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I liked the interview with Rodney King but I didn't like the way it tried to make the Koreans seem like they were victims in all this.

President Bush even came to LosAngeles to meet with Koreans to express his concern for their safety. He supported their right to defend their property. They were shooting all in the air like this was some cowboy movie. Innocent people could have been hurt.

Rodney King looks great! His mind seems clear. I am happy he has found a new love in his life.
And I hope he got paid for doing the interview.

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Didn't Rodney King have another clash with police this week?

The day before the 20 year anniversary of his infamous beating but this time, Rodney King was pulled over when someone complained about a man driving recklessly in a green Mitsubishi Tuesday afternoon and when they located the vehicle, they saw King behind the wheel.

A spokesman for the Arcadia Police Department tells us King was pulled over when cops witnessed the car making an unsafe lane change and when they approached the vehicle, King admitted he had been driving with an expired license.

We're told King was cited for the license -- not the reckless driving -- and immediately called a friend to drive him home.

http://www.tmz.com/2011/03/03/rodney-king-driving-without-license-suspended-expired-arcadia-citation-stopped-pulled-over-beating-la-riots/

Come on Rodney. What are you doing? F*ck the police and allowing his celebrity to keep him out of prison?

Everyone knows that he is the poster boy for police brutatilty for the last two decades but why does he continue to keep getting in trouble with the law regarding vehicle traffic/street violations?

Just look at this lastest situation. Reckless driving and driving without a license and I'll bet you that he's been driving like this for years and never got caught and this time when he got pulled over by the police, they realized that it was "the imfamous Rodney King" and they weren't going to mess with him for that simple fact alone because the cops don't want any trouble for themselves (he got a citation instead of a ticket or arrested) and Rodney King can't continue to drive around illegially thinking that since he's Rodney King that he's untouchable and immune to the law.

And since his beating in 1991, he's had several run-ins with the law with drunk driving and other traffic violations but he's Teflon Don and it all rolls off his back, he continues to play the victim and the cops are afraid of him which denotes this continued type of behavior has got to stop especially if he wants to change and get better.

He's been to rehab. Maybe he needs to go back.

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He will probably "always" be targeted by law enforcement because of everything that happened 20 years ago.

If he spits on the ground, he will probably be charged with "littering."

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Unbelievable, you don’t even mention Police Chief Daryl Gates! Why not??

How can this documentary be a true account of history without mentioning Police Chief Daryl Gates? Why?

I lived through those three days when 53 people were killed. Here is my account:

RIOT THURSDAY ‘92

First person account of Los Angeles Riot, 1992

by Graham Heneghan


Los Angeles, April 30, 1992. I was in the middle of Korea Town, delivering the LA WEEKLY along Wilshire Boulevard.

That morning on arriving at the LA WEEKLY circulation depot, manager Mike Menza questioned me:

“You work the Wilshire route, don’t you?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Have you got a radio in your truck?”
“It’s broken, but I’ve brought my walkman radio.”
“Well listen out, the riot could spread your way. Don’t deliver if it gets too dangerous!”

I loaded up my brother-in-laws commandeered truck, an open back pickup, with 2,500 newspapers; each containing 150 pages tied in bundles of 25 copies.

The LA WEEKLY is a free newspaper with a circulation of 170,000 and is delivered throughout Los Angeles every Thursday. Thirty drivers work out of the Glendale depot. Everybody was telling each other to take care. I began to feel a slow disquiet pass into my veins.

I set off, my bloated truck laden, red dolly perched on top between newspaper bundles, springs squeaking. It normally took me 20 minutes to reach Korea Town. My head was full of Wednesday’s TV images of Reginald Denny being pulled from his truck and beaten to a pulp, within a whisper of death. WHAT IF? How would I die, face death?

In my truck, in my sister’s hat box was a mask. Every Thursday after my LA WEEKLY route, I drove on to UCLA to attend a writing class: “Tigers of Wrath: The Creative Transformation of Anger.” I had made the mask the previous week in class and had now painted it red and black with pheasant feathers stuck around its face. From a bunch of feathers sprawling out of its throat dangled a key. The mask was my face unpeeled screaming black anger, red rage.

