50 Years On I grew up a block from where this scene takes place. In fact, if I stood in the middle of our street, I could see the Silver Dollar Bar. In 1970, I was an 11-year-old kid, who had already seen a lot of what the world was like, starting with the assassination President Kennedy in ’63. Mostly, I remember all the people on my block coming out of their houses, crying and consoling each other. Hugs across the chain link fence. Then in ’65, just months after the murder of Malcolm X, the Watts Rebellion (my maternal grandparents lived less than five miles from the flash point). In 1968, Dr. King was killed in Memphis, followed shortly thereafter by Senator (and Presidential candidate) Robert F. Kennedy in June. We watched it happen in real time on television. In March of that year, my father took me to see RFK speak at the Greek Theater, here in Los Angeles. My politics have veered further left with each passing year, but they were initially instilled in me by my Mexican American, Teamster Shop Stewart, Father. Together, we watched the Vietnam War, with its updated body count and graphic footage delivered nightly via the 6 O’clock News. A disproportionate number of these casualties were from communities just like mine. On August 29, 1970, a group of activists sought to call attention to this fact, along with other injustices, including but not limited to Police Brutality, with a march called The Chicano Moratorium. The march went through the major business district in East Los Angeles, along Whittier Blvd, to Laguna Park (now Salazar Park), where everyone gathered to hear the speakers of the movement that were on hand. My dad packed up his camera and went to Laguna Park on this day, purposefully leaving me behind at home with my mother. About an hour later, I slipped out the door and walked up the street from our house and stood in front of Discount Records, directly across the street from the Silver Dollar Bar to watch the event. It would not be my last experience with direct action, but it was my first. When the march was over, I walked home and waited for my dad to return from the park. When he did, he said, “I’m glad I didn’t take you, son, because the Sheriffs started busting things up”. He managed to slip away to his car before things too ugly. He walked with a limp (from childhood Polio) and used a cane and could not afford to get stuck in a melee. We looked at his polaroids of the first use of teargas at the park. The day, of course, was to get much worse than what he had witnessed. There would be death and destruction. There would be bloodshed and tears shed and more hot August nights to come. (You can read more about the events of the day and beyond here). Postscript: It was a few years later that finally I told him I went to see the march on my own. He nodded his head, as if to say, “of course you did”. Rest in Peace, Ruben Salazar. Photo by Raul Ruiz
