Twilight: It's funny because, when I think back, I remember being in the neighborhood kickin' it with the homies and talking about the situation. We were like, "Yeah, they finally caught them on tape. Now they're gonna get what they got coming to them."
This was the attitude of people in the neighborhood: Finally, they got caught on tape. For years that type of abuse had been taking place, and nobody outside our community would believe it. Nobody even seemed to care. A lot of us felt like something was going to happen. We felt like finally the police were going to get what they had coming.
You have to remember, it wasn't just the Rodney King situation. When that acquittal verdict came down, it came on the heels of the Latasha Harlans case. It was like gasoline being tossed on something that was already simmering.
Latasha Harlans was an honor roll student who was killed by a Korean grocer as she was on her way to school. She was murdered in cold blood. Not only did the grocer get a chance to be bailed out of jail, but also she was only given five years probation and she was allowed to leave the country. That was unheard of in any murder case I had ever seen.
What was really cold about the whole thing was that on the same day of the Latasha Harlan's verdict, on a different floor in the courtroom, a white man was sentenced to more time for abusing his dog than this woman got for killing this young Black girl. This man had to do jail time. This woman got probation and was allowed to leave the country.
It said to us that a dog's life was worth more than a Black child's life. This is what people were looking at. This is what people were paying attention to.
So people were hot but willing to wait and see how things played out with the Rodney King verdict. We wanted to see if they were going to continue to push this line of no respect and true understanding of humanity when it comes to dealing with African Americans. After the verdict, we saw exactly what they felt about us.
I tell people all the time, that's one of the things we have to look at in regards to the unresolved Black question of African people in America. Who are we? What are we? Do we not have the right to determine our own future and our own destiny? I think we have to re-look at these things because we continue to exist in a country that has no respect or loyalty towards us.
Yet they wanna use us for everything - to fight in their wars, prison labor. We're used as bullet catchers in their military. This is the reality of our existence here. How long are we going to continue to deal with that? All of those years of abuse, the Latasha Harlans situation and the Rodney King verdict are all the things that galvanized the community.
Nowhere in the media did you hear about the Bloods and Crips marching into Los Angeles' City Council meeting the night before the verdict. The day before the civil unrest, 500 Bloods and Crips from all over L.A. County went down to City Hall to address the City Council and demand the right to be respected.
We demanded a fair opportunity to participate in the mainstream so we could be better fathers for our children and provide for our families. We demanded that the type of demonization that we had been subjected to had to stop.
Davey D: Wow, I had not heard about the march on City Hall. What was the City Council's reaction to seeing all those Bloods and Crips united? Also, why didn't the local papers cover it?
Twilight: I'm not sure why the local newspapers didn't cover it. One thing I do know is that when it comes to this 10-year progress report, I have to give the whole situation a D-minus, and that's being nice.
Because even back then, the City Council acted like they did not have a concern in the world. It didn't matter to them. They were like, "Ok, so you guys want access?" But no access was ever given.
So the next day after they showed their unconcern and the verdict comes down and the community blows up and everything goes crazy, people acted on their frustrations. People showed their discontent.
You know it's interesting because today people talk about Palestine and the war tactic they use of suicide bombings. It's the ultimate level of showing your discontent, the disbelief of the conditions that you are living in leads you to destroy yourself, let alone your own community. So what I seen taking place back then and what I see taking place today in Palestine, to me, it's the same thing.
When people have no other way to show their discontent, they use whatever is most effective. And what is most effective in some cases is theoretic acts of outrage and tearing down and destroying everything that is around you to let people know that if I can't have peace, if I can't have access and participate in the mainstream, then there is nothing else here for me. Nothing else matters.
Davey D: Explain what happened with the gangs after the L.A. uprisings. Did it accelerate the peace process?
Twilight: Well as I said before, in the community that I'm from, which is Watts, peace talks had been taking place since '88. I was one of the ambassadors who was at the meetings representing my community. In fact, I was one who extended my hand to my so-called rivals and said, "Yes, we can have peace."
That sent shock waves through the community, the prison system and the rest of the country. At that time it wasn't a popular thing to do. There was a lot of backlash to it. There were a lot of guys in prison who had their objections to it. But my point in doing this was the fact that we had been living this lifestyle under certain conditions, and it hadn't shown anything that was being productive.
After learning and studying and coming to a greater understanding of who and what I was, I realized that I had been manipulated into a culture. I had been manipulated into destroying myself.
It's sort of like the children of South Africa who are kidnapped from their villages and trained by the South African regime and then sent back into their community as agents to destroy the movement of the South Africans for liberation. Today it's the same situation - except they didn't take our physical bodies, but they took our mental minds.
So here we are fighting and trying to build peace and bring things forward. The community of Watts established this communication. Bloods and Crips were marching through one another's neighborhoods. There was a core group of individuals - Daude Sherrill, Aqeela Sherrill, cats from Nickerson Gardens.
All these other big powerful neighborhoods in Watts were basically working together and communicating. This was starting to spill over into Compton and South Central Los Angeles, where leadership from those neighborhoods were coming to the table and giving this peace process a chance.
I, myself, was invited to Crip meetings where I saw the rival neighborhoods to my neighborhood. I would be there incognito, dressed down so nobody could tell who I was until the dudes who invited me told the cats I was somebody who they should listen to.
I would use the opportunity to try and inspire that neighborhood to get involved in the peace process. So what happened was, Watts had already made its mind up. This peace thing was going to happen. Circle City Pirus, Nickerson Gardens Bounty Hunters, Imperial Courts PJ Watts Crips and the Jordan Down Grape Street Watts Crips were the four neighborhoods that came together. It was three housing developments and one residential community which were and still are among the most influential neighborhoods in Watts who decided to come together and say, "Yes, we gonna do this."
After the signing of that cease-fire agreement, after coming together and going through the neighborhoods and saying this is going to be a reality, the next day the Rodney King situation blew up. What you had was individuals who had been in communication since '88 coming out. Those neighborhoods that were still walking a fine line as to whether or not they wanted to be with this, for a moment had to stick their hand in this.
They said, "Ok, we wanna do this, man. We've been looking at the conditions on how they are treating us, and we wanna be a part of this." So that's what you had taking place. There were some neighborhoods that already had the conviction in their hearts, and they were dedicated to doing it. Once they made this a reality, the other neighborhoods that were kind of skeptical most definitely came in after the Rodney King verdict.
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