UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS / PART 3 : WITNESS TO RAGE : ‘I think these riots are just the beginning.’

I’m real angry. Because Rodney King got the s--- kicked out of him doesn’t mean that you can go down town, grab a guy out of his car and damn near kill him. It’s ludicrous! It’s anarchy! It’s bull! We have the ways and means to stop it and we won’t. Why?

You’ve got a mayor who won’t talk to the police chief; a police chief who won’t talk to the mayor. That’s good. That’s real good. You’ve got a President of the United States saying, “Pray for peace.” Pray for peace my ass. What’s he going to do, offer me another 50 cents a day to pray? He offered me less than $1 a day to straighten out the economy. None of it makes any sense.

I’ve been in this business for 20 some odd years, three of my customers in the last four days have told me they’ve been accosted. My 4-year-old daughter asked me if I had my gun. That’s sick. There was burning, looting and stuff all around here. All during the riot, I walked around this shop with a 9 mm strapped to my ass. Now that makes a lot of sense in 20th-Century United States.

I was standing in my shop, talking to a police officer, a friend of mine, when the verdict came down. We looked at each other and said, “Oh, s---.”

We knew something was going to happen. We just went ahead and shut the office down after the regular work day. We didn’t realize how bad things were until we got home and caught the news. That’s when my rage started. I wasn’t afraid, but I knew all hell was going to break loose.

Then I came in here and saw the destruction around the neighborhood. I got mad. They were hurting innocent people. I started keeping a sharp eye on this place. With all the equipment and stuff around here, all it would take is one Molotov cocktail and the whole damn place would go up.

The next day, I was even more worried. There were suspicious people driving by. The rioting was getting closer and closer. I’m so goddamn mad. Let these people burn their own stuff down. If you don’t like the Koreans, why don’t you go get your own grocery store, mister? You get up at 4 o’clock in the morning. You go pay State Board of Equalization. You pay the IRS. You take care of the AQMD. You take care of hazardous waste. You pay all of these taxes and license fees and get nothing for it. It takes a full-time secretary in a small business just to keep track of the different crap.

After I saw the destruction and what was going on, I felt anger. I felt anger that they were hurting innocent people. I felt disbelief that people could destroy their own surroundings with no regard to anyone’s feelings, other than their own. And it made me feel that our educational system and our whole society has failed. These people don’t know any better. And I don’t think that they have any respect for themselves or anyone around them.

I’m trying to live in a society governed by rules and regulations, and there’s a set of people that don’t want to live by those rules and regulations. I don’t let my wife drive alone now. I don’t let my children play outside anymore. This has brought to light how loony things have gotten. For $20 you’ll get your life taken. They’ll shoot you to take your truck.

The problem is we aren’t doing anything to rectify what’s happening. We have to get back to producing things. People have to have jobs. If you were up working all day or all night, you wouldn’t be rioting, because you wouldn’t have time. If you were working real hard to support a family, and you were painting your house and that kind of stuff and you had a lot of pride in what you owned--that you worked real hard for--you probably wouldn’t tear it up either. But I don’t know if there are going to be jobs for everybody anymore. Our country is being taken over by foreign countries. We are shipping everything outside of this country to be built somewhere else because labor is cheaper. Because they don’t have the AQMD.

I went to work when I was 14 years old. I slept in a Volkswagen and I worked two and three jobs in one day. It wasn’t easy. No one ever said it was going to be. Nobody ever gave me anything. I don’t have anything that I didn’t work for . . . that I didn’t save for. And I have some nice things. But I see myself starting to go backwards now, too. I can’t keep up. A cop once told me after the fourth time my house got broken into, “Well, look at where you live.” I said, “Jesus, it’s the nicest neighborhood in Long Beach.” He says, “That’s correct.”

If I’m going to be in business in the state of California, I’m going to pay this, I’m going to pay a certain amount of taxes. I’m going to pay increased sales taxes to cover the destruction of earthquakes. I’m going to pay more for S&L; scandals. I’m going to pay more now because of the riots. We are going to have to rebuild all that downtown. We’re going to have to pay for this--each and every one, not only just the looters.

Our country is cutting out the middle-income. You’re going to have two different sides of it: The lower part of the middle-income will slide into the have-nots; the upper part of the middle-income will slide into the haves.

I’m going to be a have-not, because of the regulations that I have to live by. It’s a lot more than just the people in South-Central L.A. That’s the problem. That’s only the end result of the true problem. The true problem is, we are not governed by anything that’s fair. It’s special-interest groups.

You and I can’t build something when we want to build something, but someone else can. It’s the special-interest groups who are spending more and more and more. And we’re getting less and less and less. And someone’s making the money. Where is it going?

If we’d all get along well then maybe we wouldn’t have these feelings. But that’s not what’s really happening. If that’s the case, we’d live in South-Central L.A., too.

But we don’t want to be there. And it does frighten us. And that’s how you get those verdicts. And the more you get of that, the stranger the verdicts you’re going to get. Because you’re breeding prejudice. Life is breeding it. People are upset with the economy. They’re upset with the tax situation. They’re upset with welfare. They blame welfare for their own financial strife. And a lot of it has to do with that.

I think these riots are just the beginning. I think they got a taste of blood. They know they can get away with it, and the trouble is just now going to start. The true trouble. The day-to-day.

Who is supposed to control it? Well, this group of people over here in government is supposed to control it. What’s their excuse? Ah, we are swamped. Really? But you have a break in the morning, you have lunch, and you have another break in the afternoon, and you have a cocktail party, and you have all of these things. Well, wait a minute, wake up and smell the real roses. There are people in this world that work goddamn hard every day. Real hard. We don’t take a break in the morning. Sometimes we don’t even get lunch--most of the time. And for God’s sake, we never get a break in the afternoon. We’re lucky to get home before dark.

What we want is a good honest living. And what we are finding out, is we’re not going to get it. You think the blacks are going to riot, someday the whites will. And when that happens, that’s when your country’s going to go. I know of people who are armed now with nine mil. Uzi’s. I know people who are armed to the teeth. They are sick and tired of it and they’re not going to put up with it. One of these days, they’re not going to succumb. One of these days it’s going to be the last straw.

I hear that from everybody now. I hear from people who are a little timid, but they say “I ain’t going to take it much longer.” Then I hear from other people that say they’re not going to take it at all. But I don’t hear too much from the other people now that say, “Well, everything will be OK.”

I don’t hear anybody telling me everything’s going to be ok. That’s what I used to hear: “Everything’s going to be OK. Don’t worry. Everything will be OK. We’re going to straighten everything out.” I don’t hear that anymore. I don’t hear anybody telling me everything is going to be OK. What I hear is that everything is going to hell in a handbasket.

That is a working man’s point of view. I think it’s a crying shame.