Can't Stop Won't Stop

by Jeff Chang

  Cease-Fire

  Peco’s cousin, Dewayne Holmes, watched the tensions rising, and tried to persuade the PJs not to go to war with the cops. At a meeting of the Henry Peco Justice Committee, Imam Mujahid approached Holmes and persuaded him that a permanent truce might come out of Peco’s murder. Holmes decided to put his body on the line. In a life-risking journey, he walked first into Jordan Downs to ask the Grape Street Crips for a truce until Peco could be buried. He turned and walked down the Line of God, crossing the tracks into Nickerson Gardens to ask the same of the Bounty Hunter Bloods.

  So on a Sunday in March, the delicate peace meetings, facilitated by Daude Sherrills and Imam Mujahid at his Masjid al-Rasul on 112th and Central, began. At the first meeting, there were less than ten people in attendance, including Holmes and his mother, and Twilight Bey. “A lot of brothers didn’t trust the situation,” says Daude Sherrills. “They wanted to make sure that nobody was going to get ambushed.”

  But the meetings grew, expanded exponentially and organically. “Instead of eight brothers in there, it was damn near fifty brothers, then a hundred brothers in there,” he says. There was a feeling of destiny to the talks. By April, Daude says, “It was time.”

  He dispatched another staffer of Amer-I-Can, Anthony Perry, to find a document that could codify the peace. In the library of USC’s Von Kleinsmid Center for International and Public Affairs, Perry dug out a 1949 United Nations ceasefire agreement that had temporarily ended hostilities between Egypt and Israel. Struck by the historical weight of the document, he copied it by hand, and then attempted to translate it into terms that could hold in Watts.

  He and Daude finished the drafting together, altering the armistice agreement to refer to drive-bys and random shootings, and to take into account the loose structure of gang leadership, with its shot-callers and soldiers. Now called the Multi-Peace Treaty, the document called for “the return to permanent peace in Watts, California,” and “the return of Black businesses, economic development and advancement of educational programs.

  “The establishment of a cease-fire between the community representatives of all parties is accepted as a necessary step toward the renewal of peace in Watts, California,” it read. “The right of each party to its security and freedom from fear of attack by each other shall be fully respected.”10

  Daude Sherrills added a United Black Community Code, a code of conduct for gang members. It began, “I accept the duty to honor, uphold and defend the spirit of the red, blue and purple, to teach the black family its legacy and protracted struggle for freedom and justice.”11 It warned against alcohol and drug abuse and use of the “N-word and B-word,” and even laid down rules of etiquette for flagging and sign-throwing.12 It called for literacy, school attendance, voter registration programs and for community investment.

  Sherrills and Perry presented it to the truce leaders at the Masjid. All agreed to endorse it and to take a message back to their respective neighborhoods. On April 26, 1992, three days before the Rodney King verdict, the truce was officially in effect.

  Making It Real

  And yet, as Aqeela says, “Nobody had went into anybody’s territory yet.” By the afternoon of April 26, he was sitting at Jordan Downs with other Grape Street Crips. Twenty years of bloodshed, and four years of peace work had come to this moment. The Sherrills and Grape Street peacemakers piled into a van and headed south.

  “We all drove into the PJs, got out,” Aqeela says. “When all the brothers from the PJs saw us, they all came out and they was like, ‘Man, come on in the gym, we need to talk.’ So we all went in the gym and Tony Bogard was there [saying,] ‘Man, this shit can’t just happen like this, homeboy. It’s gon’ take years, man.’ But a whole group of our OGs was there, older brothers from the Jordan Downs, so they argued back and forth.

  “A lot of the youngsters, we went outside and was like, ‘Shit, y’all with it?’ ‘We with it! Y’all with it?’ ‘We with it!’ ” he laughs. “So while they in the gym still talking, we all celebrating outside. Whooooo! Watts! Watts!

  “After that it was just on. Like, phone calls—’The peace treaty on!’ I mean, everybody, that night in the PJs, it was probably two or three thousand people over there. Everybody outside. Mamas crying, dudes coming over to see the girl that they been sneaking to see for the past couple of years. Oh man, it was wild. Peace Treaty babies!”

