*George Floyd’s murder by a white police officer (who has been fired and has been indicted for his murder, along with 3 other now ex-officers) in Minnesota has sparked a national uprising of historic proportions.
Experts believe the riots and protests that have come as a result of Floyd’s death will have more of a lasting impact on American history than the Rodney King (Los Angeles) riots of 1992.
The acquittal of four LAPD officers who were caught on camera mercilessly beating King with their batons caused unparalleled outrage across the South Los Angeles area.
The next few days after the acquittal consisted of devastating violence and vandalism to public and private property.
Local shops and storefronts were burned to ashes, streets and sidewalks were littered with looters and clout chasers, innocent motorists and their passengers were attacked brutally in broad daylight, and for several days, despite the carnage, police had virtually disappeared from sight.
An estimated 60 people were killed during those (’92) riots – and many of the attacked and injured were white.
Protests in response to Floyd’s murder have spread like wildfire over the past several days, even extending to various countries throughout the globe.
These demonstrations have been largely non-violent. However, as tensions escalate between police and angry civilians, spontaneous eruptions of violence and unrest have occurred in every part of the country, including Los Angeles.
These incidents have encapsulated the same level of intensity and rage as the riots that occurred when King’s assailants were acquitted in 92’.
However, this time around, rioters aren’t going after property in the communities they’re from, reports the LA Times.
Instead, they’re venturing out to affluent cities like Santa Monica, Hollywood and Beverly Hills. These areas have been targets of looting and vandalism by mask-wearing perpetrators of all ethnicities surprisingly.
The chaos even caused authorities to enforce early-evening curfews on residents in various cities throughout Los Angeles county.
Organizers said this geography was deliberate.
MORE NEWS: Olympia, Washington Activists at George Floyd Protest Chant ‘All Cops Are Bastards!’
“We want to go to places of white affluence so that the pain and outrage that we feel can be put right in their faces,” Melina Abdullah, one of the leaders of Black Lives Matter, told the Times.
The group wanted to bring its rage over the Floyd case and so many others to L.A.’s elites, in their own neighborhoods. Its officials said their goal was not to cause looting but to send a message. The impact of that decision became clear last Saturday (06-30-20) when images of police cars on fire next to CBS Television City and looting at the Grove shopping mall were broadcast on live television.
Abdullah said this strategy of protesting in affluent communities was adopted early on.
The group was born on a night in July 2013, when protesters gathered in Leimert Plaza Park after George Zimmerman, a neighborhood-watch volunteer, was acquitted in the killing of black Florida teen Trayvon Martin. They waved signs that read “Honk for Trayvon,” and others chanted, “No justice, no peace.”
As they marched out of the plaza, one demonstrator tried to lead the crowd south down Crenshaw Boulevard. Abdullah shouted into her bullhorn to head north toward neighborhoods that were whiter and wealthier.
“That was a lesson from ’92,” she said. “People got it. Everybody knew why we were going north. It didn’t have to be explained.”
LAPD officers had formed a line at Martin Luther King Jr. and Crenshaw boulevards and tried to push the protesters back south. To Abdullah, this confirmed the effectiveness of disrupting the status quo.
In the wake of Floyd’s death, other protests across the country seem to be following the same tactics. Demonstrators have marched through retail strips in New York, Chicago and Atlanta in the name of Floyd, a black man who died as former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson lived through the 1965 Watts riots and the 1992 civil unrest. He said the current protests look vastly different. The earlier events were mostly black people protesting in the streets.
“The current civil unrest looks like a little United Nations, with more whites and other ethnic groups involved in the protests, and even the looting and burning, than blacks,” he said. “The new equation that’s there today but absent in 1965 and 1992 is that young whites are feeling the same rage and willing to speak out, protest, demonstrate and, in some unfortunate cases, destroy out of that rage.”
On social media, residents in some communities where the protests have raged complain of the destruction, the sound of helicopters and sirens and the thick smoke that hangs in the air.
The scene in the Fairfax district left dozens of shops shattered, many of them small businesses. Some merchants — already reeling from coronavirus closures — said they supported the movement but could not understand why they were targeted.
“We’re barely getting over the virus,” said Ricky Flores, whose Melrose Avenue clothing store was looted.
“It hurts so bad. And then to deal with this?”
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