Twilight: I know for me the first motivation was my will to live was restored to me, because in that lifestyle and being a part of it, there's a lot of hate in the hearts of the children. We had a lot of hate in our hearts.
The hate was rooted in the dysfunctionalism of our families, our schools, communities and the police. We had all of this hate and nowhere to release it in a positive way. Our hate would manifest itself in the form of violence. You could only go that way but for so long.
My will to live was restored when I was told I was going to be a father. That was a key thing for me, because a large part of why I felt so much anger was because I felt betrayed by my father. At the same time I realized that if I was going to be a father, then I did not wanna betray my child.
I did not want to allow conditions to keep me from being productive with my child. So I knew I wanted peace, but I just couldn't go for it. Everybody had to buy into it.
At the same time, the verbal newspapers called rap were bombarding the community with Public Enemy and groups like X-Clan. Rappers in those days did a lot to try and educate. When I say educate, I mean they did a lot to try and draw out the understanding within a person of their own abilities and the conditions in which they live in.
This would help them determine ways of surviving. This is not the type of training that we get in high school and colleges. Instead it's education that lets you know: This is who you are. This is the community that you live in, this is the governmental structure that you live under and these are the conditions of that governmental structure. Its foundation is white supremacy. If you are a non-white person, then you will be targeted for various types of negative activity and pressure. How do you combat that?
After understanding some of these things, I got deeper into my own knowledge as to who I was. I became even more inspired after reading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." I started to want to know even more, so I started talking with the O.G.s of the different neighborhoods.
I began asking, "What is the history of our neighborhoods? Where did the Bloods and Pirus come from? Where did the Crips come from?" I kept seeking all this information. It was a two-year massive study after coming out of high school at 18, up until I was 20 years old. It was constant study, constant research and constant seeking.
Davey D: The whole history of gangs in L.A. is rich. They just didn't start out trying to kill one another. If I recall correctly, they formed to protect their neighborhood against marauding bands of whites who would raid Black neighborhoods. Can you give a breakdown?
Twilight: Yes, that's exactly the facts. A lot of these gangs or social clubs, as they were once called, like the Gladiators, the Farmers and Rebel Rousers, formed to protect themselves from white gangs called the Spook Hunters who would come into Watts and attack Black people.
So early on, these people formed these social cubs to protect themselves. Back then, the violence perpetuated by the supremacist race soldiers posing as police officers was even more extensive. So when you were in a group, you felt more protected
Davey D: Now we're talking about the 1960s, right?
Twilight: Exactly. Now here it is right around all this time you have the Martin Luther King situation and the Malcolm X situation, where our people were assassinated. Then you had the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense come on the scene.
They were pushing survival programs. They were looking at the condition of the community and addressing those conditions. They soon became heroes to the people. Of course, young people who were already motivated to try and protect themselves and do what was right gravitated toward that.
Now there was one other component that was very important that led to the destruction of our communities, and that was the Vietnam War. We call it the birth and the death. It was the death of the old gangs like the Gladiators and the Rebel Rousers because many of them were drafted into the war.
Those who did not go away for war became Panthers or they joined the US Organization. Basically, you had a new breed of youth organizations coming up with the birth of The Brims, The Pirus and Crips. When these organizations started to sprout up, they looked at the conditions of the community and tried to do things to change it. They were becoming more and more influenced.
Davey D: Now we're talking about the early '70s?
Twilight: Right. They were becoming more and more influenced by the struggles of the Black Panther Party and the US Organization. One of the early members of the Crips went by the name Little Bunchy. He was Little Bunchy Carter who (was named after the) former president of the Watts chapter of the Black Panther Party. The crew that he came out of was the Eastside Crips, and they called themselves Baby Panthers.
Now there was an infamous situation at the Palladium where Bunchy was accused of beating down some dude for a leather jacket. That's how the newspapers reported it. But the truth of the matter was dude got smashed on because he was selling drugs wearing a leather jacket and pretending he was a Panther.
Davey D: You know, it's interesting that you mention Bunchy Carter, who was eventually killed, because his life seems to parallel another famous Panther who was killed that year. It was Fred Hampton, who headed up the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers.
>From the way it appears, both Fred and Bunchy had great rapport and
respect from the street gangs. It seems like just as they were gaining
momentum and succeeding in re-focusing the energy of the gangs onto
something positive, they both got killed. The obvious question is, was
that by coincidence or was there something else at play?
Twilight: Oh no, it was definitely part of a bigger plan called Cointelpro. That was the counter intelligence program that was orchestrated and put into power by the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover.
Basically, all resources that America had at that time was directed to disrupt, discredit and destroy organizations like the Panthers. J. Edgar Hoover used the FBI to hunt down the Panthers like dogs on the streets. They were being run out of the country.
Some were sent to jail for crimes they didn't commit, like Geronimo Pratt, who just recently was released from prison. The influence these guys yielded over the young people in the community at that time was unbelievable.
But at the same time, this counter intelligence program was set up to come in and manipulate tension between the US Organization and the Black Panther Party. There was infiltration of these organizations by FBI agents. All this counter intelligence activity goes all the way back to the Marcus Garvey movement, where they had Black man with the code "Agent 800" who did counter intelligence.
It kind of sounds like the malt liquor, he came to destroy. So, this counter intelligence program is not something new. It was all about "divide and conquer." It was all about conceal, manipulate and displace. So this was the situation people were being subjected to: With the collapse of the Black Panther Party and the orchestrated conflict between them and the US Organization, it adversely affected the young people who were being influenced by them.
You can almost go along the lines of where the US Organization and the Black Panther Party existed in the community and find some conflicts that are rooted in some of the gang situations right now. I tell people to remember that when they go back and look at the history that Bloods and Crips will come to an understanding that we were on a certain page and moving in a certain direction and someone came in, dismantled that and installed something new.
They stripped out the program for liberation and freedom and inserted a program for self-destruction and distrust. The end result of all of that is what we see today with the gang phenomenon and the gang wars.
This was compounded as we went into the late '70s and had all the Black exploitation films, which affected the minds of the young people dramatically. You had individuals returning from the Vietnam War with drug addictions that they brought back from the battlefield. They were trying to deal with all the drama. At the same time, you had an influx of drugs into the community to destabilize the effects of the Black Panther Party on the community.
Finally, you had the politically motivated economic embargo against industrial urban centers of America. All of a sudden the taxes were raised so high that to function within these urban centers, all the industries moved out and into the suburbs and rural areas.
So here you had all these people who had migrated from the South into these big cities for the jobs. Now early on they didn't have too much competition because many whites were away fighting in the war. So here it is, the whites were coming home, the war was over and people were frustrated and tired. There were lots of uprisings. Nothing is by coincidence. This was all planned.
To hear this interview, visit http://media.odeo.com/6/5/6/Twilightbey-LaRiotspt1.mp3. Email Davey D at mrdaveyd at aol.com. To hear more from Davey and his colleagues, visit www.daveyd.com and listen to Hard Knock Radio Monday-Friday at 4 p.m. on KPFA 94.1 FM and Friday Night Vibe every Friday at midnight on KPFA.
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