February 2009 Archives

Has black history month ever seemed so apt as it seems now?

I admit, I've never been a big fan of the observance--too niche, too feel-good, too much of an excuse to ignore racial struggle the other eleven months of the year. But this year it has a new urgency, a new reason to be re-examined. Sure, the election of Obama to the White House helps. But so do the Bush years. In even the most cursory retrospective afforded by the early months of 2009, it's clear that a whole host of civil rights central to the social movements of the 60s and to the idea of democracy itself have been battered and bruised in shockingly casual ways.

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Talk about a letdown. I don't just mean the fact that for about the last decade, the L.A. Times has been sinking as an institution, and the for the last year or so has been the unofficial poster boy for the distressed state of the newspaper industry. I mean a letdown much more personal than that.

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He was speaking for himself, but lawyer Leo Branton Jr. was voicing the sentiment of entire generations of blacks in L.A. when he remarked, "I was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Eventually I escaped the South and came to California."

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"They shot my dog. They shouldn't have done that."

The voice on the phone is exasperated, anguished. I couldn't agree with it more. It's Sunday, and I'm talking to Michael Reed, the 48-year-old homeless man whose beloved pit bull, Topaz, was wounded in a hail of bullets during a controversial shooting by the Inglewood police (one of many) last August. That shooting left another homeless man dead and Topaz, who happened to be nearby tied to Michael's shopping cart, with a shattered knee. One of her hind legs had to amputated less than a week later. Since then, Michael's been forced to adjust his own peripatetic lifestyle to accommodate Topaz's new disability. He's also been trying to file a claim with the city of Inglewood that'll stick, or a claim that they'll take seriously. He filed for $50,000 in damages last year and was promptly rejected. He isn't entirely sure about what to do next. He's been visiting city hall regularly since December and calling just about everybody in the directory. So far, no luck.

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