May 1 , 2007
April 29, 1992
Fifteen years ago, my career had really just started.
I was covering boxing for the Pasadena Star-News, and traveling all over the country writing about a young heavyweight with iron in his hands, Mike Tyson.
Life was good, on April 29, 1992. I had some vacation time and my girlfriend and I decided to spend a couple of days in Cancun.
But there was one thing I had to do before we could leave.
Pay a traffic ticket.
Seemed simple enough just drive downtown to Los Angeles before the court closed pay the ticket, go to her place and then fun in the sun in Cancun the next day.
Seems simple enough.
I had a 1990, Honda Prelude in those days, and less than 24 hours earlier some assclown, I love that word, jacked my radio.
Still, I loved the car, baby blue and silent.
Sometimes at a red light I wasn’t even sure if the car was on. I hopped back in the car after paying the ticket and grabbing a min-video cassette from a Radio Shack.
At first I ignored the middle-aged black woman crying on the curb. She was wailing like death was upon her shoulders and I stared at her for a few seconds and noticed another woman black woman cussing at an LAPD officer, who wasted no time cuffing her.
When two black men ran to her aid, a riot cop seemed to appear out of nowhere, with gun drawn.
After the men were cuffed, the riot cop turned his attention to me and asked me if I had business in the area. I flashed my press pass and asked him what was going on.
“You don’t know?” he asked. Then he noticed the gaping hole and exposed wire in my car, and shook his head.
The Rodney King verdict came in an hour ago, riots have started about eight blocks from here and they’re headed in this direction. I suggest you leave the area.”
It’s weird the way our senses work.
Sometimes we don’t smell the smoke until we see the fire and sometimes we don’t feel the pain until we see the wound.
The sky had a weird orange tinge, and with my heart pumping fast I fled Los Angeles. It took me two hours to make the five minute drive to the freeway. I was stopped about eight times, finally an officer escorted me, sirens blaring, to the 110 Freeway
The streets were empty, and the only sounds were the sirens.
The only people I saw were in handcuffs, some of them being clubbed with batons and flashlights
As I got to the freeway I slowed down and almost stopped.
The ticket I had paid was bogus, and the police officer that stopped me referred to the King beating when he saw my drivers’ license.
“Altadena, hey our pal Rodney King is from Altadena. Did you know him?”
“We went to the same high school several years apart,” I said as I stared at him.
“Does it make you mad?” he asked.
“It has nothing to do with me,” I said as I signed my ticket.
And as I stared at the entrance to the 110, I wanted to stop the car and burn Los Angeles myself.
I am ashamed to admit the thought ever entered into my mind, but years of traffic stops for driving while black, being told where I belong and being searched for no reason had swelled in many of us. As did the effect of the Reagan-Bush era which drover many of the same people who once sang “We Shall Overcome” back to the point of wondering how they would make it from day to day.
I thought about it forever, so long that the cop asked over his loud speaker if I was okay.
Finally I wiped the tears out of my eyes and headed home.
In the end, 53 people died.
Gunfire killed 35, including eight people shot by law enforcement and two by National Guardsmen. Six died in arson fires. Attackers used sticks or boards to kill two others. Stabbings killed two. Six died in car accidents; two in hit-and-runs. One was strangled.
The violence crossed racial and ethnic lines. The dead included 25 African-Americans, 16 Latinos, eight Caucasians, two Asians, one Algerian, and one Indian or Middle Easterner.
We never made it to Cancun.
The publisher paged me the next day and I was sent into the heart of the riots, probably for no other reason than I was the only black reporter they had.
Eventually the looters grew tired and the fires were put out, but nobody has bothered to douse the attitudes that ignited Los Angeles.
The recommendations by the Christopher Commission, the group put together to hold the LAPD accountable every year, are still ignored and that includes the post-riot recommendations.
From my balcony in Altadena, just 20 minutes from downtown Los Angeles I could see it all.
No music on the radio, no TV just riot coverage and then it happened – the Emergency Broadcast Signal interrupted the coverage and this time it wasn’t a test.
All national guardsman stationed in Los Angeles were being called to duty. Thousands of buildings were destroyed, many of them owned by Koreans and many owned by African-Americans.
The men who attacked King have long since been released, and the LAPD is still notorious in its treatment of African Americans and Latinos.
Some people claim it was all about Rodney King, but in reality the verdict was jump the moment the lit fuse met the dynamite.
