Brigid Winzinger estimates that the industrialized nations will come up with between $5bn and $15bn to buy off public sentiment. But even over this - in terms of what is needed - drop in the ocean, wide ranging controls will
Repression and resistance IN ORDER to understand the rebellion that occurred in Los Angeles in the wake of the King verdict we need to focus not only on the inter-relation of race and class but on the aspects in which the two are different. While it is true that it is very difficult to separate race effects from class effects and vice versa, because Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented in the super poor parts of the working class, it is our task to recognize and understand what makes each be exercised.
Thus the Group of 77, which brings together more than 120 Third World countries, was not able to push through its demand for the setting up of a global ecological fund. Instead of this, the sheep are to be separated from the goats according to free market criteria.
The World Bank is famous for its questionable credit allocations. For example, 90,000 people are to be forcibly evicted in connection with the Sardar Sarovar Dam project it is financing in India. But it is this very institution that will play a key role in allocating the ecological funds of the "global environmental facility"
Hope in the shadows
If there is hope, then it is to be found in the parallel conference of the NonGovernmental Organizations. While the heads of state and their entourages are rendezvousing in the centre of Rio, the alternative Global Forum is meeting in the Parque de Flamengo.
The organizers of the latter, which include Brazil's CUT union confederation, are hoping that the meeting will result not only in a general exchange of experiences but also in agreement on concrete proposals. The results will be announced in a general proclamation which will present an alternative to the official Agenda 21.
The formation of a worldwide network will be embodied in for example "binding NGO agreements" and a "Climate Alliance" between the states of the North and the inhabitants of the Amazon, and above all the indigenous populations.
Above all, however, it must give rise to well-worked out campaigns to put pressure on the rulers. For, without struggle and grassroots mobilization, the decisions of the alternative conference will also be nothing more than 4 pieces of paper. * kind of experience special. DOLORES TREVIZO
HE DESPERATE conditions produced by economic restructuring in the last 20 years, especially in the Black working class, were a necessary but insufficient condition for producing the urban rebellion of 1992. The sufficient, or primary, cause was political. Specifically, a sense of racial injustice overwhelmed a community which has felt like a collective Rodney King at the hands of an ever more belligerent state.
The economic conditions of the past 20 years have been devastating to the Black and Latino working classes. When big manufacturing industries closed the gates to their factories in many cities the Black community suffered the most because it was untrained and ill educated (itself a political effect of the racist segregation of education) to be transfered into some of the high tech jobs that opened up.
The politics of hiring
And those that had been retrained in the skills necessary to post-industrial jobs were turned away at the arches of "human relations" offices because hiring is especially political in the context of an overabundance of labor.
The upshot has meant severe unemployment and underemployment for African American men. To get a feel for the effects of capitalist restructuring on the African American community, consider these numbers: in 1974, close to one half of all Black males between the ages of 20 and 24 worked either as semi-skilled machine operators or in craft positions at family level wages. By 1986, only 25% of that group of
Black males worked in such jobs, while the others were forced either into non- union, low-waged service jobs or into unemployment.
The situation for Black youth is even more devastating. Faced with overcrowded schools, a declining quality of education and no prospect for future employment, over 50% of Black and Latino youth drop out before the completion of high school. The social effect is a wholesale disorganization of the African American, and to a lesser extent, Latino communities. Faced with the option of getting through the day by watching rerun after rerun on television, young Black and Latino males with nothing to do organize their lives around the community of a gang. And the community of gang-life is very violent as it is increasingly involved in the use and sale of drugs.
### Massive force
In order to contain the effects produced by economic restructuring the state has responded to the growth of gang membership and gang identification with massive force. The Los Angeles Police Department, under the guidance of Police Chief Daryl Gates, has in fact pioneered pseudolegal techniques in repression that are seen as a model for police departments across the country. For example, the battering ram was a military vehicle used to break down the doors of crack houses. Obviously, its use trampled over the rights not only of innocent citizens (whose homes were accidentally destroyed because of mix-ups in addresses) but even those of criminals whose property was wantonly destroyed.
Operation Hammer was another military technique pioneered by Gates that had to be abandoned because of its inherent violation of civil rights. Under this policy, police officers combed the poverty stricken
June 8, 1992
International Viewpoint # 230
reets of South Los Angeles rounding up ing "suspects" en masse. As one might ell imagine, hundreds of non-gang memirs were arrested and released simply cause they were Black or Latino boys 10 wore fashionable urban gear (baggy nts, white t-shirts and thick jackets).
id even though their innocence was ally established, their names remained police files for years after their illegal rest.
