Twilght

by Anna Deavere Smith

(Your whole stock is scattered all over

  in front of the project across the street.”)

  gunyang da ijen, o,

  p’okttong-i nassunikkani,

  mulgoni gocchok waitta goredo urin

  gogi-e dehan-gon hanna

  miryonhanna an-gajottagu

  • • •

  (Well now, uh …

  I realized then that a riot had begun,

  so even though our stuff was thrown out there,

  we decided to give up

  any sense of attachment to our possessions.)

  guldoni e, gusaram hant’e

  yolttushi ban-gyony-in-ga yolttushin-ga,

  nohi gagega bult’ago ittago jonhwaga wattago yo

  (And then, uh, he called around twelve-thirty or maybe twelve,

  and he told me that my store was on fire.)

  * Phonetics arranged by Kyimg Ja Lee.

  Messages

  Tom Bradley Former mayor of the city of Los Angeles

  (Fall, afternoon. His office at City Hail. He is in an armchair, I am on a sofa. It is a large office. A woman from the public relations office is there during the interview. He is dressed in a suit and tie. He entered the room after I had arrived, briskly and energetically. He has very long legs and sits with them outstretched, and his hands clasped to the side.)

  I was in my office in City Hall.

  We had

  already decided on

  a strategy and, uh,

  an appeal to the press to

  go live with a statement

  at about 5 P.M. that day.

  We learned that the verdict was coming in that afternoon.

  Um,

  we had four messages, depending on the verdict.

  If it was

  a guilty verdict, it was one message.

  If it was a partial verdict,

  some guilty, some not guilty, we had a separate message.

  The one that I had put down as just a … a precautionary measure,

  an acquittal on all counts,

  was something

  we

  didn’t seriously think could happen,

  but we had a message

  and it did happen.

  And so within a matter of an hour and a half we had that message on

  the air,

  uh, directly to the public,

  and it was essentially to call for … to express my outrage

  at this verdict of

  not guilty for all of these officers,

  but to say to people

  we’ve come too far

  to make changes and to make progress.

  Let us not

  kill that effort by reacting with violence.

  Speak your … your heart,

  say what you feel

  in terms of your dissatisfaction with the jury verdict

  and the fact that it simply appeared to be something completely, uh,

  completely

  disconnected with the TV shots that you saw,

  but say so …

  do it in a verbal fashion

  and don’t engage in violence.

  “Don’t Shoot”

  Richard Kim Appliance store owner

  (Morning. August 1993. A Korean-American man in his thirties. He is dressed in khakis, a white shirt, and a tie. We are sitting in the back of his electronics store, which is quite large. We are in a room with very expensive stereo equipment.)

  We waited for about half an hour

  and then my father showed up with a neighbor.

  He told me what had happened.

  There was no police officer to be found anywhere.

  We came back here.

  We started calling all the police stations and the hospitals to see if

  anybody had checked in

  if they fit the description.

  Unfortunately we can’t get any kind of answer from anybody.

  While that was happening, a neighbor called and said you better

  come down here because

  there are hundreds of people and your store’s being looted

  at this time.

  So we packed up our van, four people, five people, including

  myself, and we headed down there.

  I already knew people were carrying guns,

  already knew my mother was shot at that corner.

  So it was like going to war.

  That’s the only thing I can say.

  By the time we got there

  at this time

  there are hundreds of people at our store.

  At that time when we were approaching the store

  I realized there are gunshots going on.

  As I was approaching the store

  one person was carrying to the side—

  obviously he was wounded—

  and our neighbor,

  he was a car dealership and he was trying to hold down the store,

  trying to keep the people back,

  and I can see one person still at the corner by the door

  with a shotgun and I looked at across the street.

  There are at least three or four people with handguns firing back.

  There was exchange of fire going on.

  So I pulled our van—I was driving—

  I pulled our van in between our store entrance,

  in between the person firing at me in front of the store,

  and I got out and my first thought was I could use the van to block

  the bullets from hitting the guy in front of the store.

  I yelled for everybody to stop shooting, yelled,

  “Don’t shoot!”

  For a split second, they stopped shooting.

  And across the street

  I looked, could see three people, they looked at me, and they pointed the

  guns at me.

  And they were so close

  I could see the barrels of the guns.

  And … I knew they were going to start firing.

  I got a gut feeling.

  And I ducked.

  And … they started firing at the van.

  And … I came around the van, to the back.

  And … we had a rifle inside the van.