The fuse had been lit weeks after the King video went worldwide when Soon Ja Du shot and killed 15-year-old in Empire Liquor Store in Los Angeles after he saw the girl place a bottle of orange juice in her backpack.
Supposedly he didn’t see her approach the register with the money in her hand and grabbed her by the sweater. She hit him until he let her go and fell to the ground. She threw the orange juice onto the counter and when she turned to leave, he shot her in the back of the head.
Although a jury recommended he receive 16 years in prison, he was sentenced to 400 hours of community service and a $500 fine.
We didn’t make it to Cancun – the news editor paged me, and they sent me into the hearts of the riots, probably for no other reason than the fact, that I was the sole black reporter, even though I covered sports..
And now that same tension is in the air, this time between African Americans and Latinos. Some claim black leaders feel as if there are not enough services to go around, and others say Latinos want their piece of the pie as they become a majority in the Southland.
Whatever, the reason, the tension is there. I really hope it doesn’t happen.
I’ve been to Cancun twice since then. I love it there, and even now I am planning my vacation for September.
I really hope I make it.
R7
You can now pre-order Blackbirds: Volume 1 on Amazon.com and BN.com. You can still pre-order your signed copy on www.razor7.com
A common black family in 1955 just trying to put another meal on the table and survive, Robert and Leona McCray and their children Lincoln, Joshua and Rita, along with the people they encounter, have no idea how much the world would change by 1970.
15 years, three siblings, One will plunge, one will soar and one will die!!!
ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!!!
April 15, 2007
Blackbirds update: 100 copies sold!!!! It's outselling advanced orders on "A Liar's Tale" 3 to 1. Get your copy today www.razor7.com
A common black family in 1955 just trying to put another meal on the table and survive, Robert and Leona McCray and their children Lincoln, Joshua and Rita, along with the people they encounter, have no idea how much the world would change by 1970.
15 years, three siblings, One will plunge, one will soar and one will die!!!
BLACKBIRDS: VOLUME 1 order your copy today!!!!
One of the earliest experiences in my life inspired me to write Blackbirds, and it happened way back in 1970 when I was just six years old. Yeah I am getting long in the tooth.
A little known fact, the PUSD (Pasadena Unified School District) in the late 1960s became the first school districts west of the Mississippi ordered by the federal court to implement busing.
It was a scary time, as soon as the decision came down thousands of upper middle class families moved their children to private schools, which is why the PUSD has more private schools than any other district in California. Even now the district feels the ripple of "White Flight"
A year later, when the busing began I was six and yep, I was among the first kids bused. Noyes Primary School was a country club school, on two acres of land at the base of the San Gabriel Valley. I had three large levels, one for each grad K-3, each level had its own playground and library and auditorium. It was large enough to be a junior college, and it had a long steep driveway for the busses. We used to take the balls from the girls and roll them down the driveway.
I'll never forget the day busing began, the black parents and white parents on opposite sides of the same bus stop refusing to let their kids near each other, as if they were afraid we might catch something.Yes, the black folks acted the same way also.
On the surface, we were alien to each other. Little black boys with big afros and little black girls with big braids, not the cornrolls, and white kids and their bowl cuts and straight hair and freckles.
But on the inside, we were all afraid.
Police were everywhere, and reporters and the angry people. As my mother and I crossed the street one man yelled to us, "We don't want our kids to go to school with you black bastards."
As soon as he said it my mom shot him a look that put the fear of God in him and almost immediately he toook a step back, and the police escorted back behind the barricade.
Another guy started throwing eggs at the bus as it approached the stop. Not sure if they arrested him or not.
Even on the bus we were segregated, white kids and one side of the bus and the black kids on the other.
And then the bus took us to school complete with a caravan of police officers, more angry people and our parents.
Even though we would grow up in the 70s, and come of age in 80s, we were kids of the 60s, and we were aware.
We had all seen Vietnam, race riots and men land on the moon on TV. In the homes of most of the kids I knew race was an open discussion. It had to be, our parents and older siblings were either perpetrators or victims of American society.
But at school, all we were told was "We're all going to get along and have a great year," and then they made us sit, boy, girl, boy, girl based on color. (idiots).
We discussed Vietnam, the assisinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King openly in class, but I have always wondered how different the world would be today if those bright eyed six year olds would have had a chance to talk about race, and what our parents were telling us. Imagine what we could have to learn and pass on to other generations. I think racism could have been eradicated if every school had handled integration differently.
But they didn't, and monthe later my friend Anthony approached a white kid at the bus stop and they started talking about Hot Wheels, I think it Hot Wheels, and even though both kids' parents looked like they had just seen a ghost the world didn't end.
