Can't Stop, Won't Stop, Chapter 16

Gonna Work it Out: Peace and Rebellion in Los Angeles
by: Zenas Kim, Megan Schuster, David Tarai

This chapter is about the gangs of Los Angeles and how they went from shoot outs that ended in blood baths to police brutality and finally to peace. Like everything else that we have studied this quarter it took multiple tries and multiple people to bring people together. The chapter starts off focusing on the geography of where the gangs were located in LA. The Bloods and the Crips were in the East and West parts of the city, respectively with a railroad and Watts Towers being the dividing lines. Several other gangs, affiliated with either the Bloods or the Crips were being started around town as well. One gang that was an exception was call the Grapes. They were not aligned with either of the two main factions.

The geography of the main neighborhoods Hacienda Village, Nickerson Gardens, Jordan Downs and Imperial Courts, formed a triangle with the Grapes being in the middle. Aqeela, a student in the late 1980’s had managed to escape gang life, recognized that if the Grapes became peaceful so would the other gangs. So he, and Lois Farrahkahn a leader in the Muslim community and Jim Brown an NFL player started sending out God Squads to talk peace to the major gangs. Slowly they started coming around and Brown opened his house up for parties and eventually weekly meetings between the gangs. During these meetings they would talk about their feelings and work out differences.

During this time police brutality started to rise. The police saw gang violence as job security and therefore would stop and harass people without cause. One of the earliest examples of this is when a God Squad was on its way to a neighborhood got pulled over. When the men asked the officers why they were being pulled over the police became violent and arrested all the members in that squad. This grew into huge raids into the various neighborhoods where no weapons would be found but arrests would be made. Eventually this escalated to the point of the Rodney King incident 1991.

Eventually Farrahkahn and others were able to convince the gangs to sign the United Black Community Code. This code was based off of the temporary peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. It was modified to fit the gangs of LA and called for a truce between all the neighborhoods. During the celebration in the neighborhoods the verdict on the Rodney King trial was read acquitting all 4 officers involved. This, along with the LA City Council blowing off the peace treaty started a string a riots all over the city.