  Two days later, the party moved to Nickerson Gardens. Blue, red and purple rags were tied together. Generations celebrated. It was like a family reunion. The war was over.

  Sets came from all over town to the parties, often expressing disbelief that a peace was actually on. “All the neighborhoods started saying, man, if Watts can do it, we can do it,” says Daude. “You had brothers from Compton, brothers from South Central. We had rivals coming in, we was negotiating cease-fires with their rivals, right inside the housing project developments.”

  The stakes were much higher now. Against all odds, they had built an infrastructure of communication for peace. But for the peace to last, it would take more than talk. There would need to be jobs, services, and support. So on April 28, as the party went down at Nickerson Gardens, the peacemakers marched with 250 Crips and Bloods from seven different neighborhoods to City Hall to announce the truce at a Los Angeles City Council meeting.

  “We made a presentation to the City Council, telling them that we was coming together to bring an end to all the violence in the ‘hood,” says Aqeela. “We told them we would like to have access to funding.”

  But Council members didn’t exactly jump out of their chairs. One suggested applying for a $500 grant, Aqeela recalls, “And they were like, ‘Thank you very much,’ and ushered us out of there as quickly as they possibly could.”

  The next afternoon, the peace party came back to Jordan Downs, the final point on the triangle. The courtyard was full and the music was bumping when the verdicts came down.

  Show Them How We Feel

  At 1 P.M. on Wednesday, April 29, 1992, the jury in Simi Valley sent out word that it had reached a decision in the ten verdicts against the four cops, but were intractably deadlocked on the last. They had been deliberating for a week, leaving the city agitated and breathless. Judge Stanley Weisberg announced that the verdicts would be read at 3 P.M., giving authorities time to prepare for any potential unrest.

  At about 3:15 P.M., the ten “not guilty” verdicts were read. The last charge—one count of assault under the color of authority against Lawrence Powell—had fallen in favor of acquittal 8–4.

  Thirty miles to the southeast, near the intersection of Florence and Normandie in South Central, the young men debated what to do. This was Eight Tray Gangster Crip turf, the territory of the set made famous by prison memoirist Sanyika Shakur in his previous life as Kody “Monster” Scott.

  While Shakur served out his sentence, his brother, Kershaun, had gone to college like Aqeela Sherrills, and become a peacemaker. But his position was clear. “There were homies who said, ‘Let’s get some signs and have a peaceful protest’,” Kershaun told reporter Jeffrey Anderson years later. “I said, ‘Let’s rip shit up, let’s show the powers that be how we feel.”13

  At 4 P.M., five young associates hit Pay-Less Liquor and Deli on Florence and Dalton, and grabbed bottles of 8-Ball. When the Korean-American owner’s son, David Lee, blocked the entrance, one of the kids smashed him on the head with a bottle. “This is for Rodney King!” they shouted, and ran into the street.

  Down the block on Florence and Normandie, guys were drinking and carousing. Some starting taking baseball bats to passing car windows. As cop cruisers screeched into the intersection, their cars were pelted with rocks. Two policemen chased a sixteen-year-old rock-thrower down an alley, pulled him down off a chain-link fence and hog-tied him as he screamed, “I can’t breathe!” More than two dozen cops arrived, and they made two more arrests.

  But the mass at Florence and Normandie Streets had lost its fear. In the 1970s the chant had bee
n, “It’s Nation time!” Now the streets filled with the cry: “It’s Uzi time! Cops gonna die tonight!”14 At a quarter to six, on orders of Lieutenant Mike Moulin, the police unit retreated with the three arrestees to a command post assembling at a bus depot further north, at 54th and Arlington.

  First Blood

  Anyone not Black and unlucky enough to enter the intersection was attacked. Driving his big rig through an hour later, Reginald Denny would become the riots’ most celebrated victim. But most of the victims were Asian or Latino immigrants. In almost every instance, African Americans came to their aid, a fact that would later be lost in the rush to declare it a “race riot.”

