TPPM Watts: Restructuring of the Riot

[Otto]

My favorites:

"The verdict, to no one's surprise, cleared the cop of all criminal
responsibility. It had been an accident."

"(...) because it is dark, and Watts, and the history of this place and
these times makes it impossible for the cop to come on any different, or for
you to hate him any less. Both of you are caught in something neither of you
wants, and yet night after night, with casualities or without, these
traditional scenes continue to be played out (...)."

"(...) the white culture is concerned with various forms of systematized
folly--the economy of the area in fact depending on it--the black culture is
stuck pretty much with basic realities like disease, like failure, violence
and death, which the whites have mostly chosen--and can afford--to ignore."

"(...) calling him the name he expects to be called, though it is understood
you are not commenting in any literal way on what goes on between him and
his mother. It is a ritual exchange (...)."

"(...) his Mayor, Sam Yorty, is a great believer in the virtues of
Overwhelming Force as a solution to racial difficulties."

"In Watts, apparently, where no one can afford the luxury of illusion
(...)."

"As for violence, in a pocket of reality such as Watts, violence is never
far from you: because you are a man, because you have been put down, because
for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Somehow, sometime.
Yet to these innocent, optimistic child-bureaucrats, violence is an evil and
an illness, possibly because it threatens property and status they cannot
help cherishing."

"But in the white culture outside, in that creepy world full of pre-cardiac
Mustang drivers who scream insults at one another only when the windows are
up; of large corporations where Niceguymanship is the standing order
regardless of whose executive back one may be endeavoring to stab; of an
enormous priest caste of shrinks who counsel moderation and compromise as
the answer to all forms of hassle; among so much well-behaved unreality, it
is next to impossible to understand how Watts may truly feel about violence.
In terms of strict reality, violence may be a means to getting money, for
example, no more dishonest than collecting exorbitant carrying charges from
a customer on relief, as white merchants here still do. Far from a sickness,
violence may be an attempt to communicate, or to be who you really are."

"Some see it for what it is--this come-on, this false welcome, this attempt
to transmogrify the reality of Watts into the unreality of Los Angeles. Some
don't.

Watts is tough; has been able to resist the unreal. If there is any drift
away from reality, it is by way of mythmaking. As this summer warms up, last
August's riot is being remembered less as chaos and more as art. Some talk
now of a balletic quality to it, a coordinated and graceful drawing of cops
away from the center of the action, a scattering of The Man's power, either
with real incidents or false alarms.

Others remember it in terms of music; through much of the rioting seemed to
run, they say, a remarkable empathy, or whatever it is that jazz musicians
feel on certain nights; everybody knowing what to do and when to do it
without needing a word or a signal (...)."

"Restructuring of the riot goes on in other ways."

Otto