Pad Days 1

From Wikipedia...The 1992 Los Angeles riots, also known as the Rodney King uprising or the Rodney King riots, were sparked on April 29, 1992 when a mostly white jury acquitted four police officers accused in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King, after he fled from police. Thousands of people in Los Angeles joined in what has often been characterized as a race riot, or a mini-civil war, involving acts of law-breaking compounded by existing racial tensions, including looting, arson and murder. In all, 55 people were killed during the riots.

Smaller, copycat riots occurred in other United States cities. San Francisco police arrested 1400 rioters in the downtown area and established a curfew. The Nevada National Guard was deployed to Las Vegas and 200 people were arrested. Seattle was hit by overnight mobs of up to 100 people rampaging through business districts. Fresno had gangs rampaging through the older downtown business district with one bystander murdered in their car. New York saw racial beatings, a mob looting a shopping mall, and another at Madison Square Garden.Hundreds of protesters confronted police in Atlanta. Minor incidents were reported in Tampa, Pittsburgh, Birmingham and Omaha. Major incidents took place in Dallas and Madison, Wisconsin, etc.

And what we knew...

The television did not enter our pad until later in the year and we never, ever tuned in a radio station the entire time we stayed there. News filtered in from neighbors or from phone calls or news never reached our ears. It was very strange that we all knew of a major surge of anger, destruction, and mayhem on this otherwise normal, most likely boring, Wednesday.

I think I remember warnings about Atlanta being in turmoil, only certain areas of Atlanta though, and that folks should avoid travel as a precaution. The members of the pad all gathered at our place and for once it was strangely quiet, like a thoughtful burden was draping our usual exploratory conversations, games, fun, and randomness. We weren't directly affected; I doubt a single one of us had read a newspaper in over a year, but suddenly current events were shaping our feelings and thoughts. And it was out of our control.

We saw it in the eyes of our local beer store owner. We saw roads nearly barren. We listened to the sirens off in the distance, numerous sirens, constant sirens. We looked into the faces of one another for some answer or normalcy. We knew that parts of the city were in complete chaos, that parts of the US were burning with fire and hate and indignation and injustice. We understood that something had broken through to critical measures, long past the boiling point of acceptance, and that we were white and Rodney King was black.

We were peaceful, even removed by choice. White and black were things we watched on the back of our eyelids. But this seemed very heavy, that society was warned, burning, raging...it altered our perceptions of the present days.