The net effect of these and similar polies has been the wholesale criminalization f the Black and Latino youth of Los ingeles. Gates' war on drugs became in eality a war against minority youth, a acist war which was to produce increasing ncidents of collateral damage. Law suit after law suit has been filed against LAPD officers for use of excessive force, wanton destruction of personal property and wrongful arrests. In each case Daryl Gates has defended his officers and has pressured the city council to release the monies necessary for litigation as well as for the out of court settlement of suits.
The Black and Latino communities of South Central have recognized the racist war against them for what it is. It is a war in which only one side has had the legitimate means to manoeuvre and lethal force. And this is no abstraction. As most in the community will tell you, you cannot be a black man in South Central Los Angeles without being stopped, usually for no reason at all, forced to get on your knees if you're co-operative, or to kiss pavement if you're proud, and then released after an illegal search of your car and then your person. And if you protest too much you might find yourself not only physically abused but probably without legal recourse.
The verdict of innocence for the police who savagely beat up Black motorist Rodney King was seen, rightfully, as the complete social and political legitimation of the racist attack against Blacks in this society. In order to confront that, the African American community tested its power on the streets.
### Holding the streets
One of the things that was so awesome about the uprising was that for a few short days African Americans and Latinos took the streets, holding their enemy at bay. The alteration of the relationship of forces, however temporary, had a liberating effect for the African American community. It sensed its own power by being able to hold the streets against the cops and it got a sense that the state was not omnipotent. Indeed, the repressive state apparatus came off as an awkward and even bumbling machine when the national guard couldn't be deployed within the first 24 hours
USA because the ammunition had been forgotten.
As we know, the state has since recovered and has in fact overcompensated for those few awkward hours when its agents were reduced to spectators of the public violation of law and order. Police officers have taken back the streets through an unprecedented display of military force which has resulted in the arrest of approximately 19,000 individuals and the deportation of 700 Latinos with several thousand more facing likely deportation. This reassertion of power, coming in the form of a military occupation, has bought with it a complete suspension of civil liberties.
Currently the people of Los Angeles do not have the right to public assembly or free speech. It is even worse for the Black and brown communities who currently don't even have the right to privacy. The police are currently conducting a door to door search for loot in the Black and Latino communities and many of these searches are being conducted without search warrants. Further, both communities are being subjected to raids. Latino communities are being swept of so called "illegal aliens" and the police are sweeping the streets with the biggest operation hammer manoeuvre yet (apparently Gates is making good use of the national guard while it is still here.
### Defending basic rights
Hence at the moment, the struggle remains on this very high political level. The immediate questions before Los Angeles citizens are: do we have the right to assemble peacefully? Do we have the right to privacy? Do we have the right to a speedy arraignment? Do we have the right to due process? Do we have the right to a community free of military occupation? Do the 19,000 deserve amnesty? Do people of color have a right to equal justice?
In terms of our longer term coalition building, the strategy that ought to be adopted should be both political and economic. The issues of police abuse and the racial double standard in the courts need to be highlighted if a coalition wants to be seen as responsibly addressing the issues of minorities. This is not to say that economic demands should play a secondary role. On the contrary, while anti-racist solutions should be defining of a coalition, economic demands should be central.
A model attempt at this kind of dual strategy was seen at a Black and Latino community wide meeting called by the Coalition against Police Abuse. There were about 80 people at this meeting with about 15 to 20 community groups represented. The demands that came out at the meeting were many but the basic ideas focussed on one theme: community control of everything. There was a big discussion of community control of the rebuilding process which generated a consensus around the notion of a Cooperative Zone as counterposed to the government's solution of an Enterprise Zone. The idea was first and foremost to reject the government priority of rebuilding businesses.
This positive notion, which has not yet been fleshed out in details, calls for a major public works project. Specifically, the coalition wants to set up a public board composed of over 50% South Central residents. This board would be responsible for receiving and allocating government monies being earmarked for relief and would employ residents of the community in both the construction process and at the cooperative association level at union wages.
The purpose of this strategy is that:
a) the community democratically decides where monies go since only its real residents know what is needed and b) the community benefits collectively from the redevelopment of the area.
### Community control
In other words, not only should the construction contracts not be given to private development firms but what is actually developed should be owned and worked collectively.
It remains to be seen whether or not the coalition can mobilize sufficient forces to carry out this ambitious but no less necessary project. In any case, major problems face the local ruling class, problems that can no longer be hidden or explained away. As many of the community activists put it "an unstable Black community is an 5 unstable Los Angeles". *
CHINA