Is the Rodney King CNN Program on in your area yet

[goclark]

I'm on Pacific time - it's an hour special.

[nofurylike]

1. thank you for the alert to it, goclark!

i hope you will please post your thoughts on it, after? i am very interested to know how it goes. that is major history!!

(i wish i could see it, and will when i am near a computer to see the vid of it.)

[goclark]

3. I thought it was last night but it's on tonight ~ Sunday.

Sunday on CNN

I'm got it set to run tonight, think it's 8 pm PST

In church today, a Lawyer spoke about " Rodney King" NOT being the one that was the cause of the riots .

Rather , the POLICE were the "bad guys." They abused Rodney.

He likened it to Travon -- everyone calls it the Trayvon Martin Case.

Trayvon was the victim.

He said the case should have been called The Zimmerman Trial.

[nofurylike]

4. thank you, again, for the info, goclark!

when you get a chance, please tell of how it was?

good for that lawyer! the POLICE WERE the "bad guys"!! yes, "they abused Rodney," they assaulted and battered Rodney!!
how can anyone ever deny that?

i know they do .... it is willful delusion.

and yes, "Tayvon was the victim." it should be called the Zimmerman Trial. may the trial of Zimmerman even just really happen!!

it is shockingly difficult, isn't it all, goclark?
so many things ...

[Number23]

2. Howdy, goclark. What's it about??

[goclark]

5. The Riots in Los Angeles ~ my home town

A must see ~ CNN SPECIAL on Rodney King, a CNN Special, it must be on video now.....
A DAY FOREVER IN MY MEMORY by goclark

Our family moved to LA when I was a teen. At the time of the Riots I was living in the mid-west. My precious mother, she passed last year, was living in Los Angeles. I am African American.

Can you imagine the pain of seeing your city / your neighborhood burning to bits and you are miles away? Imagine the pain as your TV Screen flashed frustrated and out of control people burning homes/ businesses less than a mile from your house. I learned later that one business that was burned to a crisp was a Chinese Take Out Place that made you pay extra for the tiny package of soy sauce. One gas station that overcharged was burned to the ground. From what I heard after the Riots, the “considerate” business owners were spared.

I could hardly dial the phone to call my husband at work. He was working for a big White Owned company that had huge holdings in Los Angeles. They wanted him in LA immediately so they dashed us by limousine to the airport.

In flight they announced that we could not land in LA because of the situation - we had to land in San Diego. I called my mother from San Diego and she was crying ~ I called some neighbors to come and stay with her until we could get there ~ I was holding back the tears so she would not worry about me. I think we paid about $100 to get a Car Rental, there were only about 3 cars left.

The roads were blocked, no way out of San Diego, so we had to stay in a hotel ~ they were almost booked to capacity. I remember my husband slipping the guy at the desk $$$ to get the "last room." I didn't sleep at all that night. By then the power was off on my Mom's phone! At the break of dawn we were finally able to take the road. Traffic was moving like a snail, hundreds of cars, in both directions, were bumper to bumper.

I could not believe my eyes as we came to what may have been 15 miles closer to my "City of the Angels" --- nothing but smoke--- nothing but smoke---nothing but smoke. No cell phones, no cell phones those days.

It seemed like years but it was only hours when we pulled up in front of the house. There she was, sitting by the front window, waiting for me! I have no idea how long she must have been sitting in that chair. Tears are rushing down my face as I hit the letters on this keyboard. I don't ever remember hugging my Mom as tightly as I did that morning.

Can you imagine what it feels like to see POLICE with huge rifles pointing toward the bumper to bumper cars as they are stationed on the roof of the May Company on Crenshaw Blvd. less than a mile from your house?

Can you imagine what it feels like to see the Outstanding CNN presentation with Rodney King relieving his story ~ it is MUST SEE.

Just to view Rodney King say, "Can't We All Get Along?" is heart wrenching. His words then are just as meaningful in today’s Political Climate ~ "Can't We All Get Along?"

[nofurylike]

6. OMG, goclark!! UNimaginable!!!! i am choking on tears as i reply to your amazing telling

of going through that heartbreaking, and enraging tragedy, dear, dear goclark

words fail ....

it is a very big thing that you feel the CNN presentation is a "MUST SEE"! coming from one who was there, who was so intensely personally impacted, who had to walk right through it, into it, speaks extremely highly for their presentation!! i will be finding a way to see the video, as soon as possible.

There she (your Mother) was, sitting by the front window, waiting for me! I have no idea how long she must have been sitting in that chair. Tears are rushing down my face as I hit the letters on this keyboard. I don't ever remember hugging my Mom as tightly as I did that morning.

