Editorials
CONTENTS Volume CXIX, Number 10 Correspondence 2 Editorials 3 An editor's notebook: Patrick Jordan 4 The Perkins lady/man!: Katharine Byrne 5 Writes poems, will travel: Jim Forest 6 Freedom...
...The airwaves and newsprint have been filled with half truths...
...How is the beating and killing of innocent people understandable...
...police beating case was a terrible mistake in judgment...
...Many whites, who may not feel the visceral anger of blacks, nonetheless were heartsick at a verdict that showed how far we yet have to go in healing the wounds of racism...
...Clarence Commonweal 22 May 1992: 3 Page of the Chicago Tribune voiced the fear of many black parents: right now everyone thinks his three-year-old son is darling, but, Page asked, will they remember that when he's a strapping young man like Rodney King...
...The half truth follies n war truth is the first casualty...
...4: 22 May 1992 Commonweal...
...If the riots were primarily an expression of black rage against racism, how is that so many Hispanics, and some Anglos, took part in the looting...
...Blacks from all walks of life and all parts of the country were reminded of incidents of unwarranted police scrutiny or intimidation in their own lives...
...delivered a scathing speech in Congress...
...But the matter of anger does not end there...
...The verdict in the L.A...
...The nation has been reminded, once again, of how many Americans still live outside the protection of our laws and the comforts of our economy...
...Portland, Me...
...That these events fall in the midst of a presidential election is an opportunity to pay attention to decades of urban neglect, to a shrinking wage base, and a decline in blue-collar jobs...
...10038...
...10038...
...Because of the blistering attack, for more than two decades the latter topic, as well as its linkage with the former, was shunted aside by those-black and white-who knew better...
...Staff: Harriette Balsky, Carmen Alava, Pamela Quatse Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor Publisher: Edward S. Skillin Commonweal, [ISSN 0010-3330] A Review of Public Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, is published biweekly, except monthly Christmas, New Year's and July and August, by Commonweal Foundation, 15 Dutch St., New York, N.Y...
...Pressed to provide an explanation for the Watts outbreak, the Johnson administration trotted out the draft of a document, soon dubbed the Moynihan Report after its author, then under-secretary of labor, now Senator Daniel Moynihan (D-N.Y...
...But a black Los Angeles high schooler in a television interview a few days later showed no such confusion...
...it was not just blacks who were angered...
...The people who were supposedly to be protected from the observations of the report have ended up paying the price of truths that were ignored...
...Does that mean that Rodney King's beating will never be righted...
...None of this should be squandered by liberal guilt or conservative righteousness, by blaming the victim or exonerating the criminal, or, above all, by canonizing the wrong half of half-truths...
...What may be natural, at a moment boiling over with recriminations and anger, is also a reason for worry: the damage from thoughtless commentators and careless interpreters may be more lasting than anything done by out-of-control police or rioters...
...Yes, he said, in the first couple of hours it was anger at the verdict, but after that people joined in looting and burning because everyone else was doing it...
...Heroic behavior by some blacks saved a white truck driver, fearful withdrawal by the police may have encouraged the first rioters...
...How is singling out Korean-Americans for retribution understandable...
...Telephone: (212) 732-0800...
...At the moment, the dynamic of events seems a chaotic mix of hard-headed calculations and haphazard events and encounters, crimes of opportunity side by side with impassioned acts of protest, as much the result of class differences as of racial animosities, as much generated by greed as by anger...
...It was the exceptional social activist (Martin Luther King, Jr., was one) who didn't attack the document and its assessment: two key factors were shaping the recent destiny of black Americans, male unemployment and the growth of female-headed families...
...Half-truths abound...
...Or what of the two black women weeping over their burnt-out homes, asking where they were going to take their children...
...and the Los Angeles police chief's near dictatorial powers are under critical scrutiny...
...Display advertising correspondence should be sent to Ruth E. Taylor, 11 Graffam Rd., So...
...He has entered a civil suit, the U.S...
...Go back, for example, to 1965...
...It does not help those who most need compassion, material aid, and the support of a national reaffirmation of the common good to be inaccurate in our assessments of responsibility, of what needs to be done, and of how we can effectively do it...
...Many who say they do not condone the carnage-who could?-say they understand it as an expression of the outrage blacks felt on hearing the verdict...
...New York, N.Y...
...Daryl Gates is leaving as police chief...
...Excepting the jury and the defendants, everyone, even President George Bush and Daryl Gates, the Los Angeles police chief, seems agreed on that...
...Senator Bill Bradley (D-N.J...
...The verdict angered many people, above all Los Angeles blacks who were outraged by the decision itself as well as fearful that it would be seen as a license for further police brutality...
...to consider both the commitments the country needs to make and the responsibilities that individuals in South Central Los Angeles need to shoulder...
...his aggressive and provocative style of policing will almost certainly disappear under Willie Williams, his successor...
...The document was incomplete and filled with the sort of verbal flourishes that get pruned in final versions for public consumption, but it made some prescient observations...
...And so it appears in the aftermath of the "not guilty" verdict and the riots in Los Angeles...
...One juror in the trial-a Hispanic woman convinced that the police were guilty-recalled how she had prayed and fasted in an effort to win the other jurors to her view...
...No matter, it was soon buried under a heap of no less excessive rhetoric that flourished in the feverish atmosphere of a long, hot summer...
...to listen to those who don't normally make it on the talk shows or in news columns (and wouldn't it be useful to hear more from the student who stayed home, "because my mother wouldn't let me out the door," and less from gang members who are part of the endemic violence in Los Angeles...
...But was the trial a travesty of justice...
...Justice Department may bring civil rights charges against the policemen, and the policemen themselves, who have been suspended from their jobs without pay, must still answer departmental charges...
...And, except for retrying Officer Laurence Powell on one undecided count, there is no going back...
...CONTENTS Volume CXIX, Number 10 Correspondence 2 Editorials 3 An editor's notebook: Patrick Jordan 4 The Perkins lady/man!: Katharine Byrne 5 Writes poems, will travel: Jim Forest 6 Freedom to obey: John Garvey 7 Poetry is presence: Missy Daniel 9 Poetry: Les Murray 11,12 Joan Rohr Myers 16 Stage: Gerald Weales 12 Media: Frank McConnell 13 BOOKS At Weddings and Wakes: Paul Baumann 15 Blue Calhoun: Elizabeth Beverly 17 Owen Lattimore and the "Loss" of China: Nicholas R. Clifford 18 Billie Dyer and Other Stories: Rand Richards Cooper 20 Over the Edge: Robert M. Hayes 22 Paradise News: Edward T. Wheeler 23 The Myth of the Independent Voter: Dotty Lynch 24 The American Religion: Edward T. Oakes 26 Very Old Bones: Paul Elie 28 STAFF Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan Associate Editor: Paul Baumann Production Editor: Jacqueline Dowdell Senior Writer: Robert G. Hoyt Movies: Richard Alleva Stage: Gerald Weales Poetry: Rosemary Deen Columnists: John Garvey, J. Bryan Hehir, Abigail McCarthy, David R. Carlin, Jr...
...Change of venue, the prosecution's decision not to call King as a witness, a defense that argued the policemen were acting in the line of duty-all were unexceptionable decisions in a process that presumes the innocence of the defendants...
...04106 (207) 799-4387, classified advertising correspondence to 15 Dutch St...
...How do we sort the true from the false...
...The adage applies to civil discord as well...
...POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Commonweal, 15 Dutch St...
...But what exactly was the connection between that and the rioting, looting, and arson that left over fifty people dead and thousands of homes and businesses destroyed...
Vol. 119 • May 1992 • No. 10