I began to fantasize about being attacked and trapped by a mob. What would I do, could I do? I imagined being blocked at a traffic light, rocks smashing my windscreen, gang-bangers running towards my truck to drag me out. In a frenzy I would tie my mask on my face. The gruesome sight would arrest anyone’s intention, at least momentarily, while I took my clothes off.

Naked I would charge into the marauding mob, like the Celtic warriors of old; not feeling vulnerable unclothed but pagan proud, unashamed, untainted with Christian sin. Black, white and red, death surely but what a way to go! Staring death in the face defiantly as rage flares their eyes with violence.

I drove south along Vermont Avenue to begin my deliveries at Wilshire Boulevard. I would not be able to return that way. The first thing I noticed in Korea Town was the absence of Parking Enforcement Officers. They too had abandoned the day leaving an eerie silence in deserted streets. Yet I still kept feeding the meters.

Don’s “Fountain of Health” cafe on West 6th Street was OPEN with its door locked. The owner unlocked the door explaining, that someone had just been threatened around the corner, near a place I just delivered at. It was getting scary. I delivered 25 copies to the L.A. ORT Technical Institute on Harvard, where inscribed for students to ponder, are the words: “WHAT I AM TO BE I AM NOW BECOMING.”

I crossed Wilshire to drop off 25 copies at “The Roses Gift Shop.” As I left this building, the black security guard looked at me with kind eyes and told me to “Take care out there.” Yet so far I had seen nothing. I kept on going, dropping off bundles at restaurants, stores, cafes, and office blocks. Some were already closed and boarded up.

It was midday by the time I arrived at PEPE O’BRIEN’S mid-Wilshire diner. I parked my truck in front of their window, its cargo of LA WEEKLY newspapers flapping in the wind, a torchable target, I thought. Here with a warm smile from Bertha and a free meal from Martin the owner, I took my first break.

In South La Brea at GOODMAN’S MUSIC STORE, I delivered 50 copies; they were in the process of closing. They would never reopen. Later that day the store was torched and completely gutted.

In between the stops, my mind wandered back to England, when I was twenty, being chased by three police cars. Earlier that evening, I had been badly beaten in a bar fight; unable to see out of my left eye which was clouded with blood, I was being pursued along country lanes. Speeding round a bend, my headlights picked up a white police car blocking the road. Too late! I crashed into its rear end.

I switched the engine off. I was not in any state to offer resistance. In the deadly quiet before the rush, I wound down my window to give myself up. A fist smashed into my face as a truncheon smashed out my other side window. I was dragged out and set upon by the gang of police officers; hard rosewood truncheons thudded into my head. I was saved by falling down an embankment into a ditch.

As I lay there, I felt a prickling sensation on my hands. I had landed in a bunch of stinging nettles! That was the last straw, even nature, I felt, was against me. I blared my eyes out. I was handcuffed and taken to hospital, where I remained for one week.

I had outfoxed police in pursuit for 30 miles. Their blood was up, excited like hounds on scent. Underneath the civilized veneer of our human exterior, lies raw tension, unmasked in moments of rage.

Heading north along La Brea, I turned west into West 6th Street, to deliver 125 copies to the “Pik-me-Up” cafe. Their restroom is poetry in motion, the walls adorned by such lines as:

“Cry yourself to sleep mother-darlin, because you can’t write.”
“There is nothing as potent as a smile.”

The art decor in this cafe is something to be seen with its sacred images of pagan colors; especially Ivan Morley’s powerful artwork of a coffin altar with phallic candles lighting up a verse of William Blake:

THE SICK ROSE

O Rose thou art sick
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Later that night a molotov cocktail hit the “Pik-me-Up”, but neighbors put out the flames.

A strange atmosphere pervaded the streets, everything felt surreal. I knew I was taking chances, especially going down side streets. At one point along Wilshire I heard car horns hooting as though it was a wedding celebration. A convoy of cars passed; one young black woman was sitting-out on the window edge of a car door, holding on to the roof with one hand and waving a bottle in the air with the other, screaming at bystanders.

