Author: Riots show L.A.'s decay

While most people know about Reginald Denny, author Mike Davis said, not many have heard of Mark Garcia, a 15 year-old boy accidentally shot by police during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Garcia was one of many unknown victims of the tumultuous riots and, more generally, of Los Angeles' growing urban problems, Davis said during a speech Monday night. Davis, author of City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, delivered the 9th Annual Urban Studies Lecture, titled "Who Killed Los Angeles." Davis began his lecture with a film that showed 13- to 16 year-old members of a gang displaying their gun wounds for the camera. The film set the tone for the lecture, which was not about the riots themselves, but rather the city's overall "degeneration" since the 1965 Watts Riots. The 1992 riots were not the cause, Davis argued, but the effect of years of neglect which the people and the city have received. The media, he said, has reported the situation backwards. Davis cited as an example how the networks pointed out the food lines after the riots, but neglected to present the "underlying hunger that caused the riots in the first place." Another misrepresentation of the media was to present the riots as one event, he said. Davis said the events in L.A. comprised three separate rebellions: the events of South Central L.A., the looting of black businesses outside the city limits in areas such as Compton and San Bernadino and the unrest in west downtown L.A. Davis focused on west downtown L.A., stressing the disparity between the problems such as homelessness and urban blight, and the few new office buildings that have been erected in the last 10 years. The first slide of the presentation was of a temporary encampment of homeless people in the foreground with large buildings rising in the background. Instead of improving the area geared towards the already present working class, Davis said, the government and developers are wasting millions of dollars trying to lure businesses and members of the upper class. Davis and his students studied a block in the MacArthur Park District, once dominated by aristocrats and now one of the most dangerous 12 areas in the United States. They found the tenement buildings on the block were owned by white people, with names ending in "the third." "It's easy to be a slum lord in L.A.," said Davis, "with management companies to do the dirty work." While owners receive large surpluses, he said, nothing was being done to improve the tenants' quality of life. The lecture was highlighted by another short film about police brutality in L.A. The film was an account of a march by janitors who clashed with police in full riot gear. Throughout his lecture, Davis pleaded for the people of L.A. In every instance and account, he went back to talking about the community, about the "hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their foothold in the sweatshop economy." "He laid out very well how the last 12 years, the policies of Reagan/Bush destroyed my hometown," said History graduate student Larry Goldsmith. "I don't see any hope for the future in either of the major parties. The hope lies in the people – the tenants and gangs – organizing social services and education." Asked if there was any hope for the future of L.A., Davis said change will have to come from the people rather than from the government.

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