  And … I pulled it out,

  pulled the trigger,

  and it just clicked, because there was no bullet in the chamber.

  So I went back,

  put the bullet in the chamber, and returned fire at the people firing

  at us.

  I wasn’t aiming to hurt anybody.

  More or less trying to disperse the people.

  I was firing at the general direction that the gunfire was

  coming from.

  When that happened, people dispersed.

  I guess the people firing at me decided it wasn’t worth it and they all

  took off.

  Everybody just went “pa-chew.”

  Butta Boom

  Joe Viola Television writer

  (A friendly man, in an area between Beverly Hills and Mid-Wilshire. We are sitting in a very bright room, almost like a covered patio. He has set out cheese and fruit and crackers for us. He is in a pair of jeans, a striped cotton shirt, and wears his glasses on his forehead.)

  The, the bottom line is …

  is that

  I believe that

  there is extraordinary justice.

  Not that it happens day in and day out,

  but our court

  the real court

  where we judged these cases,

  where I experienced the riots, where my family did,

  for the first time

  in my entire life,

  my entire life,

  I was terrified.

  ’Cause I sat here.

  It began at the corner of the Big Five.

  I was standing there,

  just having mailed my daughter’s registration to Berkeley, what

  better stroke,

  and I was standin
g there when the first cars rolled by and this was

  like one-thirty in the afternoon,

  and they … I saw a kid with a nine

  and he brought it up,

  he didn’t aim it directly at me but he said,

  “I’m goin’ to kill you, motherfucker,”

  or “You’re dead, motherfucker.”

  Something like that.

  Right here, right on the corner!

  I sat back down like my ass was filled with cement,

  right on the corner,

  right here, “butta boom.”

  And when they pulled into the Big Five lot

  at that time, moments before,

  I heard screams

  and I started to cross the street.

  It’s a three-way

  and I looked down toward the Jewish Federation, and I didn’t see it.

  Didn’t see anything happening.

  That’s when these cars rolled up.

  Exactly a week later, in the LA Times was this unbelievable story

  about … that these two cars pulled to the curb

  and a girl—there were three teenage girls in the first car—

  got out of the car with a two-by-four

  and smacked the guy right in the head, smacked him right in the

  head!

  Did you hear this story?

  Young guy, briefcase, regular West

  Side attaché carrier.

  This was lunchtime, one-thirty,

  and the guy dropped the case,

  blood in his face,

  disoriented, started walking

  toward the car and the curb.

  Now people were screaming, “No, no, no.”

  And this one girl,

  black,

  a dancer

  out of work for a week doing temp work,

  was going to an office job.

  She’s been called

  and she was just going to work, she had an address.

  She sees this white guy with the blood in his face.

  She runs over to him

  to pull him away.

  Now, the Jewish Federation has all these ex-Israeli commandos

  as security,

  so this guy who was in the lobby

  heard the screams and came running out and he’s got a nine-millimeter

  himself.

  One of the guys in the car says to the kid in the passenger seat,

  “Shoot ’em!”

  And so he shot the girl,

  shot her through the leg!

  This is one you ought to track down!

  He took a piece of her calf out.

  So—this was two minutes later—

  that car came up to me.

  Anyway, the next thing I know

  they pulled into the Big Five, and I’m running.

  I come running in. I said,

  “Marsha,

  shut the doors.

  I’m going in to go get the kids.”

  War Zone

  Judith Tur Ground reporter, LA News Service

  (The Santa Monica Airport. A small airport. Their hangar. Lunchtime. Judy is a very, very attractive woman in her fifties. She is blond. She is impeccably made up. She is wearing black tights, a white T-shirt, or long white jersey. She has on black suede cowboy boots with high heels. She has a tan. Planes are heard during this interview. We are sitting in front of a television. She is showing me the video which John and Marika Tur took from their helicopter over Florence and Normandie. This was the famous video of the Reginald Denny beating.)

  This is the beginning of the riots

  and, uh,

  this is the video we’re going to be giving you for your show.

  Here’s a gang member.

  Here …

  This is

  a live broadcast, by the way.

  Now watch this, Anna.

  This is absolutely,

  I think,

  disgraceful.

  These poor …

  He fell like a sack of potatoes.

  I mean, real brave men, right?

  Now these women here—

  you’ll see them later—

  are taking pictures of this.

  This is sick.

  So this is the video I’m gonna be …

  that I’m gonna give you for the show.

