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life and times of beto p.
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On the 10th anniversary of the los angeles rebellion
(incomplete)
a riot is the language of the unheard.
-martin luther king jr.
the buildings burned like marshmallow houses graham cracker houses
structures so quickly incinerated with the fuel of liquor and beer and wine
even superfort-ified banks had to board up their windows and doors
in fear of catching the spontaneous combustion of the streets
white people’s royal coat of skin became the mark of the beast
as they got pulled out the safety of their steel cubicles, the 4th wall was broken
for every whiteman as Reginald Denny came tumbling out the truck
delivering what, that truck, no one ever asked what the truck was doing
on the corner of Florence and Normandy in South Central, delivering
what, no one ever asked, but if you ask me, I think I know, I think you
know it was probably sacks of fried snacks or cases of liquor, guns, maybe bibles
that seems to me at times all we ever have in south central
the countless corner storefront churches and liquour stores and gunstores and check cashing places and fried chicken huts and did I mention the liquor stores?
maybe it seemed that’s all we ever had to the man who pulled Reginald out of that truck
I don’t know. I just know what I felt, I just know how people felt,
In fact no one of us ever knew, we never knew the numbers
If you asked us for statistics you’d draw a blank stare
Not many know about the numbers of blacks and latinos incarcerated
Vs. the number of blacks and latinos in public universities
Vs. the number of blacks and latinos murdered by the police
Or the history of how blacks and latinos came to live in south central
Of the “dark alliance” exposed by journalist gary webb of the government network
That brought drugs and guns into the ghetto
Or how district lines are drawn and public funds are allocated for schools
Or how the tracking system in those schools bullets us to manual labor
If you asked any of us on the streets with bricks in our hands
None of us knew the mathematical, social scientific formulas of our rebellion
None of us could chart the factors that contributed to the explosion of rage
into a neat pie-chart a nice color coded graph,
an orderly clear transparency or a slide-show
None of us would think to present our case in a neat assembly lecture hall
If you asked us to quantify our dissent in a neat thesis paper
You would have received a brick to the head or worse.
Our thesis was our lives.
Our sense that we were lost, so far away from the rest of the world.
That day Darryl Gates lunched in the world famous Beverly hills Beverly-Wiltern Hotel
On Wilshire, only miles away from the flames,
But worlds and worlds apart
South Central Los Angeles is another universe, a vortex, a black hole, an uncharted African, Amazonian, Lacandonan, jungle, the kid of place where 16th century explorers were still charting the wild. A wilderness.
At least to white people who couldn’t even define South Central Los Angeles,
who would stare blankly at a map of Los Angeles
if you asked them to find Watts to find Lynwood,
to find Willlowbrook, to find Compton,
to find Boyle Heights, to find East L.A.
to find Mid-town, to find Inglewood,
to find South Central
to tell you were in the sprawling mass of Los Angeles that lay before them, where in Los Angeles, what in Los Angeles, who in Los Angeles is this “south central”
They don’t know.
Ask them to locate one single housing projects in all of Los Angeles and they’d be dumbfounded. Are projects anything like condos, they might ask.
We make up the majority of Los Angeles, but they don’t know
Brown people
Of Los Angeles
Are like ghosts
Or
Or mice
Or better yet
Like cockroaches
Big beautiful cockroach
People that come to the rich west-side
To wash dishes to clean toilets to lay bricks to cook fast food to sell oranges to wash suv’s to rake lawns to do anything you want for a day
Wonderful trained cockroaches
Who will work for scraps
Day old donuts
And stale-flat cans of soda
They survive on so little
And at the end of the day
Into the tomb-like RTD busses that whisk them away
They scurry off to who knows where,
Into their roach motels maybe
Into some place
Called south central, east la, mar vista projects,
Into some place people call
The ghetto.
The rebellion didn’t begin as an urge to get free vcr’s, free mattresses, free swapmeet clothes, free liquor, free speakers, free sneakers, free for all
The rebellion wasn’t the spurred by greed
We didn’t all just wake up and say, goddamn I could use a new t.v.
(though we probably could)
yet I here white people argue that’s all we were doing
lashing out in an inarticulate violence motivated by dumb greed
and oh how stupid do all those niggers and beaners look
on the television stealing televisions
of course the police are going to apprehend them
they’re on tape for chrissakes
can’t these fuckers even steal correctly?
the los angeles rebellion began with our collective
shared beating in brother Rodney king
the rebellion began because of a trial in Simi Valley found the four devils clean
by a jury of their peers of devils just like
them of Simi valley the choice suburb communities
for the pigs that patrol south central
that catch gangsters in south central
that shoot the bullets in south central
but sure as hell don’t live in south central
they live in simi valley
(and you ask me where the hell simi valley is, and I sure as hell don’t know.
I just know it ain’t no where near a world called South Central)
clean clean clean and free
and we, we’re the dirty cockroaches that
the master can stomp out on a whim
we never thought of ourselves as cockroaches
we though we were humans
that if they pricked us
if they maimed us
if they beat in our skull
did we not bleed
we thought we were humans
and how could anyone
how could anyone
how the fuck how the fuck could
anyone not see this
man being beaten
this man being lynched
if the man was hung by a tree
would they still have been set free?
And I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know
I don’t know who the hell set things up like this I don’t know who the hell doesn’t this that this ain’t right that this ain’t right and I begin to repeat myself over and over because words ain’t enough
Word’s ain’t never enough
All they did in the courthouse was use words
And look what happened there
White people own words
Own the truth
They can malign both so simply at their whim
Like they can malign our lives like they can malign our bodies
And words
Since when did we own words
Since when did the school start giving us words to use
Words to defend ourselves
Since when did the schools with no textbooks start speaking to us
Since when did the defeated stance of the church
Telling us to hide behind it’s walls and wait just wait for jesus
To fall from the sky in holy rapture to bring down a heavenly justice
But wait
So when did the church ever give us the words to
Express our collective rage
And what happens
What happens to a
People who don’t own no words
Whose words so obviously
Ain’t got no weight
Ain’t got no sway in say
In the government ain’t got no sway in say
The locall economy
Ain’t got no sway in say the school system
Ain’t got no sway in say our working conditions
Ain’t got no sway in say housing conditions
Ain’t got no sway in
ain’t got no sway in
ain’t got no sway.
And so the riot becomes the language of the unheard
Beto Palomar
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