Thursday during the rioting.

The Colosium is being used as a staging area for the National Guard.
Just like they do in Chile.

Channel 7 News.  Preppy reporter near a South Central intersection
reporting that a power cable is dangling so low that cars are hitting
it.  They show video footage of a cop car going under the wire and
having its roof lights ripped off.  They pan the camera over to where
the wire is and show cars slowing to go around the wire.  'Due to the
smoke it is very difficult for drivers to see the wire.  I don't know
if the wire is live but if it is it could be very dangerous for
anyone running into it.'  The preppy reporter then has the camera pan
back to some nearby looting.  The broadcast switches to some other
reports but returns to the preppy reporter about ten minutes later.
He's still talking about the wire.  'Hopefully someone will do
something about that wire before it causes more damage or someone
gets hurt by it.'  Dude, move your camera vehicle over to where the
wire is hanging down and block the fucking lane so that no more cars
will run into it.  Idiot.

Channel 5 News.  Camera shot of a young family walking down the
sidewalk across the street from where major looting is going on.
Well dressed, out for an afternoon walk.  Baby in arms of the mother.
Father holding the hand of their five year old son.  Cut to reporter
back at news room, who describes the family walking down the street,
and reports 'Incredible that they would be out their walking down the
sidewalk!'  Are our reporters trained to be stupid?  Maybe this
family lives two blocks from that street.  Maybe they are unemployed.
Maybe they don't want to stay hemmed in their home all day long
watching your idiotic news report.  What is so incredible about that?
Maybe what's going on isn't that much different from the violence
they experience daily in that part of town.

Now Channel 7 is interviewing one of the Rodney King jurors.  He's a
young guy, obviously very upset by what the verdict had resulted in.
News Beauty Christine Lund at Channel 7 news is asking him questions
about the trial 'in light of what the verdict has caused'.

Bull.  This verdict did not cause anything.  It's not the verdict.
It's not Rodney King.  It's not those specific twelve jurors.  It's
not the four white cops who did the beating.  It's not the gangs.
It's us.  We build this society.  We elect the Bushes and the Quayles
(and the pigeons).  We send money to the fascists in Guatemala and El
Salvador and the Philippines.  We kill tens of thousands of Iraqies
in order to rethrone the Kuwaitee sheiks.  We allow institutionalized
unemployment.  A society that says that 7% of the work force should be
unemployed is a sick society.

American Life.  Total Lack of Social Analysis and Consciousness.

Political Leaders.  The ONLY political leader who I have heard talk
directly about the causes of the riots has been Jessie Jackson.  Lack
of jobs and education.  He puts it that simply because, fundamentally,
the problem is that simple.  NO other political leader that I have heard
and no news commentator that I have heard in the past 48 hours has
mentionned the problems of jobs and education.  A few other cultural
leaders have addresses those issues.  Arsenio Hall, believe it or not,
did.  My respect for Arsenio went up a factor of a 1000 when I heard
him talking about the need for jobs, education, communication, working
together.