Today is Rodney King's birthday. Some of you may remember Mr. King. In 1991 he was pulled over during a traffic stop by the LA police and beaten very badly by the cops. The beating was recorded by a bystander and the footage was aired across the country.
In 1991 it was rare to see film of any traffic stop. Today, that is not the case since most ordinary citizens have cameras on their cellphones and the police can record traffic stops using the cameras in their squad cars.
Mr. D and I were living in the Chicago area in the spring of 1991. We saw the footage of "The Beating" on the evening news. It was difficult to watch.
In 1991, we listened to a radio station called WXRT. The station is still on the air. WXRT is a pretty independent station. It plays a wider variety of rock music than most radio stations, there is less morning talk than other stations and the DJ's appear to have a say in what songs are played during their show.
The morning after we saw "The Beating" on the news, I woke up and turned on WXRT. The DJ said that he had seen the film and his comment on "The Beating" was to play this song:
What's Going On
I was reminded that morning that sometimes singing the words is a more effective way to get a message across than speaking or writing.
3 comments:
Well said, Mrs. D. I was 12 years old when that happened. The footage of the beating was shocking, but it was even more shocking when the cops who did it were acquitted. I knew *nothing* about racism post-MLK/the 60s (what they teach you in school) and systemic, modern repression back then. So when the riots happened, I was genuinely confused about what the rioters hoped to accomplish.
let us keep in mind, as we pay homage remembrance to rodney king, that the old lady he had beaten with a crow bar didnt recieve the millions of $ settlement he got from the police.
and neither did reginald denny, who's beating was far more severe.
niether the old lady, nor reginald denny, were involved in criminality at the time of their beatings, either.
The footage of the beating was shocking, but it was even more shocking when the cops who did it were acquitted.
That's because the video footage became an asset for the defense attorneys. A frame-by-frame shot showed King getting hit only once for each time he repeatedly refused to be cuffed. Another aspect of the incident rarely mentioned? King's fellow perpetrators did not resist and thus were placed in the squad car without incident.
But even more despicable was the idiocy spewed by Congresswoman Maxine Waters regarding the ensuing riots after the acquittal.
"If you call it a riot it sounds like it was just a bunch of crazy people who went out and did bad things for no reason. I maintain it was somewhat understandable, if not acceptable. So I call it a rebellion."
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