Today in Labor History April 29, 1992: People rioted in Los Angeles and protested in other major cities in response to the Rodney King verdict. Despite video footage of police brutally beating a defenseless King, the jury acquitted all the police officers involved. Over the next three days 64 people died and hundreds of buildings were destroyed. However, the LA riots in also included an anti-Asian pogrom. 2,300 Korean businesses were looted or burned and hundreds of Koreans suffered from PTSD. Those who died included 2 Asians, 28 African Americans, 19 Latinos and 15 whites. In San Francisco, African American youth chased cops down the street with bats. And protesters shattered the façade of Bank of America with a concrete bus bench. I also remember having to duck behind a car to avoid being shot by a scared shop owner near Chinatown, as young men ran out of his store with 12-packs of beer. The violent police assault on King was one of the first to go viral in the digital age. It inspired hundreds of protests and ushered in a new era of citizen journalists documenting police brutality that contributed to the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
