So, I can't sleep and I am reading this Michael Connelly novel, The Concrete Blonde, which was published in 2002, but it takes place between 1993 and 1996, not too long after the LA Riots and a passage really struck me with everything going on.
Quote:
“They’ll bulldoze this and make another parking lot,” Pounds said. “That’s all the riots gave the city. About a thousand new parking lots. You want to park in South Central these days, no problem. You want a bottle of soda or to put gas in your car, then you got a problem. They burned every place down. You drive through the South Side before Christmas? They got Christmas tree lots every block, all the open space down there. I still don’t understand why those people burned their own neighborhoods.”
Bosch knew that the fact people like Pounds didn’t understand why “those people” did what they did was one reason they did it, and would have to do it again someday. Bosch looked at it as a cycle. Every twenty-five years or so the city had its soul torched by the fires of reality. But then it drove on. Quickly, without looking back. Like a hit-and-run.
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With the LA Riots being 28 years ago, this passage is both prophetic and sad. I hope the current generation does more to prevent this from happening again than those in 1992.