It was open day in L.A. The Los Angeles Police were in hiding. Gangs in car convoys were rioting through the streets, throwing rocks, breaking windows, beating people and torching buildings. It was scary, unsafe, I felt unprotected, you were on your own. If you walked around the wrong corner, stopped at a red traffic light at the wrong time, you could be beaten to death.

Wednesday night, 6:30 PM reappeared in my mind. White blond hair rinsed in blood, Reginald Denny lay helpless by his truck, like a broken rag-doll. In Brentwood, Police Chief Daryl Gates was speaking at a fund-raiser. His sickly white skin was encased in a black uniform, buttoned to the neck as though restraining his inward violence from erupting outward. Answering one woman’s question, about motorists being pulled from cars and beaten to death, he responded: “There are going to be situations where people are without assistance. That’s just the facts of life.”

Some brave cops acted on their own initiative, like officers Lisa Phillips and Dan Nee, who had been ordered out of the area of Florence and Normandie. They heard a radio message that a woman was trapped in her car, unconscious.

Officer Lisa Phillips recalled:
“Dan and I looked at each other, and said, ‘Lets go.’ We have to go. We can’t leave this woman in her car, getting killed.”
Officer Dan Nee:
“We saw about 30 people around her car, just pummelling the vehicle with sticks, rocks and bottles.”
Officer Lisa Phillips:
“We devised a plan that Dan would go to the vehicle, and try to get the woman out. I would try and fend-off the crowd as best I could. I had my gun out and I was sort of doing circles around Dan, and around our vehicle.”
Officer Dan Nee:
“Well, I knew Lisa be watching my back. So I turned my back on the crowd, picked the woman up, and got back in the car. We were just being pummelled. It felt like rain on the roof, a constant drumming of rocks and bottles hitting the car. The rear window blew out showering everybody with glass and we got out of there.”

Their lives were put at risk by Police Chief Daryl Gates vomiting his revenge over Los Angeles, choking on his racist bile.


In the stillness of chaos, I carried on delivering the LA WEEKLY as though transfixed in the eye of a storm. While unloading at the delivery bay of Museum Square, a large office complex, the security guard came rushing towards me, shouting:

“We’re closing down. Some guy out front just hit a Korean lady with a baseball bat. You better get out fast. They come back here, be the end of you and your truck.”

I drove back onto Wilshire and came to a stop in front of the same building, at a red light. On the opposite side of the street, a black guy was yelling at cars, his arms flailing madly as though declaring the end of the world. In his hand was a metal baseball bat.

Looking at him and the short distance to my white truck, I felt I needed a gun. The traffic moved and I turned into a side street to make a delivery at Marie Callender’s. The restaurant was closed. As I looked back towards the black guy, a car stopped in the middle of the road, he waved the baseball bat high in the air in a final salute of defiance, and jumped into the car, packed with gang members.

For safety I parked my truck in the underground car park at 5750 Wilshire, to deliver to EAST COURT GIFTS. What can I say about Jeff Green, the manager, whose presence and manner of being with customers is heart warming. One year ago on my first day delivering to his store, I was hot, flustered and late. His welcoming smile and offer of a cold drink, helped me to relax a while. And he gave me the quote of the century:

“There is tension in every situation.”

I seemed to be the only person still delivering as I pushed my dolly stacked with newspapers, through empty courtyards of glass and granite. EAST COURT GIFTS shop was closed. I left 100 copies stacked in a corner. It was 2:30 PM and everywhere was closing with a mass exodus of people fleeing the concrete jungle.

It was time to call it a day, yet I drove on to see if I could make a few more deliveries. “Johnies,” a neon spangled coffee restaurant on the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax was strangely still open. I offloaded more than their normal amount, stacking 200 copies on a window shelf. The “Miracle Express Cafe” was closed, so I missed Silvia’s bowl of homemade Armenian soup. My next delivery, a liquor store, had covered its sign with blankets and was boarding up its windows. I asked if they were expecting trouble and was told a gang convoy had just passed through.

It was getting hopeless to continue, but I would make one last delivery. Molly Malone’s pub always welcomed me with a pint of Black Tar, a glorious Guinness; which Derek would slowly draw as I stacked the LA WEEKLY.

