On April 29, 1992, I was a kid growing up in Korea and my life changed forever. It was the day of the start of the LA Uprisings. Already for several years I had been witnessing the tensions that were building up in LA.
Los Angeles is the largest Korean community outside the Korean peninsula, so news of LA is very close to Koreans.
A year prior in 1991, on March 3rd, Rodney King was beaten brutally by police. This was captured on videotape and aired everywhere. I remember watching that video as a child and how it absolutely shattered my heart. Little did I know that it would shatter even more.
Just two weeks later, 15-year-old Latasha Harlans was in a grocery store buying some orange juice with money in hand, but the grocery store owner, Korean Du Soon Ja, shot and killed her, claiming that she was shoplifting. Latasha Harlans was not.
These were of course not the only acts of anti-Black violence that were happening everyday in and around LA at the time. There were many, but these events were so heinous, blatant, and unjust that those bearing witness across continents felt their indelible impacts.
On April 29, 1992, the verdict for the four officers that violently beat Rodney King finally came out, and they were all acquitted.
This was despite the indisputable video evidence. This is gaslighting that happens to this day.
That history, all of that conflict, all of that tension kicked off the LA Uprisings.
Over in Korea, I was glued to the news and witnessed the reaction of Koreans to the LA Uprisings. The anti-Blackness by my people, anti-Blackness in the peninsula, and anti-Blackness in LA. Add to this the fact that I grew up in a country filled and flooded with U.S. militarism. This all put me on the path that I am on today.
As a child, I made a vow that I would commit my life to fighting anti-Blackness within my communities through abolition. And I’m still here, decades later, fighting.
The LA Uprisings changed LA, Korean Americans, and Koreans in the peninsula forever. We must remember and honor all of this, and bring those lessons to our fight today.
We have to be crystal clear about our purpose and how we need to get there.
Back in the U.S. Empire, the regime has been consistently escalating militarism, weaponizing anti-immigrantism, ableism, transphobia, anti-Blackness, and anti-Indigeneity to push further into authoritarianism with cop cities around the Empire, and with surveillance and weapons to attack people, not protect them.
Our purpose is to build as a people with each other, not against each other, to defeat power over so that we have power with each other.
Liberation for all, liberation with all.
Comments are closed.