Question:
So you were there before it blew?

Answer:
I spent a lot of time in L.A., although I live in San Francisco.

Question:
Did you know it was coming down beforehand?

Answer:
Oh sure. Of course. The situation had been deteriorating, not just with the Rodney King thing. You have to realize what was happening. Police chief Gates had been fired; he was on his way out. Willy Williams was coming in as chief. The situation with the Korean community had been deteriorating. The Koreans had bought out the black tavern owners. There were very few Jewish owners of buildings anymore, since the Watts riots. The Jews got burned out in 1965 and they left. The Koreans came in, and they had bought up over half the taverns, liquor stores, and little grocery stores. It took me a while to understand Koreans. Koreans do not fit the Asian stereotype. In many ways they're aggressive. They're the bottom of the social ladder for some Asians. Korea's become industrialized in the last fifteen years. Before that it was mainly agricultural. So the Koreans came into L.A. There are three hundred thousand Koreans in L.A. and about thirty percent of them have a college education. Some Koreans are very blunt; they're like the Israelis. They are very direct. They became shopkeepers. They didn't hire blacks because they are family run institutions. They moved in and bought shops in black areas. To run a liquor shop in a poor area, black or not, you're going to have protection. You're talking about central L.A. where at that time there were more murders than anywhere else in the world. You're talking about drugs and gang warfare; it's a dangerous place. Here is where they have their shops. I don't think some black customers like them very much, and I don't think some Koreans like the black customers very much. It took me five years to get into the Korean community, being very patient. Once you're in, you're in. They trust you, but it takes a long time. They had a dozen robberies of Korean stores by blacks. There was an incident that was the turning point, though. A fifteen year old black girl went in with her girlfriend to a store and she got a couple cans of soda. She got into a fight with the older Korean shopkeeper, and the shopkeeper killed her. The woman claimed she wasn't paying. Fortunately or unfortunately, there was a TV camera there. What happened was that the girl came in, she got cans of soda and she had money in her hand. She came up to pay and there was a misunderstanding. They started shouting at each other and the girl threw the cans. She did push the woman, but she wasn't trying to steal the soda. She turned her back and she started walking out, and the woman took a gun and blew her head off. It went to a jury and the judicial system assigned the case to a new judge, who was a white woman. This was her first case. Nobody else wanted the case so they gave it to her. They found the woman guilty of manslaughter and the judge gave her probation. She never spent a day in jail. They left and went back to Korea. There had been a black and Korean merchant group using my problem solving approach. I don't believe in just dialogue, but the human rights commission set up a dialogue group. I got the leader of CALPAC (California Association of Taverns and Package Liquor Stores), a black woman who was a real visionary. My idea was to get together with KAGRO (Korean American Grocers Association). I got the two groups together and I wanted them to sponsor a program for training. I got them to co-sponsor a project for two things. First, we were going to set up a complaint system so black customers could register complaints and there would be a system to deal with the Korean merchants who were really doing things wrong. The other thing was that we would train. The woman who headed CALPAC was running two stores. She knew how to do it and she had a lot to teach the Koreans. And the Koreans had a lot to learn about how you deal with customers. I spent over two years trying to do a whole series of meetings and we couldn't pull it off. There was a lot of resistance from the black community, but this woman really was a leader. She was pulling her group along. But behind the scenes, she was paying the price for it. There was a lot of anti-Korean sentiment. The other thing was that the Human Rights Commission was undercutting the project.

Question:
How so? Were they doing something specific?

Answer:
They had a Korean-black dialogue and the Koreans tend to respond to where they see the power is, and I couldn't produce the money. If I could have produced the foundation money to fund this we could have done it, but I could not pull it off; it was too risky. The county, through the Human Rights Commission had this other thing going, and they saw what I was trying to do. I could not do it through the county. So I had to set it up as a separate thing and they saw it as competition. But anyway, this trial had happened a year before which had a tremendous amount of publicity. We tried to work on that hostility between blacks and Koreans, but when that trial happened, that killed it. The feeling of the black community was so strong, because much of the Korean community would not acknowledge that there was anything wrong. They came to the defense of the merchant. It's true that it was dangerous to be a Korean merchant in a poor black or Hispanic community. But the woman had no right to kill this girl. They caught her in the lie and they had it on tape. The Korean community did not write her off; they tended to defend her. That just killed my effort. So it was the combination of the LAPD actions and the buildup of tension in the black community after the Rodney King trial, the fluid situation, the Korean- black thing. When the riot came every Asian store got targeted. It wasn't just Koreans, they went after. Unlike the later trials, we only had three hours notice. Later we had more notice. Nobody could believe the jury let them go. Maybe we should have known better. Also there was a vacuum of leadership in the LAPD, which became very obvious. I was on a plane when it started. As we were coming over LAX at about 6:00 pm, the plane was diverted. Usually they come over direct, but we diverted; we went further South. The pilot came on and said there were reports of rifle firing. That was the first day; that was April 29. I got a rental car and drove downtown and I set up a temporary command post at City Hall. I knew a woman in City Hall and she let us into her offices. By that time at Parker Police Center, windows were broken, and there were police cars burning; it was out of control. And of course the next day it got out to the Valley and it wasn't black anymore, it was Hispanic. First day was black, and there were some white politicos involved, but the second day became Hispanic. Unlike the Watts riots, within two days it was over a third of the city; it was even out in Hollywood. Somebody broke the windows of the sex store on Hollywood Blvd. You have to remember by this time L.A. had 300,000 El Salvadorans and 100,000 Nicaraguans, most of whom were there illegally. Crimes of opportunity, poor people who didn't have much, saw on TV that nobody was stopping the looting. It wasn't until the national guard came in the fourth day that the situation really came under control.