How I love to sup that frothy liquid, letting it linger in my mouth, its taste demanding another gulp, to ease my weary eyes. Now I felt I needed a drink to relax before returning across Los Angeles. Molly Malone’s was closed. I could hardly believe it, the door firmly boarded up before my eyes. It was time to head for home.

The previous evening, Bobby Green, a black ex-truck driver was watching the same T.V. images as the rest of L.A. He saw Reginald Denny trying to raise himself from the ground, and then a fire extinguisher smash into his skull.

By the time Bobby Green got to the intersection of Florence Boulevard and Normandie Avenue, Reggie Denny was back behind the wheel of his 18 wheel cement rig, almost unconscious, inching the truck forward. A young black woman hanging onto his cab door was shouting steering instructions to Denny, whose eyes were swollen shut. Bobby Green climbed aboard the truck and drove it to the Daniel Freeman hospital, with the help of three others.

On arrival Denny went into convulsions and started spitting up blood. “One more minute, just one more minute and he would have been dead,” a paramedic told Bobby Green.

Driving through the streets, black smoke was rising up in clouds, buildings burning behind and in front of me. Our Lady of the Angels statue still stood on the corner of Wilshire and Harvard, her gray arms raised towards heaven. You could almost hear her saying: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

But she wasn’t, for we are all guilty, even the squeaky-clean TV anchors; slapping each other on the back, congratulating their bravery of dancing in front of cameras. The comfort of a fat wage made them abound with moral judgment. Our Lady of the Angels was like everyone else, wanting to escape the Tigers of Wrath, imploring redemption from her concrete form.

Along Vermont, police had cordoned off fire areas, forcing detours into unknown side streets. A car passed me coming from the opposite direction, its front windscreen smashed. I wound my side window up, not that it would stop a bullet or rock coming through. I just didn’t want a hand reaching in and dragging me out.

At each red light, at each traffic stop, I left enough space in front of my truck to escape if attacked. I was primed for flight unlike Reginald Denny, the truck driver who rolled into the intersection at Florence and Normandie, like a lamb to the slaughter.

It took an hour and a half to reach the hills of Glendale and comparative safety of home. My brother-in-law was looking for his two guns that my sister had hidden! Too wired with images, that night as L.A. burned, sleep was impossible.

The next day, Rodney King, his skull broke in nine places, emerged into daylight and in front of the world, a faltering heart of grief uttered quivering words of passion:

“People, I just want to say, you know, can we, can we all get along? Can we get along?
“Um, can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids and I mean, we’ve got enough smog here in Los Angeles, let alone to deal with setting these fires and things.
“It’s just not right. It’s not right. And it’s not going to change anything. We’ll get our justice. They’ve won the battle, but they haven’t won the war. We’ll have our day in court, and that’s all we want.
“I love, you know I’m neutral, I love everyone – I love people of color. I’m not like they’re picking me out, picking me out to be.
“We’ve got to quit. We’ve got to quit. You know, after all, I mean, I could understand the first upset for the first two hours after the verdict, but to go on, to keep going on like this and to see that security guard shot on the ground. It’s just not right.
“It’s just not right because those people will never go home to their families again, and I mean, please – we can get along here.
“We all can get along. We’ve just got to stop. You know, I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s, you know, let’s try to work it out. Let’s try to beat it, you know, let’s try to work it out.”

Purple petals of the Jacaranda trees blossomed in abundance, peppering the streets of L.A. with a soft lavender hue. Above in a clear space of blue sky, white vapour trails of an aircraft inscribed the letters – T H I N K


End…..

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AmariKKKa!!

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The lesson of Rodney King is a simple, universal one called "Cooperate and Graduate." How many times did we see him struggle to get up after being beatdown so ruthlessly? All I could think about was his pride being shattered with those batons until there was no more. Thank God Rodney King survived his lesson and he has not returned to the national spotlight. Cooperate and Graduate isn't a hard lesson to learn unless pride gets in the way.

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Actually in the interview Rodney King said they kept telling him to "get up." I guess they wanted him to run. Or try to run.

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