  Community and civic leaders were gathering for a peace service at the symbolic heart of Los Angeles’ civil rights movement, the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, seven miles north. Two South Central activists, Karen Bass and Sylvia Castillo, the director and assistant director of the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment, were heading toward the Church west down Florence after another day of counting and mapping liquor stores in South Central. They had been conducting research for a campaign they launched in January to close fifteen particularly noxious, crime-inducing liquor stores in the area.

  Castillo followed Bass as she slowed down at Normandie. The crowd had broken down the riot gates to Tom Suzuki’s liquor store and hauled the alcohol back into the streets. They had grabbed tires from the gas station and set them on fire, the beginnings of a roadblock. When Bass, an African American, signaled to turn right, they let her car pass. But they rained rocks, concrete and malt liquor bottles on Castillo’s car, shattering the passenger-side windows and the windshield. Suddenly a guy was in Castillo’s car, trying to open her door. “Bitch, you’re gonna die,” he yelled. Castillo hit the accelerator and sped south down Normandie, her face bleeding.

  Twice police tried to take back Florence and Normandie; twice they gave up. So the crowd moved north on Normandie. By now, disturbances were breaking out across the inner city. At Western and Slauson, three fires burned. Near U.S.C., another crowd was throwing rocks at passing cars.15

  Downtown, at the police headquarters called Parker Center, political protestors gathered to denounce the verdicts. Michael Zinzun, one of the city’s leading anti-police brutality activists, told a reporter, “This community has got to realize that an unstable Black community means an unstable L.A.”16

  When night fell, the activists were replaced by young men who set American flags and a parking kiosk afire and tried to storm the glass entrance before being repelled by riot police. They moved into downtown, overturning police cars and setting them on fire. They threw rocks at the Los Angeles Times building.

  Cold and Hot

  Despite the growing reports of unrest, and the apparent inability of LAPD to do anything about them, Chief Darryl Gates left his command post and headed out to the posh Westside. He was a lame duck. The Christopher Commission, created by Mayor Tom Bradley a month after the King beating, had already passed judgment on Gates’s tenure, finding a pattern of racism in the police department and proposing broad reforms of the department’s leadership, operations and accountability. His successor had already been chosen.

  So instead of reacting to the riots, Gates was being driven to a right-wing fundraiser against a Commission-initiated police reform measure on the June ballot, Charter Amendment F. His motorcade sped down the Santa Monica Highway past the First African Methodist Episcopal Church.

  Thousands were jammed into the church. On the dais, Mayor Tom Bradley, City Council members, church and community leaders and Rodney King’s mother exhorted people to keep calm, to express their anger through the political system. Pastor Cecil Murray prayed for peace, and the gospel choir sang. “Operation Cool Response” was underway. But outside, angry young men and women from the neighborhood weren’t having it. “We ain’t gon’ turn another cheek so they can come and kick us in the ass,” one told filmmaker Matthew McDaniels.17 “We gotta do shit!” The crowd outside the First A.M.E. started doing shit—destroying cars, looting stores.

  Soon the streets were jammed: boys slow-rolling in their rides as if it were a Crenshaw night blasting “Fuck Tha Police,” flash mobs of young girls protesting, “No more Simi Valley!” In West Hollywood, lesbian and gay activists marched toward Sunset Boulevard. Near U.C.L.A., students poured down Westwood Boulevard. From the site of the Rodney King beating, hundreds marched to the LAPD Foothill Division headquarters, all echoing the same cry across the city: “No justice no peace.”

  At 8 P.M., fifteen fires raged. Two hours later, there were nearly fifty.18 Rioting had spread to Long Beach, Baldwin Hills, Inglewood, Pasadena and Hollywood. Gates returned from the fundraiser to a police force hamstrung by indecision and incompetence. Rather than take control, Gates immediately demanded a helicopter tour of the city. “He took something like an hour-and-a-half ride and never issued any instructions as far as I could determine,” said William Webster, the former FBI director who would be appointed to lead an investigation into LAPD’s response to the riots. “So he is just up there watching Rome burn.”19

  At 11 P.M., near Nickerson Gardens, a liquor store was ablaze and the streets were full of looters. When cops and firefighters pulled up, snipers opened fire on them. For hours, the shootout continued, with police expending hundreds of rounds. When it was all over, three Black men were dead, and three more were wounded.20

  By midnight on April 29, the riots had taken fourteen lives. Three new fires were being reported every minute. Governor Pete Wilson had declared a state of emergency and Mayor Bradley established a dusk-to-dawn curfew. Eighteen hundred officers had reached the command post. But most were still standing around awaiting instructions. The few deployments in the field were mostly placed at the edge of the inner city.21 The urban core was once again abandoned to looting and war.