Slowly but surely things changed on that corner and before long our parents began to laugh and talk, and the racists and police didn't show up anymore.
Change had come to Altadena, and I was part of it.
The ironic part is all of that yelling and screaming and hate was about, 1.5 miles. The kid being bussed the furthest only lived 1.5 miles away from the school. I lived about a mile away. They wanted to keep us out of that 1.5 miles, although the houses in the area are all of the same caliber and the crime rate was the same. You could sleep with the door open, anywhere in Altadena as long as you kept the screen door locked otherwise you would end up with a skunk or coyote in the house.
Several years back they talked about putting a plaque at the school to celebrate that first class that learned to come together and actually taught the adults something about tolerance, just be their example. It never happened and two years ago, they closed Noyes.
Enrollment has continued to decline since 1969, and the district that once had 35,000 kids now has 19,000. Some say its because Altadena and Pasadena have become too expensive, so they move east where property is cheaper. Others say it's because test scores in the PUSD are so bad, that parents are looking for better schools.
The lessons I learned at that bus stop have stayed with me for a lifetime. The same kids that we were told not to play with in 1970, we graduated with in 1982 in the Rose Bowl and on that day we didn't sit according to color.
Change the world ...
March 28, 2007
Don’t forget, starting Sunday you can pre-order your signed copy Blackbirds: Volume 1. Just click on the button under the cover on the home page.
Growing on –
There’s a family portrait above my mantle and my dad is strangely missing from it, even though I was 8 years old. We’re all there, my three cousins, my aunt, grandmother and my mother and siblings.
I never understood why he wasn’t in the shot. He was still alive at this point. I suspect it was taken at Christmas 1972. I’m wearing a brown vest with fringes on it over a blue turtle neck, like some kind of Jackson 5 reject.
Good thing you didn’t have to match in the 60s.
I’ve always wondered why he wasn’t present. In the picture, I am holding a camera and taking a picture of the person taking the picture, yeah I know that makes no sense.
For years I though he was working when that picture was taken.
After all he was always working. He drove a truck to feed us.
That’s the only job he ever had in the 10 years of my life he was alive.
He never invented anything, wrote anything and he never really traveled the world, although he spent some time in the service.
My father was just about my height, 5-8 with a strong build and sandy brown hair, although my hair was coal black before the gray came in, I always hear how much I look like him.
I used to think he didn’t accomplish much in the short time he was here, 42 years and 7 month, and then he was gone.
Williams Carlos Coleman was born in West Virginia to an interracial couple at a time when any mixing of black and white was not accepted. Imagine all the arguments we hear about gay marriage, but take the words same sex out and put in interracial and you get exactly what they said back then.
His father was a coal miner, and of course his mother did not work. He dropped out of high school at a young age and ran away from home when he was 15, to avoid another beating by an abusive father.
My mom told me a story about him this weekend that has been running around my mind.
After the Watts riots there was a black exodus out of Los Angeles to the suburbs. We landed in quiet and peaceful Altadena. I was four at the time, and I can actually remember the day we moved in.
Altadena was so calm and quiet that we used to walk to the store and leave the front door open so the house could cool down. The first several weeks, my folks had a hard time sleeping because no cars passed the house, and there were no sirens blaring in the distance rushing to another emergency.
After my parent’s friends Lucy and Larry, not their real names, visited they too landed in Altadena. Unfortunately, they weren’t quite ready for suburban life.
Lucy had to have everything new. She hired an interior decorator for the kitchen, put all new furniture in the place and hired a gardener. Mind you this is in 1969, when most black people were lucky just to have a job, less more a house.
My dad kept telling him to slow down and save some money.
My mom and dad were using the same furniture they had in LA, and my two older brothers took care of the yard.
One night, when they got together to play cards, Larry started talking about a guy he met on the street when he got off work, he worked with my dad in LA.
The guy promised him he would take his check and triple his money for a short fee.
Kind of like those emails you get from Nigerians promising you millions if you just help “relative” of a disposed military leader get billions hidden away somewhere. Back then they called them pigeon droppers.
Unfortunately, Larry listened to him and gave him his check.
He never saw him again. That night my parents didn’t play cards with them. Instead, they consoled them.
Larry went back to the corner where he met the pigeon dropper and never saw him again.
The decision put them in financial ruin, and within half a year they lost their home.
