1 Candidate’s Riot Is Another’s Unrest

There was Richard Riordan, rolling along at a mayoral candidate forum when something got stuck in his throat. A word. The “R-word.”

What to call that violence that overtakes a city when the underclass gets to feeling angry, fed up, lawless, opportunistic? (Take your pick.)

“The 1965 Watts. . . .” Gulp. It was as if he’d hit a wall. Talk about your pregnant pauses. The room fell silent.

” Rebellion! “ Riordan said finally.

The audience of mostly African-Americans erupted in laughter. They call that the “P-word”--politicking.

The debate over what to term that unpleasantness that happened last April 29 had candidate Riordan rethinking even a phrase that’s been etched in history books for nearly 30 years. Few issues have dominated this mayoral race like the events of last spring, yet the field of candidates can scarcely agree on what to call it.

” Uprising ,” declared Nate Holden.

” Civil unrest ,” said Linda Griego.

” Frustration riot ,” concluded Tom Houston, now that you mention it. (Before we asked him, he just said plain old riot .)

“All of the above,” said Julian Nava.

When it comes to semantic gymnastics, early front-runner Mike Woo did a double half-twisting somersault dismount.

“The uprising in African-American neighborhoods--and the riot in other parts of the city,” he said when Newsweek magazine asked for his word of choice.

“I think people know where I stand on the issues,” Woo said later. “My credibility goes beyond my selection of words.”

Not if you ask Sandra Cox, chief executive officer of the Coalition of Mental Health Professionals, a group born of the April 29 insurrection , as they decided to call it after considerable discussion. She was all set to vote for Woo. Now she is going to seek him out at a candidate forum and clear up this ambiguity once and for all.

“Someone who blurts out: ‘It was a riot,’ sends a message about that person’s understanding of what’s going on in Los Angeles. Those people were trying to do the same thing people were doing when they threw the tea in Boston Harbor--get their grievances redressed,” Cox said.

It boils down to this: There is no safe word in this election when it comes to the subject of April 29 and the days following. Invoke the word riot and risk offending some voters in the African-American and Latino communities who believe that the word suggests violence for the sake of violence, rather than a lashing out against intolerable conditions of life.

Call it anything but a riot and risk offending many middle-class whites (who make up the majority of voters), some middle-class African-Americans and much of the Korean-American community, many of whom would term anything but the word riot a sugarcoated justification of frightening anarchy.

“No matter what word you choose, you are going to alienate some of the people some of the time,” said H. Eric Schockman, professor of political science at USC and a former aide to Woo. “I’m gonna call it X, you fill in the blank, then we can all agree and move on.”

Such is the challenge of running for public office in the nation’s most ethnically diverse city. But it’s really nothing new. Candidates are forever changing their style to suit the audience.

At a San Fernando Valley synagogue this month, many of them donned yarmulkes; Riordan quoted Rabbi Hillel; Joel Wachs passed out a flyer noting that he is “an active member of Temple B’nai Hayim,” and Richard Katz reminded all present that he sponsored a resolution declaring California Holocaust Memorial Week.

It pays to be careful. A gaffe can take on a life of its own. (Some people were outraged when Ross Perot referred to minorities as “you people.” And it has taken Jesse Jackson a long time to put that “Hymietown” remark behind him.)

“Candidates who are not politically correct are seen as off the political beat. They don’t have the tempo of the people, they are out of sync with what’s happening out there,” Schockman said.

No wonder, Schockman added, that the candidates are all over the map about what to call April 29 et al. So is the body politic.

“It’s too raw, too soon for people who lived through this to really understand and define it,” Schockman said.

Ultimately, history will take care of that. But unfortunately for the candidates, probably not before the April 20 primary.