Thanks, Rodney

by Fazeel Chauhan

(Published in Pakistan Link  ~  5-12-93)

The whole country watched the brutal beating of Rodney King by four cops. Their guilt was documented on a video, yet the jury found the policemen not guilty. I asked Jameel about his thoughts and feelings about the case and the riots that followed.
"I don't blame the people for rioting", he said. "You have to look at the history of this country. You have to objectively see the tremendous problems with the social, economic and political systems of this country. A closer look shows that fairness isn't equally likely for minorities and the less privileged. Police beatings and unjust verdicts occur every day. We just don't see it... until it happens to us. Only then do we usually try to do something about it.
"To fix a problem, first we have to acknowledge that it exists. But usually, Americans choose to not see things that may upset the status quo. If the sleeping masses wake up and see what the U. S. is doing to their own people, as well as to other countries, then they would become very upset and will do something to change it. This is what people were attempting to do through rioting. The Rodney King verdict woke up some people with a big jolt. Some took to the streets and expressed themselves violently. The destruction is seen as sad and scary by most people, but in the bigger picture of things, it is not a big deal. About fifty people died and there were about a thousand fires. Compared to the 300,000 plus human beings killed in Iraq and the total destruction of cities and industries there, the L. A. riots are minuscule. Why didn't the American people riot then? They didn't identify the death of Iraqis as a problem.
Problems are usually allowed to get out of hand before they are noticed. Consider for example the millions of deaths in Africa due to hunger and disease, lack of human rights around the world, the population explosion which is suffocating the Earth, the cutting down of the South American Rainforest at a rate of one acre per second and ozone depletion, the conquering of the Native Americans and the deletion of their history, slavery of blacks and ongoing racism, teachers who don't get paid enough, daily gang shootings in L. A., assassinations and government overthrows of sovereign nations by the CIA, enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world sixty times over, the two-party political system in the U.S., both of which are two sides of the same coin, the ever growing multi-trillion dollar U. S. deficit and the violence and tension in the Middle East, Kashmir and the new Soviet republics. These are massive, sad, scary and upsetting problems about which most American have not done much. These are the things that people really need to protest and correct. If the people lead, the leaders will follow. But for most people, if it's N.I.M.B.Y. (Not In My Back Yard), they don't care and they remain asleep. People started "caring" when their back yards were on fire.
"Politically, the American people are very naive. They will have to open their eyes to the identify problems such as the Rodney King case, and become involved to correct them. Not budging from the status quo and the comfort zone create numbness. On the other hand, each change is a chance for progress and learning. The last riot in L. A. was twenty five years ago. That means the people have been asleep for many years because as I said, there are far more important issues to protest about than a police beating. Hopefully this protest has paved the way for people to get actively involved in trying to correct other problems.
There has been destruction but the positive aspects have far out-weighed the negatives. The violence may not have been an appropriate means, but at least the people did something to get the attention of the powers-that-be. Maybe they were also tired of peaceful demonstrations, which nobody seems to care about. In a numb society, outcries of injustice can be very healthy because they can wake people up. Thanks to Rodney's verdict, the people attempted to take things into their own hands. Their methods may have been wrong, but at least they tried. They attempted to change things, to correct wrongs and to make progress. The roots of the problems are in the overall economic, political and social systems. Those are the areas that always need to be actively evaluated and corrected. As a first step, we must have equality for all human beings"