My dad used to tell me “Stop and think about what you’re doing.” Of course, I was a kid then, and like most of us we learn the equation, long before we learn the lesson it contains – but like so many of his words – I still hold on to the lessons, and the times I haven’t carry regrets.
Monday night I asked my mom a simple question, “What was dad’s dream? What did he want to do with his life?”
All she said was “He did everything he wanted to do.”
I had no idea what she meant and I started examining the small pieces about his life that I knew.
He landed in LA where he met my mom after the service. Years later, he got his GED.
But that boy who was forced to change from a natural left-hander to a right-hander because his ignorant parents thought southpaws were from the devil achieved his dream.
I found a pic last night of my dad. He’s taking a picture of something, I thought it was odd until I saw the reflection of the family posing in the mirror behind him.
The reason he wasn’t in that family photo is because he was taking the picture. He was there, and he’s always been here.
That was his dream – to always be there for his family.
I am 42-years, 8 months old this month and still I haven’t accomplished anything on his level.
March 14, 2007 - Blackbirds, Chapter 1
Chapter 1 of volume 1 is now online!!!
Go ahead take it out for a test spin and drive it around the block. You will meet some real people, and once you do, you will want to pull up a chair and sit down and peek into this small window into their world.
This book is a lot deeper than ALT. It's a lot harder to write for five characters, and remember their histories and unique personalities, and this book is what I call honest fiction. They are in real situations, and sometimes even meet real people and discussing real events, but the characters are not real.
Hours and hours of research went into Blackbirds to make it as realistic as possible. When you read that the characters are listening to a particular song that means that song was on the radio that month, and that year. Seems trivial, but did you know the early years of the TV show Happy Days set in the early 1950s, used 60s music?
The reporter in me just won't let me go out that way. Even the beer names are authentic and as it turns out so is the family name. My mom’s maiden name is McCray. The authenticity met reality after I "invented" the city Crescent, Louisiana – only to find out that Louisiana is the Crescent State. My mother is from Louisiana, so I am sure that little fact was buried somewhere in my head.
Like ATL, Blackbirds was born years ago, and was my first shot at story telling. In that version the main character, now an elderly old man, is dying and tells his family the true story of their last name and why he had to change it years ago. Don't worry I am not giving anything away. This story is told in a linear line, there are no flashbacks.
Instead this story is born out of a simple question I have asked myself over and over, “What if I came of age in the 50s and 60s?”
There is a lot more of myself in this book. Although I do have to say it still shocks me when people email me asking if “A Liar’s Tale” is based on my life.
Yeah, somehow all my lies came true.
Maybe they didn’t but my fantasies are. I am now an established writer and I love what I am doing. Just a week ago, Le Sanctuary Book Club in New Orleans, emailed to say they may be reading "A Liar's Tale" in April.
If you ordered "A Liar's Tale" (ALT) via this Web site you probably received something in the mail from me. I also have decided to hold a little contest.
I will name a character after the first person to order an advanced copy of “Blackbirds: Volume 1” on April 1.
That character will have a supporting role in “Blackbirds: Volume 2” which will be out in late 2008.
See ya in 7
Dre’
March 1, 2007
“There's battle lines bein' drawn,
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speakin' their minds.
Gettin' so much resistance from behind.” – Buffalo Springfield, “For What’s It’s Worth”
That song has always touched my soul.
Although many people think it was about the 60s counterculture and a take on Vietnam and the older generation, it wasn’t.
In actuality, it’s about the escalating unrest between police and young partiers during the closing of Pandora's Box, a 60s’ club on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood.
But we don’t define what we write about, it defines itself.
Our words are living and breathing beings that define themselves, in spite of the writer’s best intentions. That’s what writers mean when they say, “It wrote itself.”
That’s what it was like when I was writing “Blackbirds: Volume 1.” The words flowed through me.
During the process, “For What’s It Worth” kept coming back to me. Maybe it’s because nobody is right when it comes to the problems in race relations.
Politicians court the imaginary black vote, that’s right black people don’t all meet and decide how to vote, nor does being black guarantee that black folks will vote for you, just ask Al Sharpton. Far too many black people play the victim, and far too many white people say everything is okay now
Everything is not okay now, yet every time an African-American is arrested it’s not just because he’s black.
We’re a flawed people just like every other race sometimes we are guilty –
OJ did do it, and Michael Jackson is suspect too. Sometimes we perpetrate the images that we fight so hard to stop other people from postulating – just watch Flava of Love as Flavor Flav does his best Steppin Fetchit impersonation.
