Dan Lyons Records

The Los Angeles gang truce that happened towards the end of the 1992 riots

I was emailing to my old friend recently. Let's call him "corn dog". He and I discussed the black homicide rates, and for our age group it was really quite high. He said he probably had a life expectancy of 25 or so (he's 33, I almost asked him if I could have his car when he said that). So, he tried to get me to write a book... which I don't feel is really necessary. Instead, I'll provide a synopsis of what really happened, from my perspective. I'm going to include a "memory confidence level" for each step... as some parts are kinda hazy. If you think I'm loopy, you should (not) listen to some others.

My "memory confidence level" for this runs from 1 to 5:

5 - 100% sure of this memory, quite historically accurate.
4 - 80% sure of this memory, maybe it's a little tiny bit off.
3 - 60% sure of this memory, it could be a bit pretty far off
2 - 38% sure of this memory, it's probably pretty whacked.
1 - 10% sure of this memory, for all I really funkin know I
fainted and dreamt this part up.

1) Memory confidence level: 5
So I was going to this segregated honors school in South Side Los Angeles where they let a couple white boys attend. Even though we were mostly smarter than our teachers, with few exceptions, a lot of them thought that condescending to us all the time was just peachy.
So this dude Rodney King got beat up, right? Some other dude caught it on video camera. So, like, all the blacks at school, which was like 40% of the school, were all like whiney and mopey and all that.
What I was honestly thinking was that if you took all those whiners, put'um to work for minimum wage for the time they had spent whining, and collected all that money, you'd have enough to cover Rodney's doctor bills.
So, rather than listen to all this mopey mopey stuff from'um, I snuck from my dad the name and location of my cousin who's a reconstructive surgeon. Then, this one black chick (who's actually pretty nice), let's call her Chihuahua, had two doctor's for parents.
My cousin, the surgeon, let's call him Chipmonk... he's a nice guy, really. So in the midst of all this whiney mopey junk from my clasmates, I ordered Chihuahua to have her parents pick up Mr. King and take him to Chipmonk.
So, like, unknown to everyone besides me, I never told Chipmonk that Chihuahua was gunna do this. Do you realize... I was like 40 miles away from where Mr. King got beaten... and there are 10 million Los Angeles residents, none of whom did shit about the beating but gawk, mope, and whine. That's about all Los ANgeles residents ever do, really... gawk, mope, whiney, and get into car accidents.
2) Memory confidence level: 5
So, like, anyhow, "liability issues" was the difficult part, of them fixing up Rodney. I had expected all that. Anyhow, some person/people came up with the idea of raising publicity on the matter, to make Chipmonk seem like some kind of hero for doing it anyway. Personally, I had the urge to say NO to the publicity issue, but bit my tongue.
I probably could have summoned a few hundred people to work for minimum wage for 8 hours and paid off the surgeory, really. But some people wanted to publicize this crap, because there were all these crazy rumors about blacks always getting fucked up by cops.
3) Memory confidence level: 5
So like, when this court verdict came out on the cops that beat up Mr. King, some people had been paying attention and pretty much knew the verdict in advance. So, some crazy old guys decided to incide riots.
I threw like 300 peaceful protestors outside the court house, but like... this did not detur the riots. It was kinda humorous... there was a huge line of cops around the court house and the protestors were being kinda silly. I was going to bring donuts to wave in front of the cops faces, but I didn't.
4) Memory confidence level: 5
So, when the verdict came out, our nutjob mayor, who was black, said some crap and the riots went off.
Now, I stayed outside the curfew zone but went riding around with my brother and step brother in a car... we were screwing around driving down some empty industrial roads. However, the curfew zone got changed while we were out, so like 3 cop cars and 9 cops surrounded us, hand cuffed us, and mouthed off at us for a good while. They let us go when we admitted we were doing osmething illegal because I was driving with a permit unaccompanied by someone of 25 years of age (at about 15 MPH around on an empty road.. my brother had a normal license, I had a permit).
The cops were like looking for some other car or something, even though they followed us home.
Needless to say, I made it back to high school without a baton up my butt.
