Behind the blaze: a history of protest in Los Angeles

The “No Kings” protest in Los Angeles

Los Angeles has a long history of protest against social injustice.

From the Rodney King riots in 1992 to the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, acts of resistance remain vivid in the collective memory.

Pivotal moments of insurrection have helped firmly place LA as a battleground against discrimination.

The resistance we’re seeing on the streets of LA stands in that tradition.

In 1992, the streets of LA erupted when anger over years of police brutality reached boiling point.

On April 29 1992, Los Angeles Police Department officers had been acquitted for the racist beating of a black man named Rodney King.

People rose up in the city. The anger echoed the Watts riots of 1965, again a response to racist police violence.

Marxist author Mike Davis wrote, “The Rodney King verdict became the nucleus around which very diverse grievances coalesced.”

The National Guard repressed the Rodney King protests.

As the city burned over six days, 63 people were killed and police shot nine people.

The National Guard was also sent into LA in 2020 after police murdered George Floyd.

The protests were characterised as violent—but they were not. Floyd’s death sparked one of the biggest anti-racist movements against racism in history.

The US state’s response, as always, was repression through fear, violence and vilification.

This was the case in LA, and many other cities in the US and the rest of the world.

The uprising today is simply the most recent chapter in a city’s struggle against racism.

There’s only one reason the state would deploy militarised troops.

And that is to attempt to brutally suppress people rightly resisting racism.