Can you imagine what it feels like to see POLICE with huge rifles pointing toward the bumper to bumper cars as they are stationed on the roof of the May Company on Crenshaw Blvd. less than a mile from your house?

UNimaginable.

gratitude, profound gratitude for your being willing to walk there again, to show it to us.

and for alerting us to that presentation. it should be on every channel.

[Number23]

7. Holy moly

I got shivers, goose bumps and about five lumps in my throat from reading that.

Damn, that was a helluva post. Thank you for that. And no, I can't imagine what it must have been like in those days. Do you remember A Different World, the spinoff to The Cosby Show? They had an episode where the little bougie princess (Whitley) and her boyfriend/husband? Dwayne Wayne went to LA during the riots. It was an event that changed them both. Hard to believe that stuff like that can happen in AMERICA.

[goclark]

8. Thanks for your reply

I wanted to post this in the General Discussion Forum but I've just returned to DU and don't know the DU rules ~ can you post the same Message in two
Forums?

I'm also not up to speed on Video's. I did a search for the Video of the CNN Special, I found one but when I clicked, I could not get it to work ~ when you can actually see Rodney King talk about his life than and now, the time with Don Lemon is amazing - great interview!

[Number23]

10. Yep, you sure can post the same thing in more than one forum

And because this is just a group, you can definitely cross post stuff from here to the big forums.

[goclark]

9. I forgot to say

that I don't believe I saw that Cosby Show ~ I loved the Series!

How I wish they had quality TV like "the good old days."

[nofurylike]

11. thank you so much for posting this in GD, goclark! i just finally saw you had,

i am sorry i was so late to it.



(i was looking for it, and today i used "search" and there it was. )

[kwassa]

12. I was in Los Angeles during the riots.

and I saw some of it happen all around me.

The important point is that the cops disappeared. They just left the entire city after the initial confrontation at Florence and Normandie because Darryl Gates was a racist coward that ran the LAPD, and yanked his people at the first sign of a problem.

They were gone for several days.

The first day Wednesday was my ex-girlfriends birthday, I took her out to dinner down in Redondo because we were still friends, and fortunately decided to take the freeway home instead of heading directly up Crenshaw, a shorter route. I saw the smoke and was wondering what was happening. She frantically called me after I got home wondering if I had made it home alright.

In Los Angeles, a city of helicopters, everything is covered live as it happens from above, from Reginald Denny getting beaten to OJ making a low speed chase. All of the riot was shown live on TV as it happened.

I went to work the next day in Culver City. We were released early as things got worse. I drove my usual route around a shopping center that was getting looted on the front side, though I drove by the back and never saw it. The curfew happened then, and I was transfixed in front of my TV in my apartment.

The riot went from people exploiting easy opportunities to gangs deliberately robbing stores. It spread throughout central LA. Along Pico Boulevard, a few blocks south of me, three grocery stores had been set on fire. Along LaBrea, the main north-south route that went up into Hollywood, every single gas station was set on fire.

I went out on Friday with a neighbor, after a serious spell of cabin fever. The weather was beautiful, the city was strangely quiet because there were no cars on the streets, the only sound was the many helicopters floating in the sky, and pillars of black smoke from many buildings set on fire were going up in a full 360 degrees of visibility. We wandered over to Adrays, the local version of Best Buy, where we and hundreds of local residents witnessed a gang trying to break into the shuttered store. The locals were taking pictures. It went on for a long time, we left, later we heard that security guards showed up, fired shots, scared them off.

the bottom line is that the police abdicated their responsibility to "protect and serve" They did neither. Most of the crime was opportunistic, some was targeted against electronics and camera stores.

[goclark]

13. Wow!

You saw it from the inside out because you were IN Los Angeles.

I was seeing it as a Visitor who once lived there.


Thank you for sharing your experience with me.

As I type, I realize that I returned home to the Mid- Westabout 4 days after the riots.

So, I really was not in touch with the TV/LA Times etc.

Thanks for sharing!

[JustAnotherGen]

14. We were sitting in Belize

Watching it on Sunday. Or rather - trapped in Belize!

Anyhoo - My husband was not aware it ever happened. . . Seriously couldn't remember reports of riots happening over here in the US (he was living in Paris at the time) so it was interesting to see someone react to the situation as a brand new piece of knowledge.

[goclark]

15. The Special helped me to put pieces of the puzzle

in place that I did not know about after all these years.

It should be all over the web by now on Video.