The podcast from NPR, The L.A. Riots, As A Neighbor Remembers It, focuses on the views and emotions that were shown primarily throughout the black community. The interviewee presented in the podcast was Karl Fleming, a journalist for Newsweek in the 1960s. He recalls multiple incidents that were very similar to that of Rodney Kings, and others who were different but held the same narrative, police officers abusing their power to punish black people physically and mentally. He says the police officers would call their assaults on people as "proning them to the ground." There was always a problem and tension between people of color in areas of Los Angeles and the police. Only those who lived in or near the ghetto felt and experienced the riots. The wealthier parts of Los Angeles remained intact, which is not a surprise since there was a lot more police surveillance in that area.
This podcast presented something a little different with its different elements, including the audio recordings of the court cases and the explanations of what was happening at different times. I found this particular podcast very interesting because we hear an account of someone whose residence was burned down, we have mostly analyzed those who were directly affected by police brutality. We also hear about what happened in the ghettos, but they don't account for what occurred in the more affluent parts of L.A. Here we are told that the wealthier areas were intact, yet some of the residents were tense about what could happen. As we've discussed this in lectures, the ghettos suffered the most, and it is interesting to hear about how different the reactions to the Rodney Kind video depended on the economic status of individuals.
-Azucena Nava
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