AN OUTRAGED CRY AGAINST INJUSTICE:

This is the truth about Los Angeles

By JAMES E. JACKSON

After you have read it all, all about the riot in Los Angeles that is, you will have to weigh
all of the thousands of words of the newsman’s “‘battle scene’’ stories against one solid
statistic — the head count of the dead. i

The incontestable fact is that
of the 29 people who died in the
four days of wrath, 26 were
Negroes. In addition to the sum
and the division of the dead,
other statistics have been duti-
fully compiled, There were 676
persons hospitalized for injuries
of whom 640 were Negroes,

Negroes arrested in the Watts
area of Los Angeles were jammed
into every available space in the
city jails—of the 2,157 people
who were arrested in the area
all were Negroes.

(Later figures give the death
roll as 34—all but six Negroes—
and injured as 862, most of them
Negroes, and the number ar-
rested as over 3,000, almost
exclusively Negroes,—Editor.)

Who were the white victims of
the riot? There was a sheriff's
deputy—Ronald E, Ludlow, 27-
and another white man died of a
wound that could have come from
a police riot gun, also a white
fireman died when a wall of a
burning building fell upon him,

Most of the- 26 Negroes who
were killed were gunned to death
by police wielding riot guns,

They say it was a “race war,”
and “insurrection,” etc. But how
come it turns out that 26 Negroes
were killed to one white deputy
sheriff?

Israeli people
West German

The August 20 edition of the
Jewish Western Bulletin carried
two conflicting news items onthe
arrival of West Germany’s first
ambassador to Israel, Dr. Rolf
Pauls. Both items give a Tel
Aviv source.

One says: “Following extra=

ordinary security precautions, —
Ambassador Pauls and his en- -

tourage arrived -without incident,

Barrel of fun
this Sunday

The V@icouver Labor Festival
Committee wishes to once again
remind all PT readers of the
Barréof Fun outing this coming
Sunday, August 29, at 3440
Fromme Road, in North Van-
couver, Festivities start at 1:30
p.m.

A pleasant day for the whole
family has been planned by the
committee in charge of prepar-
ations, Features includea Volley
Ball Match, Giant Tug O’ War,
Swimming, Refreshments and a
Salmon Dinner,

The committee has also an-
nounced that the recipient of a
fully paid for Labor Day Cruise,
including boat and captain, will be
announced during the day.

Admission is free, so be there
early and avoid disappointment,

JAMES E. JACKSON, editor. of the

U.S. Worker who spoke at a rally ir
Vancouver in May sponsored by the
PT, outlines in this slightly abridged
article the real meaning of the recent
events in Los Angeles.

This was no “race riot.” This
was an elemental scream of out-
rage from a violated people en-
tombed in a prison house of
social deprivation and economic
impoverishment.

No man has a right to expect
that those: whom the men of
power and privilege, the capital-
ist ruling circle, have rendered
relief-less in their wretchedness
will for ever slumber silently in
the lower depths where they have
been consigned by this society of
bourgeois and billionaire,

Only those ignorant of history,
only those blinded to the sight of
injustice and the daily degrada-
tion of the Negro detainees ofthe

profest
ambassador

and were greeted only by a lone
demonstrator... .”

The other says: “As Bonn’s
first Ambassador to Israel ar-
rived this week, thousands of

‘demonstrators marched silently

through this city’s main streets
(Tel Aviv) in a massive protest
. . e against Israel’s new diplo-
matic ties with West Germany.”

Now which is it, one “lone
demonstrator” or thousands?

Other sources of information,
from Israel itself, are not so
“modestly” muddled, In Jerusa-
lem monster demonstrations,
with banners demanding “ Pauls
raus” (out with Pauls) and “out
with the Nazi” protesting the
establishment of any diplomatic
relations between Israel and the
Bonn regime, were very much in
evidence, In clashes with the:
police many demonstrators were
injured and arrested,

’ Bonn’s ambassador to Israel
is a former senior Wehrmaeht
officer of the Hitlerite era.

NEXT WEEK

The PT will revert back to

a regular 12 page weekly

paper.

slums of this country’s great
cities, ringed all about as they
are by towering walls of white-
supremacy, hatred and exclusion;
only simpletons can assume that
prisoners will not generate out
of the fury of their circumstance
the fire with which to ignite their
cages.