And some black are racists, and that is not okay.
It’s a shame that our country still needs to talk about race in 2007, and that also is the fault of all involved.
We’re all victims of racism and I suspect we have all perpetrated it.
When we look back from 2007 to 1955, we do so with knowledge that everything turned out okay. We can look back at the craziness of Jim Crow, knowing the world would change, we never feel the fear, frustration, horror and desperation of the people on both sides.
Unfortunately, the people during that time had no idea if the world would ever change.
That’s what Blackbirds is all about.
A common black family in 1955 just trying to put another meal on the table and survive, Robert and Leona McCray and their children Lincoln, Joshua and Rita, along with the people they encounter, have no idea how much the world would change by 1970. They’re not perfect people, instead they are terribly flawed which is exactly the kind of people I like to write.
They are all blackbirds.
Some will spread their wings, some will plunge, and some will soar.
This is not a “get whitey” book that puts the ills of black people on the shoulders of white people. On the contrary, this book is honest and real, and says some good and bad things about all people.
Some of it will make you laugh and some of it will make you cry.
It’s a five volume set that looks at where the country has been, and although it seems like the next line should be “and where we are going,” it’s not because I have no idea where we are headed.
Advanced copies on sale April 1 through www.razor7.com
“Mother, mother, there's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother, there's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today, hey
Father, father, we don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate – Marvin Gaye, “What’s Goin On?”
For what it’s worth
R7
February 22, 2007
The Return of the Bad Guy
Remember Oil Can Harry from the Mighty Mouse cartoons, you know the
villain that would do anything to get that piece of land because he knew the
railroad was coming through
It always seemed like the hero would find a way to defeat him in the end.
Keeping the land free, and instill that eternal message into us all that a free spirit
can survive in the world.
Unfortunately, the villain always come back, and this time it looks like he may
get what he wants.
Over the past 20 years a handful of corporations have slowly purchased most of
the major media outlets like an evil land baron who snatches up the land in the
old west knowing that oil flows below the land.
In Los Angeles, Tribune Inc, Clear Channel, Time-Warner, General Electric and
the Los Angeles Newspaper Group dominate TV, radio and film.
Even the so-called alternative press, the LA Weekly, and yes, the newspaper I
work for, the Pasadena Weekly are no longer independent. The LAW is owned
by Village Voice Media, which owns 17 other Weeklies and the Pasadena Weekly
is in fact owned by the 10-publication media giant Southland Publishing.
But if these corporations have been the media equivalent of Oil Can Harry,
ending the then the Internet has been the last of the free spirits doing its best to
preserve the voice of the people.
Unfortunately it looks as if the free spirit is selling out. Last July Fox News
purchased MySpace for more than half a billion dollars and anyone who
frequents the site can already see that it is becoming bogged down with
advertising and messages.
At one point the site, which has a population the size of Scottsdale, Az,
according to their marketing director, was poised to define "Generation @" but
not anymore. More and more the once wide-open virtual real estate is being
gobbled up more and more by major corporations, and it won't be long before the
underground bands and artists flee the site.
Both political parties, and just about every political candidate has a page. Not to
mention many religions - parents worried about pedophiles lurking inside waiting
to pounce on their child's body, should also worry about those who want their
children's mind.
Also consider what could happen if Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News,
decides to push a certain religious or political stance on the site.Take a long look
because we may never see anything like MySpace again. Google should finalize
its deal to purchase YouTube in the next couple of weeks.
The Internet will never die, but the freedom it provides is shrinking.
At one time, the net provided anyone with a voice to be heard, sure
it still does that, but now it is being corporatized at every turn, and
all the voices are starting to sound the same.
There's nothing new on TV or the big screen. The same goes for
radio, even the oldies stations seem to play the same 40 songs over
and over.
He who controls the message rules the world, and already our country
doesn't tell the stories of the disenfranchised.
Something our country cannot afford in these times where the truth
is reported less and less on Fox, MNBC and even CNN.
We've seen history rewritten and reported after Ronald Reagan died,
and since 9/11 it's been rewritten so many times, I have no idea how
it will ultimately be remembered in the history books.
Before MySpace and YouTube there were the truly alternative
papers. Unfortunately there is no alternative press anymore and
those voices have been silenced. The hard core bloggers fail because
the media takes their very stories and spins them.
Somewhere Dick Dastardly is laughing as he twirls his moustache, and
the hero is nowhere in sight.
"It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused
by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There
is more than one way to conquer a country." - Raymond Chander.
R7
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