a rag and flicker and made a statement that had lain fallow in their
hearts for more years than they had been living, a statement that had been
whispered by ancestors so far back that its first utterance had been the
murmur of slaves.

The Watts riot was unity without direction, agreement without
understanding.

This was not the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. This was not
the NAACP. This was not Paul Robeson or Jesse Owens or any other
identifiable group, movement or personality.

The Watts riot was a deep-seated anger at injustice that had gone on
unchallenged, that was intended to go on forever. There would be no true
power for black people. They did not deserve a history or a worldview or
even a place at most tables. The Watts riot was the product of an
intelligence that was unaware of itself. It was an action that was
artless, unstructured and unplanned.

So, what's so important about this? What lesson could we possibly learn
today from that 40-year-old expression of unrest?

Maybe some people reading these words already have an answer. Maybe they
know about the million black men and women languishing in prison -
overcrowded, bored and hopeless; they know about the millions more who are
soon to return to the penal system with its punitive rules and
representatives.

They know about the gangs that form in the vacuum of hope. They know 
about
the innocents and soldiers hung out to dry on foreign soil. They know
about the shrinking pot and the empty promises and the intentions of those
in power to keep the status quo.

The immediate and mostly unconscious result of the Watts riot was that
some people got a sense of bitter satisfaction while others learned to
fear. But this is not knowledge, not learning. The lesson, for black and
white, was taught but not learned.

People all over the world - in Darfur and Cleveland, Paris and Jakarta -
are suffering. They're angry and disaffected, lost and staring at TV
screens or podiums dominated by religious zealots. There's a thought
somewhere in their unconsciousness, a word waiting to be spoken.

This is what I am remembering when I think about that hot summer. I am
remembering a future that will be forgotten before we know it has
happened.
***

Los Angeles Times

What we forget about Watts
The riot was spontaneous, leaderless and fueled by a long-smoldering rage
that is still burning.

By Walter Mosley

WALTER MOSLEY is the author, most recently, of "Little Scarlet" (Little,
Brown, 2005), a mystery featuring Easy Rawlins and set five days after the
Watts riots.

August 9, 2005