The Fires, From That Time to Now - Chris 'Preach' Smith

Twenty years ago today. the City of Angels burned like hell.

Los Angeles saw itself set ablaze because of the horrendous acquittal of four LAPD
officers caught on tape beating Rodney King after pulling him over on the road after
a high speed chase. That video did nothing to sway an all-white jury in the suburb
of Simi Valley from setting those cops free. And years of pent-up frustration and
anger exploded. It took one billion dollars of property damage and a new federal
trial to bring some sort of calm back to the streets. It took 54 people dying and
one near death on TV, that of Reginald Denny, a trucker, to get a kind of justice
for Rodney King.

I can’t sit there and say that I remember the riots themselves very well. But I do
remember feeling that they marked a significant change for me. I remember
thinking that as we watched Cliff and Claire Huxtable dance off the set the night
after, marking the end of ‘The Cosby Show’, thinking that we were seeing the end
of a supposed innocence the country allowed itself about people of color. Here in
New York, I remember seeing my parents’ faces grow a bit somber. We were glued
to coverage of the riots when we were home. I was in my second year of high
school. As much as I was into video games, comics and music and girls at that time,
the L.A. Riots was something that weighed on me. I began to question just how
justice could ever be given to people of color. I also wondered if something like
that could happen here. I don’t even remember more than one teacher talking
about it. In a Catholic high school set in the predominately white neighborhood of
Fresh Meadows, it may have been tantamount to revolution.

The L.A. Riots struck a chord in me, one I didn’t realize until years later. It helped me to
connect better with the music of NWA, Tupac and others who called those streets home
and had dealt with the paramilitary-styled LAPD for years. I began to think how I could
have grown up out there, feeling as if I was at war with an arm of a society that viewed
me as a criminal. And then seeing that I was in that same boat with the NYPD. I dug into
books on the riots during the Civil Rights era. And as I grew, I saw hip hop grow with a
duality of voices, bearing both a hard edge and a political one.

Leonard Pitts of The Miami Herald wrote about the Rodney King case being similar to the
recent death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. And that comparison is stunning, because
of what it means. It means that we as a nation have not learned nor fully addressed racism
as this country’s original sin. We’ve never dug deep in that national discourse. Given the
fact that riots are cyclical, who’s to say that if justice is not served in the Trayvon Martin
case that we wouldn’t see something like that break out again? I’m not advocatiing it or
predicting a riot. Because that damage now, in a weak economy that has hit Black homes
hard would absolutely push us over the brink. There’s no power in that. But what this day
should be is more than a mere footnote. We should remember why those fires burned. We
should not be afraid to have that discourse on race and justice, ALL of us. And we should
remember that fires that burned before can rise again if we’re not careful.