Question:
What was CRS doing all this time?

Answer:
Can't do much; sure as hell can't mediate. It's definitely a police problem. Also LAPD would not let us in. You don't do anything, really, in a riot. You get the hell out of the way. You have to wait for things to calm down and then you can mediate. There was a meeting that first night. at the First Methodist Church. It's the leading black church and it's minister is a real leader. He's a remarkable person. We had participated in getting a network of black men who would've gone out on the street and calmed things down, but it was too late. There wasn't sufficient time to do it and it wasn't sufficiently organized. It happened too fast. Another month we might have been able to do it, but we learned because we had more trials. As Willy Williams came in as police chief, I got in for the first time. We became part of the contingency plan for the city.

Question:
In what way?

Answer:
I ended up spending about 5 months in Los Angeles after the Rodney King event and as part of that lump of things. I was involved in arranging for, and then actually conducting mediation between a group of Korean businessmen and the federal, state, and private agencies and organizations that were in Los Angeles for disaster response. That included FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Administration), the California version of FEMA, the Red Cross, Administration and others. A lot of that ended up being almost like a cultural training, because a big part of the concern of the Korean business people was that they weren't familiar with American culture. For instance they didn't have a clue as to what to do with the dry beans they were being given for food assistance. If they were going to be getting food assistance, they needed things they were familiar with. So we got the Red Cross to look for more fresh vegetables and rice. In some cases it was just a matter of looking at the physical layout of the disaster relief center it was called the DAC Disaster Application Center. I looked at the layout and considered how that lead to or avoided confrontations between inpatient people who needed help. Sometimes we ended up just playing a role in rearranging the furniture in a way that made it more conducive to having people being served at various sides at the same time, rather than having long lines which made people lose patience. There was a real sense all along on the part of the Korean victim community that they were not being understood, that the severity of their situation wasn't being dually acknowledged and they could not understand why nobody was taking responsibility for the fact that they, through no fault of their own, had suffered all of these losses. They couldn't figure out why nobody had resigned yet -- you know, out of shame, for having allowed this to happen. And the other piece which was major, particularly early on, was that they did not believe that they were receiving protection from the police or national guard for their businesses. So they ended up forming their own protection force a young adult team which was heavily armed and spent nights patrolling streets of Korean businesses to make sure that they weren't vandalized, attacked, or destroyed. As they began to go through the process of applying for assistance at the DAC, and then waiting for a response, and looking for help, there was a lot of impatience. Language was a big problem. They were threatening big demonstrations in front of the DAC at first, and later on they did have demonstrations at City Hall. It took awhile to get mediation going. When we were trying to arrange it, there were one or two Koreans who wanted to speak for everyone. We tried to explain that while it wasn't that we didn't trust them, and we were sure they were honorable people, we couldn't take their word for what the entire Korean community wants. We insisted that we have more participation from the Koreans. There were a couple of business associations we got to participate and we had the leader of this Korean young adult team which was doing the protecting service. There were a couple who were clearly sort of elders within the Korean community, too. The entire process had to be bilingual, so I had to have a translator, because I don't speak any Korean at all. These were all day sessions, and we ended up going on for three days. I could never persuade any translator to come back for a second time because they were so worn out, so totally exhausted after one day. So there was no way I could persuade them to come back again. Part of what happened is that some of the Korean victim party who spoke at least some English, so if the translator didn't get it just right, they would jump in and say "No," so this poor person had a very, very difficult time with it. The other challenging thing was that almost everybody at the table on both sides were men, and here I was, a woman, taking charge of the process. But I did it, and it was fascinating, just because of the dynamics of what was going on, some of the interactions among parties. Never mind the actual negotiations between the parties. I ended up becoming very close to that leader of that adult group. He calls me "Mom." I'm his American mother. So we ended up being a very close link into that particular community. They really they were concerned that they receive protection. They would've much preferred that L.A. police do it, so later on, we managed to arrange for some meetings between some of them and law enforcement on how to coordinate security services in these neighborhoods It didn't become a full time vigilante group working in the community, but it was certainly challenging.

Question:
Did you provide technical assistance to both sides?