  I’m gonna fast-forward here,

  because you can see him

  getting up

  and nobody’s helping him.

  These two

  men try to help

  him.

  Football

  tells them something.

  “Get away.”

  Okay?

  Look at this

  decrepit old man

  and look at these,

  these clowns

  here.

  Anybody with any kind

  of a heart would go over and try and help.

  Here’s Reginald Denny passing by.

  If you saw an animal being beaten, you would go over and help an

  animal.

  Okay, here’s a black man

  going and helping.

  I think his name is, um,

  Larry

  Tarvo.

  T-a-r-v-o.

  And this gentleman here is getting his glasses and trying to help him

  and …

  He risked his life doing that.

  Now you’ll see Reginald Denny

  and I look at this and each time I see this

  I get angrier and angrier.

  Because there was no reason for this to have happened.

  (You can hear John talking throughout very faintly from the helicopter about what we are seeing, you hear a very clear “Oh my God” from Marika again. It is them talking to police helicopters, etc., which came out on the video.)

  Okay, here’s another animal

  videotaping this guy.

  These people have no heart.

  These people don’t deserve

  to live.

  Sorry for getting emotional,

  but I mean this is not my United States anymore.

  This is sicko.

  Did you see him shoot him?

  Did you see that?

  (Rewinds the tape)

  This is like being in a war zone.

  This is the guy with the gun.

  Pulls out the rifle.

  You see

  the shot?

  He missed Reginald Denny.

  He missed him.

  But he doesn’t even run across the street.

  You would think he would want to run

  and disappear.

  As far as I’m concerned,

  nobody is better than me,

  I’m not better than anybody else.

  People are people.

  Black, white, green, or purple, I don’t care,

  but what’s happening in South-Central now,

  I think they’re really taking advantage.

  Now I’m mad,

  and you know what?

  Let them go out and work for a living.

  I’m sick of it.

  We’ve all had a rough time in our life.

  I’ve had major rough time.

  At forty-two years old

  I left my husband.

  Never got a divorce ’cause he died four months later.

  You know what Judy Tur did?

  I used to be a clothing manufacturer.

  My husband was major gambler,

  blew everything.

  I was penniless.

  I got a job from ten until three in the afternoon working in a doctor’s

  office making minimum

  and from four until midnight every day

  worked in a market as a cashier.

  I mean, from living on Bel Air Road to …

  I hadda do it.

  And you know what?

  It embarrassed me when people said, “What are you doing at the

 
; market?”

  I was like it was so beneath me.

  And now when I run into those people

  I’m proud of what I did.

  But I would never think of going on welfare.

  I would never think of robbing a market,

  holding

  somebody at gunpoint.

  I hate guns.

  But you know what?

  I don’t hate them anymore.

  If I’m threatened, my life is threatened, I’m not even

  going,

  going to hesitate.

  I pull that trigger if my life is threatened.

  It’s terrible for me to be angry—

  I hate to be angry—

  and what’s happening, the white people are getting so angry now

  that they’re going back fifty years instead of being pushed ahead.

  Bubble Gum Machine Man

  Allen Copper, a.k.a. Big Al Ex-gang member, ex-convict, activist in national truce movement

  (He is wearing an odd cap with a button, and buttons on his shirt. In a gym in Nickerson Gardens, 5:30 P.M.)

  The L.A. Four they committed a crime of what?

  Assault

  and battery?

  And what did the government dig for?

  What did they dig for?

  Stoppin’ traffic of a truck?

  Are they sure that truck belonged in that area?

  Did they check to see if that truck qualified to fit on that city street?

  No, they didn’t check that.

  That wasn’t a highway or nothin’;

  that was a boulevard.

  He was turnin’ off a residential street!

  You gotta understand, it may have been a

  intimidation move,

  OK,

  drivin’ into a location that is at a uprising.

  And I guess he’s at a point tryin’ to prove he can get

  past.

  Any other commonsense person

  woulda went around.

  But we’re not basin’ our life on Reginald Denny;

  neither are we basin’ our lives on Rodney King.

  Only thing we’re expressing through the Rodney King—

  through Reginald Denny beating—

  it shows how

  a black person gets treated in his community.

  And it was once brought to the light

  and shown

  and then we still … we see no belief,

  because they never handled, from the top of the level, the way it

  should have been handled,

  because they handled like a soap opera.

  That’s all that

  really was.

  If you put twenty hidden cameras

  in the country jail system,

  you got people beat worse than that