  Paying the Price

  At dawn on Thursday, the writing on the wall read: MEXICANS & CRIPS & BLOODS TOGETHER TONITE 4–30–92.

  Seeing evidence that authorities had no interest in maintaining order in the urban core, and hearing reports that the National Guard was on its way, some figured it was last call. Rusty, junk-ready cars filled the streets, the mini-malls, and supermarket parking lots.

  People got their essentials—diapers, canned goods, milk, butter and guns. After all, these were wartime conditions. “I felt some shame,” said one Salvadoran refugee. “But I thought, if we don’t take the food now, what will we give our children to eat? When will we be able to buy food again?”22

  Some got a lot more—shoes, clothes, toys, tires, videos, stereos, beds. For many it was payback time. “The cops can do anything they want and nothing happens,” said one young Latino, whose take included a goat, two sides of beef and thirty-seven cases of beer, and whose plan was to invite friends over for a riot-feast. “Well, we got away with our stuff. Daryl Gates can kiss my ass. It was fun, lots of fun.”23

  When they were done, the arsonists moved in. They burned ice-cream shops and fast-food franchises, glassmakers and camera vendors, flea markets and hair salons, one-hour photos and next-day dry cleaners, check cashers, churches and cultural centers; businesses that sold sheepskins, pagers and lingerie; the offices of dentists, chiropractors and acupuncturists. They torched Mobil, Union, Arco, the Bank of America, The Boys’ Supermarkets and the Slauson Swap Meet.

  All night, Radio Korea’s announcers had broadcast street-by-street reports of Korean-owned businesses that had were being looted or burned. 911 was a joke. The police or the fire department would not come to save the day. The calls went out. Bring all your guns. The looters and arsonists are coming to Koreatown.

  The young men called into the ranks of Koreatown’s makeshift militia identified themselves with white headbands. One of them was Cal State Fullerton’s student body president Joseph Ahn. The first-born son of a once high-ranking Korean diplomat, Ahn’s family had come upon hard times, immigrated to San Pedro and moved int
o the housing projects. Coming to America meant beatdowns at first, football next, and then all-night popping battles with Ice T at Radio.

  Joe was pushing his gray Civic to join his dad, rifles and ammo in the back seat. A long line of cars streamed south out of the city. But no one was on the road ahead of him. As he speeded up the 10, he could see billows of black smoke filling the sky over Koreatown. He wondered if he would see old friends on the other side of the gunsight.

  On the roof of their bakery in Koreatown below the arc of street-fired bullets, he and his friends kept one ear on Radio Korea, their only lifeline to the world beyond the block, another to potential danger—the distant roar of the crowd, the crackle of flaming buildings, bottles shattering, rocks hitting metal, rounds of gunfire. Much less frequently, they heard a police bullhorn from a barricaded van: “What you are doing is illegal. Disperse immediately.”

  By nightfall, the air was acrid and smoky, and there was no electricity. The only light came from the fires in the building across the street. “Fuck the police,” Joe thought, bitterly. “Koreans and Blacks pay taxes into the system and ain’t nobody getting shit back from nobody.”

  When it was all over, the young volunteer security forces had saved most of Koreatown from being burned to the ground. Damages to Korean-American businesses in Koreatown were less than half as much as damages to Korean-American businesses in South Central.24 A shift began to take place within the community, as leadership and power pushed toward the “1.5ers”—the generation born in Korea but raised mostly in America. They had come of age, but not without paying a dear price.

  Two miles away from the Ahns’ bakery, eighteen-year-old Edward Song Lee, James Kang and two other close friends headed up to Koreatown. All day, they had fired warning shots at looters who drove into the neighborhood to scope the pickings. After dark, they heard a call on Radio Korea about looters on the roof of a restaurant on Third Street. They got into their cars and headed up there.