Tuesday, July 07, 2020

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/30/20 "Things That Never Change"

"It doesn't matter that the turmoil or the barrage or the hate/Just keep a cool temper/And we'll talk about it/After a while/The things that never change/Got a hold on you/The chains of the predicament/Won't let you be." The police assault against Rodney King happened in 1991. Nearly 30 years of police violence caught on tape and it's only gotten worse. And the hand-wringing, apologetics, and victim-blaming never stops. Protests erupt in response to the murders and the grand national wail of, "but what about the property?" rises as well, vandalism pitched as more horrific than violence--so much so that it is mistaken for violence. 30 years and it still takes effort to see the people being attacked and killed as victims. Even in the second Rodney King case, when the officers faced civil rights charges and two were found guilty, the judge excoriated King for putting the officers in that situation.

-6/30/20. "Things That Never Change" from Los Angeles Friday (lyrics)
(one week earlier)

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