And so they set fire to their
prisons, those unattended, de-
nied, abused and degraded ones.
They burned their prisons as did
the desperate ones who followed
Spartacus,

Like the ragged ones who
marched and sang with Villon,
Like the slave-chain breakers
who lived to hang with Nat Turner,

So they made other statistics
—500 stores of absentee-owners
were Set afire.

Also the sleek cars—symbols
of the “American way of life”
which the TV commercials gloat
about but the Establishment con-
spires to keep out of the reach
of the people of Watts and of
all the Wattses of all the cities
of America,

Some officials say the fire loss
will come to $175 million. One
of those who lost a store to the
angry uprising of the downtrod-
den of Watts of Los Angeles (the
City of the Angels it says in the
Chamber of Commerce ads) was
a certain Richard Gold.

Mr. Gold has many stores, a
chain of furniture stores, so he
will simply write that burned one
off on his income tax returns
next year,

But the point is that Mr, Gold
knows more about the time of
day in the world we all live in
than most of the men of his class
and all of the Los Angeles city
fathers,

Said Mr. Gold: “I cannot con-
demn these people. These people
should not be shot down like dogs.
White people who were as poor
as they would burn and loot if they
saw the chance, What’s behind
this is pent-up anger over poverty
and miserable housing,”

Mr, Gold the Watts business-
man, is white and right on this
score, Watts is indeed the most
poverty-ridden area of lush,
Plush, tinseled and glittering Los
Angeles. Into its 150 blocks are
jammed 67,000 Negroes, They
pay high rents for decrepit, 25-
year-old houses,

There in Watts, income is low-
est in all of Los Angeles, save
the “skid row” district, Unem-
ployment is three times higher
in- Watts than for the city as a
whole, Watts is the city centre
of a Negro population which num-=
bers some 523,000 in the whole
of metropolitan Los Angeles,

The New York Times on Sun-
day told it as it was when it said
that “the fact is that the new
Civil Rights laws, andthe related
anti-poverty program, have not
yet greatly improvedthe lot of the
Negroes in the teeming ghettoes
of the cities of the North,”

POLICE VIOLENCE. This kind of violence by the police in various parts
U.S. and in Los Angeles against Negroes demanding their freedom
tights workers helped spark the recent events in Watts county.

The welkin sounds that came
from Watts were loud and angry
enough to have shaken the com-
placent into a wide-eyed con-
frontation of the reality of the
challenge by the slum-confined
multi-millions who have come to
the point where they were de-
termined not to live longer inthe
same old way.

The challenge of the Watts ex-
plosion can be met only by atruly
massive program to extend genu-
ine material equality of oppor-
tunity to the Negro masses in
particular and to those who dwell
in poverty and social depriva-
tion.

It means a vast increase inthe
investments in the War Against
Poverty Program,

Such an increase can only come
about through a proportionate
decrease in the expenditures in
the criminal diversion ofnational
resources: and men to the dirty

work the Johnson Administration

is carrying out in Vietnam,

In Watts itself, what is called
for is not.only a total economic
opportunity program for wiping
out unemployment and for proper
job-training, but a program for
the total reconstruction of the
area. :

All the blight of slum condie-

ean be established a8
‘eurrences of such trae

August 27, 1965—PACIFIC TRIBUNE

tions must be eliminated
cord with a plan speedily!
mentedw Housing, educé
recreational facilities ™
provided in full measures

In addition, Watts require
Negroes, who are more © 4
per cent of the populatiom af
be predominant in the POP ig
partment, fire fighting 2 oti?
city service jobs and {uM
for the area.

I}

Also, merchants doing DY

in the area must employ

in their establishments 1”
ratio.

With such an approae!
Watts and for all the ast”
cities of the country, guy

bursts of primitive Pl
outrage at injustice.

As Representative uso
Hawkins, Los Angele® a
Congressman, said: “i
is that nothing has ev
done to solve the long-!*
derlying problems.”

Watts means that the ee
stalling and demagogi¢ P
and good-will platitude? ‘a
out, It has come dow?
Either wipe out the % 4
that produce the s1UM 5

slums will wipe out the ©