 |
| DC RIOTS 1968 DC Fire Department photos |
The day before Obama’s inauguration I was in the block next to my old office on Capitol Hill. There were two National Guardsman drinking coffee on the corner. I looked at them with a stroke of undeciphered déjà vu. Then I remembered. The last time I had seen two National Guardsman patrolling that block was over 40 years ago. . .in the wake of the 1968 riots.
At the time, I was editing a community newspaper in a neighborhood next to the Capitol where 25% of the labor force was either unemployed, earning less than $3000 a year or employed only part-time. Over half of all adults living in the east part of the neighborhood had eight years or less schooling. Over a quarter of the housing units in this same area were listed by the census as dilapidated or deteriorating.
There were more than a few in the neighborhood trying to make things better. In late 1967 I came up with the idea of pulling together the various leaders of Capitol East into an informal council with the possibility of forming a major neighborhood coalition. Fourteen people attended the first meeting on January 31, 1968: 7 white and 7 black. This group was making a little headway in helping white businesses become more responsive to the community’s problems, when all hell broke loose.
Two of the capital’s four major riot strips were in our neighborhood. In the vicinity of H Street and some 124 commercial establishments and 52 homes were damaged. Another 21 businesses were damaged on or near 8th Street.
Our house was five blocks from the H Street riot strip. Smoke flavored our living room as my wife and I watched what was happening on TV
My office was a few blocks further away, but the laundry in the next block was trashed and the Safeway supermarket up the street was looted a number of times.
So I know a bit about riots. And the reactions to them. I wrote later about ours:
“Reaction varied from the intense anger of many white merchants at the failure of police to shoot looters to the feeling on the part of some community leaders that a new opportunity had been created to correct old economic and social wrongs.
“During the riots, black mayor Walter Washington had been called to the office of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, where he was told to start shooting looters. Washington refused, saying that ‘you can replace material goods, but you can't replace human beings.’ Hoover then said, ‘Well, this conversation is over.’ Replied Washington, ‘That's all right, I was leaving anyway.’"
Today, I know the riots did some good, some bad and left much right where it had been. I would write that fall, “The Republicans have nominated Richard Nixon for president. The Democrats have nominated Hubert Humphrey for president. The reading scores of Capitol East schools are lower than ever. Some 9th Precinct patrolmen don't want to ride in integrated scout cars. Some white DC fireman don't want to use the same breathing apparatus as black firemen. Congress has passed, and the President has signed a bill ordering the District to complete a freeway program overwhelmingly opposed by the people of the city. DC Transit wants another fare hike and the transit commission says there's nothing it can do about it.”
One could argue that the riots helped bring the capital colony its first elected government in a century and one could argue that it helped put Richard Nixon in the White House. One thing we know: it took nearly four decades for the H Street riot strip to make it to the planners’ and the media’s economic score card – and it did, as typically the case, through ethnic displacement with benefits going to those doing the replacement.
After the riots I had argued for a five year suspension of property taxes in damaged areas to bring backs residents and businesses. Of course, it didn’t happen then. . . and when, years later, the idea cropped up as something called a TIF, it applied only to convention centers, sports stadiums and similar corporate icons.
In 2006 I wrote, “A few years ago, white America decided it wanted the cities back again. H Street leaped from despair to displacement without ever stopping for a dream. Now you can't even install the car part you just bought in the Auto Zone's parking lot without someone calling the cops. Someone who doesn't understand that the city isn't only theirs. Someone who doesn't understand that there are people with as much right as they to live near H Street but who would rather go to Cluck-U Chicken than Starbucks.”
Following the riots in Britain, memories poured back. As did the realization that much that was being said about them made no sense at all. Such as politicians responsible for the conditions that led to the riots pompously condemning the outbreak. Or a glib news anchor asking someone, “Well do you condone the riots?”
It has nothing to do with condemning or condoning.
One way to think about riots is that they are like the cancer that results from things like too much smoking or too many pesticides. You don’t condemn or condone cancer; you try to deal with it. And the things that cause it.
If we handled health problems the way we handle politics and economics, most of us would be dead right now.
Rather than pontificating, this is also a good time to listen. To things like that reported by Martin Fletcher for NBC:
|||| A Londoner [was] asked by a television reporter: Is rioting the correct way to express your discontent?And, finally, bear in mind: what you don’t do in decency, you may pay for in anger.
"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"
The TV reporter from Britain's ITV had no response. So the young man pressed his advantage. "Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."
I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere. ||||
