![]() ![]() Let the sociologists bemoan the absurdity and intoxication of this rebellion. Let the economists fret over the $27 million lost, and the city planners sigh over one of their most beautiful supermarkets gone up in smoke, and McIntyre blubber over his slain deputy sheriff. But who has defended the Los Angeles rioters in the terms they deserve? We will. ![]() What did one of those unemployed leaders, NAACP general secretary Roy Wilkins, have to say? He declared that the riot should be put down with all necessary force. And Los Angeles Cardinal McIntyre, who protested loudly, did not protest against the violence of the repression, which one might have supposed the most tactful policy at a time when the Roman Church is modernizing its image he denounced this premeditated revolt against the rights of ones neighbor and against respect for law and order, calling on Catholics to oppose the looting and this violence without any apparent justification. And all those who went so far as to recognize the apparent justifications of the rage of the Los Angeles blacks (but never their real ones), all the ideologists and spokesmen of the vacuous international Left, deplored the irresponsibility, the disorder, the looting (especially the fact that arms and alcohol were the first targets) and the 2000 fires with which the blacks lit up their battle and their ball. Police Chief William Parker, for example, rejected all the major black organizations offers of mediation, correctly asserting: These rioters dont have any leaders. Since the blacks no longer had any leaders, it was the moment of truth for both sides. Reactions from all sides were most revealing: a revolutionary event, by bringing existing problems into the open, provokes its opponents into an unhabitual lucidity. Official sources listed 32 dead (including 27 blacks), more than 800 wounded and 3000 arrests. Stores were massively plundered and many were burned. It took thousands of police and soldiers, including an entire infantry division supported by tanks, to confine the riot to the Watts area, and several more days of street fighting to finally bring it under control. By the third day the blacks had armed themselves by looting accessible gun stores, enabling them to fire even on police helicopters. Despite increasing reinforcements, the forces of order were unable to regain control of the streets. An incident between traffic police and pedestrians developed into two days of spontaneous riots. Reprinted by Internationale Situationniste #10 (March 1966) Translated by Ken Knabb AUGUST 13 - 16, 1965, the blacks of Los Angeles revolted. Text archives > situationist international texts > The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy Guy Debord unsigned tract originally translated into English by Donald-Nicholson Smith, distributed in the USA in December 1965 ![]()
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