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I Was Scared
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 Maxine Waters, Congresswoman for California’s 35th District. This interview is taken from a speech Waters delivered at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church (FAME) shortly after Daryl Gates’s resignation and the riots. Smith notes that FAME is an important gathering place for political activity in LA. Movie stars go there, and Arsenio Hall frequently attends. Smith shifts her focus to Waters, describing the congresswoman as “elegant, confident,” and “with a big smile, a fierce bite, and a lot of guts.” In her speech, Waters speaks of the police brutality and institutionalized racism that created the unrest the city just saw.
Daryl Gates stepped down as chief of the LAPD on May 30, 1993, after repeated calls for his resignation from the public. It’s not unusual that Waters would decide to deliver a speech at FAME. The church has long been a center for political and social action in Los Angeles. Waters, for her part, is a powerful person, as a Congresswoman. Speaking about the reasons for the riots offers hope that she and other powerful people will use their clout to try to advocate for change and prevent a repeat of the riots.
Themes
In 1992, Waters states, the state of the country is very much the same as it was decades ago, after a Kerner Commission report publicized these social injustices. She addresses the president, stating, “THEY’RE HUNGRY IN THE BRONX TONIGHT, / THEY’RE HUNGRY IN ATLANTA TONIGHT, / THEY’RE HUNGRY IN ST. LOUIS TONIGHT.” She appeals to the president to think of the children, whose lives are threatened by violence: of “young men who have been dropped off of America’s agenda.” She addresses the president and the governor, explaining how everyone in the street is “not a thug / or a hood” or criminal. She admonishes people who judge those who commit petty theft, stealing diapers or a pair of shoes out of desperation. If these people are criminals, then what about the President’s transgressions?
Waters contextualizes LA’s current (1992) crisis within the broader history of the government failing to give adequate aid to low-income communities. In 1967, following a summer of urban riots, the White House ordered the Kerner Commission to investigate the cause of this social unrest. The resulting report, published in 1967, provided unequivocal evidence that lack of employment opportunity, police brutality, and economic underdevelopment were the leading causes of the riots, yet the government effectively ignored all of the report’s suggestions for ways to improve the infrastructure of impoverished urban centers. Waters sees the government’s response to the 1992 riots as history repeating itself, as she is not seeing the state or federal governments addressing the systemic issues that incited the riots. Lastly, Waters draws attention to the double standards of lawfulness applied to white and powerful people and Black, poor, or otherwise marginalized people. A disadvantaged Black person is considered a “thug” or “hood” for stealing basic necessities out of desperation, yet the President of the United States (George H.W. Bush at the time of Waters’s address) remains in a position of immense power despite having committed what Waters implies are more serious transgressions (though it’s unclear what she’s referring to).
Themes
Waters criticizes public leaders who want her to go to Watts and tell the protestors to “Cool it, baby,” as Black leaders had done during the civil rights movement. But she is too angry to do this, and too angry at journalists who try to tell her what she should and shouldn’t say. While it’s “unfortunate” that people have turned to violence to express their anger, “riot / is the voice of the unheard.”
Unlike many of the authority figures in the play so far, Waters explicitly refuses to condemn the rioters’ violence. Her remark that “riot / is the voice of the unheard” validates the violence, framing civil unrest as “the voice” of people whom society silences through disenfranchisement.
Themes
