The closest I've come to being in a riot was during the blackouts of '77. We were so ignorant. We destroyed our own neighborhoods and fought against each other.To be clear, when I say "we," I'm referring to the people in my neighborhood. I was too young. My mom kept us home. A bunch of us hung out on the stoop in front of my house talking and making fun of everybody running around like crazy. Then, the next day, we realized everyone had new shoes, mopeds, and stereos, and we were like, "Wow, this sucks."The real problem with riots is that while you're participating in them you don't realize that you're wrecking the places you have to shop at the next week. These are local businesses—the places where you buy your baby food and your clothes. A lot of those shops won't reopen, so everyone in the neighborhood loses. After a really bad riot, all the residents will have to go shopping 15 blocks away from their house.If I were ever in a riot, it would have to be for a good cause. I don't know what that cause might be… I would have probably been upset with the Rodney King incident. If I lived in LA, I might have been one of the ones rioting, because for years the police told the black community they needed proof of police brutality, and once they got it they threw it out.I suppose that's sort of similar to the recent events in England. People over there are tired of their law enforcement not doing their jobs. The people are just fed up. Money's tight, jobs are scarce, and then you have something like this happen. They just lost it. Burning police stations, turning over police cars… that's some serious unrest. Eventually, somebody has to sit back, take all that in, and say “Listen, we have to rethink what we’re doing here, because apparently what we’re doing isn’t working."What I'm trying to say is that rioting is never right. Innocent people inevitably get hurt, livelihoods are destroyed, people go to jail, and, at the end of the day, the cops are going to win. You've got to hit them where it hurts—vote for the right people to clean it up.RON HEMPHILL
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