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Surfer’s Desert
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Police Brutality, Corruption, and Systemic Racism
Healing, Progress, and Collective Consciousness
Justice, Perspective, and Ambiguity
Individuals vs. Institutions
Action vs. Symbolic Gesture
Summary
Analysis
Smith interviews Theresa Allison, founder of Mothers Reclaiming Our Children (Mothers ROC), and the mother of gang truce architect Dewayne Holmes. Alison talks about the origins of Mothers ROC, which began on November 29, 1991, after her nephew died and her son, Dewayne, thought about bringing peace to “the guys in the project” (Allison stresses that she doesn’t want to say “gangs”). Inspired by the gang members who began to meet every Sunday to establish the gang truce, Allison established her own advocacy group for mothers whose kids were arrested by the LAPD on false or exaggerated charges.
On the one hand, the formation of Mothers ROC emphasizes the potential for community involvement and shared experience to promote healing and progress. On the other hand, that Allison and these other mothers must advocate for themselves rather than turning to law enforcement to help reflects that society has failed its marginalized communities. For Allison and these other mothers, the police are the perpetrators, not trustworthy public servants.
Themes
One day, Dewayne was sentenced for a crime he didn’t commit. Then, Allison’s nephew, Tiny, was killed by police officers driving unmarked cars and dressed in gang clothing, in what was meant to look like a drive-by shooting. Allison explains that this is a common tactic that the police use: they kill a Black man, then blame it on an enemy gang. On the night of his death, Tiny was outside, gathering up children to protect them from the shooting that goes on in the projects after dark.
Allison explains how officers sometimes impersonate gang members to carry out violence. They can do this because the police are sanctioned by the state, so they have the protection of a powerful institution. Tiny’s death represents a role reversal of sorts, as he was killed by police while trying to serve and protect his community. The police, rather than protecting the community, ultimately harm people.
Themes
The day of Tiny’s death, something felt off to Allison, like the day of Jesus’s crucifixion. When she got home, her daughter ran to her crying and told her about Tiny’s death. Allison, a staunch Catholic, recalls how she immediately thought of Jesus passing around “one loaf of bread and made a whole.” It was then that she decided a change had to happen, since a change had already overtaken them: her son had changed, and everyone had changed “from happy people / to hurting people.” But, Allison says, white people “don’t want the peace, / they don’t want us comin’ together.”
Allison’s inspiration to form her grassroots organization based on Jesus passing around “one loaf of bread and ma[king] a whole” is a testament to the healing protentional of community engagement and shared experience. Fragmented communities are made up of “hurting people” but communities who can offer each other compassion and support are “happy people.” Allison’s belief that white people “don’t want the peace” of Black communities “comin’ together” seems to stem from a desire for the oppressor to maintain their power by keeping oppressed communities disadvantaged and unable to organize.
Themes
After Tiny’s funeral, the police came after Dewayne. He was walking around the projects at night when the police accosted him, insisting that he was a different man named Damian Holmes. When the police escorted Dewayne to their car, Allison and some others assembled to tip it over. A young woman positioned herself beneath the back wheel. Allison told the police her son didn’t have a warrant, but the police insisted that he did—and the officer said they’d have to take him to the station to run his name through the system to check, anyway. Allison states that she knew then that the police knew perfectly well who her son was and intended to kill him.
Allison’s story about the police officers’ dishonest way of trying to apprehend her son shows the extent of corruption in the LAPD at the time. They overstep their authority to keep communities like Allison’s under their control. Allison’s fear that the police planned to kill her son shows how corrupted and broken the relationship is between the police and the communities they are supposed to protect. This stands in stark contrast to the unassuming, friendly interactions with officers Jason Sanford described earlier in the act.
Themes
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Although the sergeant made the other officers apologize for their mistake, after that night, the police remained determined to capture and arrest Dewayne. Allison explains that the police had a vendetta against her son because they didn’t want everyone to come together and protest against the police. After all, the LA police department is supposed to be the best in the world, and it would be a scandal for the world to see them for the corrupt force they are beneath this facade.
The forced apology was nothing more than a symbolic gesture—a formality to pretend the police were operating legitimately. Their continued search for Dewayne shows that the police had made no mistake in misidentifying Dewayne: their mistaken identity was a calculated attempt to press charges against an innocent person. Their only mistake was in getting caught.
Themes
Allison describes the LAPD’s corrupt practice of taking a kid from one project, dropping him in another, and leaving him to be killed by an enemy gang. They picked up Dewayne multiple times, beginning when he was just a little boy. Allison remembers the woman who shot Tiny in the face. She thinks about how the police officers take kids as young as 12, knock their heads against trees, throw them to the ground, and stomp on them. Allison demands to know why the police couldn’t just handcuff the kids and take them to jail.
The behavior of the LAPD that Allison describes goes beyond a tough-on-crime approach to police work. Allison isn’t demanding that Black people be let off the hook for any illegal acts they’ve committed. Instead, she simply requests that they be treated as humans who have committed a crime, not animals for the police to subdue and cause to suffer unnecessarily.
Themes
Allison thinks the police shot Tiny in the face “to keep him from say’in what they said to him,” to cover for themselves. She says the police aren’t strong enough to say they messed up and killed the wrong person. She laments how wrong it is that the police have power and a system that works for them: once the police remove their uniforms, they’re just people and are no different than anyone else. Allison cries as she relates how the police took Dewayne one night while she was away receiving care for her heart problems.
Allison’s observation that the police are like anyone else shows how all the police officers’ power comes from the protections they gain from their association with law enforcement and the government. Being part of a government organization is, she suggests, the only thing that makes them any different from the people they arrest and abuse.
Themes
