No Need for Another Year of Living Dangerously

Dear Rodney,

Peace, it’s wonderful. Maybe we all can get along.

It was so nice and quiet Saturday morning at the corner of Martin Luther King and Figueroa. Our peace-loving neighbors the Clippers put tickets on sale at the Sports Arena box office for their upcoming NBA playoff games. No fuss, no muss. No broken glass. No boarded windows. No sirens. No fires. No tears. No fears.

Remember last year? Remember what we saw and how we felt? How we could hardly believe our eyes? How apprehensive or afraid some of us--rich or poor, black or white, male or female, cop or civilian--were to cruise or stroll the neighborhood? How reluctant we were to go anywhere near the vicinity of the once-upon-a-time City of Angels?

Remember how the Clippers had to call off one playoff game, then transplant it all the way to Anaheim? Maybe you remember Ron Harper appealing for peace and being thankful that his team’s victory over Utah “gave people a chance to see something besides people in L.A. being shot and beaten and killed.” Same as I remember Doc Rivers, dedicating the game to everybody--”blacks and whites and greens.”

Maybe we can get along.

Saw you at the Dodger game the other day, Rodney. Maybe you sat there thinking we were all going to have to suffer through another spring in hell like that last one. Maybe you wondered if you were the villain or the victim. Or maybe you shut your eyes, shut it out of your mind and did nothing more than concentrate on the baseball game in front of you, too tired down to your bones to replay that madness again and again.

The Dodgers had to postpone four games after the ruckus began. People couldn’t even sit outdoors at a ballgame and eat hot dogs and razz Strawberry or Lasorda, for fear of being beaten in their seats or yanked from their cars. That’s how crazy it got. The city shut down. Even our entertainment had to be canceled. Even the show couldn’t go on.

I remember the Lakers playing basketball the night the verdicts came out, remember the worried looks on their faces and the fearful tone in the voice of Portland’s Buck Williams, who could practically sniff the panic in the air. I remember the courage and conviction and candor of Byron Scott’s comments, then the way they were not misquoted but incorrectly interpreted, the way they sounded more like a call to arms than a call for reason, and I remember dropping by Byron’s house so he could clarify what he meant.

“That was my city out there that was burning,” Scott said. Those were his friends who suddenly had no shelter, his neighborhood merchants whose stores were turned to rubble. So even as he was choosing not to condemn those who did the damage, to understand how such a thing could have happened, this was also a man who prayed in his heart of hearts that it would never happen again.

The Lakers played at home Friday night, same as the Clippers did. They were able to think about basketball, talk about basketball, be concerned only about basketball. The verdicts were due around dawn the next morning, yes. But they couldn’t believe history would repeat itself, refused to believe it, disregarded the possibility. They wished for a bright, safe morning. They got their wish.

Maybe we can get along.

The Kings can play hockey now. They can come home from their first two playoff games in Calgary to the same town they left--they hope. To a town where a person doesn’t have to fear walking up to a ticket window or wearing the wrong team colors on his coat or cap. To a town where someone from South-Central and someone from Simi Valley can sit side by side at a sporting event and pass the popcorn between one another.

I have memories. I have reminders. I remember Olden Polynice, a 7-foot man with a broom, sweeping the shards of glass and piles of ash from the street, taking time off from being a fine athlete to being a good citizen. I remember Jim Brown, bravely and generously intervening in a gang negotiation, arbitrating a truce. I remember Vlade Divac, a man who left behind a Yugoslavia strewn with corpses and carnage, looking around his adopted town and wondering whether anywhere was safe.

Maybe it’s over now, Rodney. This bad, bad dream that scared us all. Maybe it was your own fault. Or maybe it was the fault of a couple of guys who stood Saturday inside the halls of L.A. law. Whichever. Point is, maybe we can finally move along now. Maybe we can finally get along now. Maybe you can go to baseball games more often now.

Maybe we’re safe at home.