Los Angeles & Southern California - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [15]
When the postwar baby boomers hit their late teens, many rejected their parents’ values and heeded Tim Leary’s counsel to ‘turn on, tune in, drop out.’ Though the hippie counterculture was an international phenomenon, Southern California was at the leading edge of its music, psychedelic art and new libertarianism. Sex, drugs and rock and roll ruled the day. Venice Beach was a major hub and hangout of Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and other luminaries of that era.
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In 1997 the Heaven’s Gate cult brought unwanted publicity to the upscale San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe, when leader Marshall Applewhite convinced 38 members to commit ritual suicide.
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In the late 1960s and early ’70s, New Left politics, the anti-Vietnam War movement and Black Liberation forced their way into the political limelight, and flower power and give-peace-a-chance politics seemed instantly naive. The 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy in LA, the sometimes violent repression of demonstrations, and the death of a spectator at a Rolling Stones concert at the hands of security guards (Hells Angels the Stones had hired for the occasion) stripped the era of its innocence.
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TROUBLE IN PARADISE
LA has a long history of racial strife, which reached its first explosive peak in 1965. The city was booming but not everyone was invited to the party. Entire neighborhoods, predominantly black South Central foremost among them, had for decades been suffering from institutional neglect and lack of opportunity. On a hot August day in 1965, frustration levels reached a boiling point. In the end, it was a relatively minor incident – a black motorist being pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving and then beaten – that caused the lid to blow. Six violent days later, when the so-called Watts Riots were over, 34 people were dead and more than 1000 were injured.
As the city began to lick its wounds, Governor Pat Brown appointed a commission to study the causes of the riots. Commissioners did a fine job identifying the problems – an unemployment rate double the LA average, overcrowded and underfunded classrooms, discriminatory housing laws etc – but lacked the vision, money or motivation to fix them. A generation later there would be a high price to pay for such indifference.
April 29, 1992: ‘Not guilty.’ The words cut through the stifling air of a hushed Simi Valley courtroom, their gravity still unfathomed. More than a year earlier – in an eerie déjà vu of 1965 – four LAPD officers had stopped Rodney King, an African American, for appearing to be driving under the influence. When King initially resisted arrest, the cops allegedly started to kick, beat and shout at the man as he crouched on the sidewalk. A neighbor, infamously, caught the whole thing on videotape.
The cops’ acquittal unleashed a replay of the Watts Riots on an even bigger scale, as rioting and looting spread through several neighborhoods. National Guards patrolled the streets with machine guns, businesses and schools were ordered to close and a dusk curfew was imposed. LA felt like a war zone. The shocking toll: 54 dead, 2000 injured, 12,000 arrested and $1 billion in property damage.
Police brutality has continued to stay in the headlines. In the late ‘90s, it became coupled with police corruption in the so-called ‘Rampart scandal.’ New police chief William Bratton, who arrived in 2002 from New York, was hired to clean up the LAPD’s act and ease racial tensions. Although Bratton generally gets high marks, even he could not prevent another controversial incident. When demonstrators at a May 1 immigration rally started throwing bottles at officers, a melee ensued and the cops ended up being accused of using excessive force. With the abyss of distrust between the police and ethnic groups, it’s anybody’s guess what the future will hold.
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What a difference a decade makes. In the 1980s and ’90s,