Los Angeles youth speak out

By Adam Hanieh

ADELAIDE -- Helena Swan and George Evans, two young people from Central Los Angeles who are touring Australia to inform people about life in Los Angeles after the riots, spoke to a Resistance meeting here on 8 October.

“This was not a race riot, but an economic one”, Swan said. The events in Los Angeles following the Rodney King verdict exposed a deep rot in US society, where 22% of children live in poverty. The life expectancy for black children is 50% of the white population's.

Swan and Evans said that the conflict between Korean and black populations of Los Angeles was very much a media beat-up.

Since the uprising, two major gangs in LA have agreed to a truce, and there is a sense of unity in the black population and the realisation that the government doesn't offer any solutions.

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