4) Memory confidence level: 3
Now, I have problems remembering.... but everyone at my high school had basically lost their sanity, so, like, there were some street gangs nearby school (mostly Compton and Watts) which had come together to riot....*PFFFFFT*
People had been trying to get them to truce quite a lot... but it was always like "quit gangbanging and be a janitor" or some crap like that... "quit gangbanging and make some donuts".
So, towards the end of the riots, people were tired of riots... the riots weren't really as fun as some people seemed to think... and, so, I conspired with Chihuahua and a couple others to have the gangs unite to form businesses, right? To unite around "me", well, I think I said like "that doesn't bother me"... and the black gangs got the latino gangs in on it (somehow).
Nowwww, what I think i did was tell people to have religious groups do it... what I did was have people tell them "Do you WANT the truce?"
To form businesses? Ah dunno, there were these segregationist black groups that were whining about having "black owned businesses" or something. Ya know, I'd normally tell them "Go fucking make your own business instead of whining so much"... but, whatever.
5) Memory confidence level: 3
So, anyhow, yeah, two gang leaders shook hands in a park and a lotta gang members plotted up their own businesses. Music business was a popular idea, but I don't think anyone realized how lop sided the industry is. A few people make a lotta money in music, a lotta people don't make crap, unless you teach.
So, like, I wandered around high school asking people what else to do... there was like a sense of urgency in the air, since the truce was finally a green light.
So, I heard a lot of SHIT ideas on what to do with the truce. Over fill the jails... take over the government... all kinds of nonsense. Someone said to talk to your politicians... which was about the only decent idea I'd heard.
So, like, the democrat party threw their boy at us, Willie Brown... and he gave a talk. I told Chihuahua I was going there to listen, and she sent in some dudes.
5) Memory confidence level: 4
Now, up til this point, I was doing pretty well, not really being bothered by anything that was going on. But when Willie Brown started talking, all these dudes went off about uprisings and revolutions like cheerleading. And I almost fainted. So I made my way out of the room... and there were these two like 6'5 black dudes in front of the goddamned door, wearing like microphones or some crap. So, wobbling around as I was, nearly fainting, 15 years old and whatever, I made a charge for the fucking door and they moved outta my way. The audience was really like half black, btw, at that meeting.
Now, you hear some bullshit artists say that that was the first time black people talked to politicians in south side or some crap... but really, their congresswoman is black, the mayor was black, and so on... so I dunno why they bullshit it up so damned much.
6) Memory confidence level: 3
Afterwards, I just wanted to go back to high school, but had some problems with people annoying the piss outta me. Every goddamned political issue, from gun registrations to immigration to death penalties to abortions... they wanna drag me along or something.
7) Memory confidence level: 4
So, high school was reasonably screw ball at that point... but I tried to keep my chin up. so i think i drummed up an award ceremony at school... then I talked 4 teacher's into giving me awards because my truce made their lives safer. I rigged the whole thing that way... but no one gave too much of a crap about it at that point.
8) Afterwards? I didn't much talk about it. I useta get ill every time I heard the name Rodney King. I almost beat someone up just for making some dumb Rodney King joke in front of me many years later... but, I didn't.

So, anyhow, what was my magic in all this crap?
It was this one sentence, right?
Do you WANT the truce?
THAT was my magic line that pulled so many people in.
Oh, forming businesses.. yeah, I'm not 100% certain that was my idea anyway. I remember thinking it over for a long long time, though, and thought that would likely be good.
I was kinda a manipulative bastard though ... during some moments. I didn't enjoy being a manipulative bastard.
The truce had really started before, though... it's just that my truce was like really giant or something.. or sticks out in people's memories... or was televised.. or whatever.
So, corn-dog, can I have your car?
(btw, he said if I keep writing bit by bit, I'll have enough to write a book.... but dealing with the ~~blacked out~~ whited out memories... that's a pickle eh?)