Answer:
Yes. I always provide technical assistance to both sides. Now sometimes, the technical assistance required by an establishment side, just for the purpose of kind of grouping them, they require less assistance than the minority community. But I make sure that I offer pre-mediation training and preparation to everybody who's going to be involved. In this case, there was actually relatively little preparation for each. Partly because of the immediacy. I think some people thought they were just coming to a meeting. But I made sure that we kind of put it into a mediation session rather than a free-for-all conversation, because it was the only way to accomplish what we needed to and, well, I'm a mediator, and that's what I do. But I really thought in this particular setting -- we must have had at least thirty people in the room that we needed mediation. We had many response agencies maybe about twenty people, and six, maybe eight Korean representatives. So we had to have some kind of a structured process so this discussion could actually take place. Part of what came out of that is that, after all the broad issues were addressed, was there were then sort of splinter mediations, if you will, or splinter meetings. And the one that comes particularly to mind was with the Small Business Administration. Besides FEMA, SBA ended up being one of the major sources for financial assistance. They had an excellent director there on-site who really bent over backwards to understand and meet the needs and be flexible. He was one of the least bureaucratic bureaucrats. So that made a big difference. They helped out with business loans, because it was mostly businesses that were destroyed during that time. We helped facilitate the Koreans applications, helping them to apply by giving them technical assistance to make the application process easier.

Question:
So the negotiations were basically over what kind of assistance was going to be provided and how and when?

Question:
How soon after the riots began did you come on the scene?

Answer:
That night when things were still burning. We landed in Burbank and then proceeded to L.A., and we met at our hotel. We couldn't do anything that night because we didn't know anything.

Question:
Had you met with other people?

Answer:
No, we just met with our own staff. Then we began to determine what was happening and how we might be able to help.

Question:
How did you assess what was happening in that case?

Answer:
We had already had some people down there -- I think a couple of people who were probably stationed in L.A. at that time. So they knew what was taking place and there was contact with the police department. When we got there, it was a matter of them briefing us on what was happening and then working out potential assignments for further assessment of the situation, and making assignments for people to deal with the police department and the sheriff's department and city folk in general. Then some of us would have to go out into the community and sort of get a feeling of what was happening. We stayed on the periphery. We really didn't move into the area of the problem itself because they had the National Guard there, and there was a lot of checking and rechecking and concern that we might get fired upon by some of the people involved in the riot or maybe some trigger-happy guy from law enforcement. So we sort of stayed on the periphery and talked to adjacent communities about what was happening, what they saw as happening. These people, even though they were not actually in the problem area, had a pretty good handle on what was happening. We also spoke to police departments in those adjacent areas.

Question:
How did you decide what was the appropriate time to actually go into the problem area?

Answer:
That is a good question, because I can remember being told about things that were happening, but I can't really remember being told, "This is what we're going to do." We were mostly left on our own and since we worked in small teams, that's exactly what we did. So we decided when we would go into the problem area and we decided when to deploy ourselves in these situations. We were just told, "You're out there in that area, and you've got a new job to do. Now, here's the book, go out there and do it." But we had our experience and we had contacts and that kind of thing, and we had a general plan about what it was that should happen. In those kinds of cases, you follow your own instincts. You hear about things occurring at a given area, so you move over there to see if it really is happening, and to talk to the police in that area, and then decide what you ought to do. The cops at that point were very good about cooperating with us and at that point also, we could move into the problem areas pretty freely -- except at night. At night, it wasn't the best thing to do. Once we'd done that, and having sort of surveyed the area, then we were able to make some kind of assessment, and then we decide how to commit ourselves -- "I'll be here and you'll be there. You let me know over the radio what's happening over there, and I'll do the same thing. Then in the meantime, I'll find out what's happening here, and once I start doing something, I'll let you know." That sort of gameplan.

Question:
I'm picturing what you're doing in the area. You're sort of standing around and sort of migrating over to a particular person and engaging in conversation, saying, "What's going on here?" Is that how it happened?

Answer:
That's right.

Question:
When you go up to these groups and talk to them, how do you start it? What do you say initially?

Answer:
While the police and I would banter back and forth, there was usually at least one guy that was just standing there watching -- not saying anything, not doing anything. I'd go over to him and say, "Hey, what's happening? My name is so-and-so and I'm with the Department of Justice, and I'm here to watch that these guys don't overreact on you." He might say, "How are you going to do that?" So then the conversation begins and they say, "Hey, come over here. This guy says..." And then you start talking. So when we talk to the sergeant, we tell him, "We're going to try to get these folks from not engaging with you and we're going to go over there and talk with them. It may sound like we're laughing and having a good time, but what we're really trying to do is get them to agree that maybe it isn't the best thing to get up in your guys' faces and start screaming at them." As an example, that would be one way. Eventually, the police would usually get impatient with all this bantering back and forth, and the officer would want to make some progress. He'd come up and say something like, "Alright men, you're going to have to clear out. We're going to have to move you out. There's no more of this hanging around. We'll give you ten minutes to start moving." So then it would be my turn to use the rapport that I'd developed with the guys to move them out of the area. "Let's get the out of here; we'll go to the next block down and keep talking." We'd start moving and the police would start advancing their line, but very slowly. They're not going to instigate anything. They'd start moving very slowly until they'd advanced a satisfying distance for them, and then they'd stop. You just had to pay attention to how far they were advancing.

Question:
They were trying to clean out the area? Is that what they were trying to do?

Answer:
Yeah, little by little.

Question:
What were they trying to get people away from?

Answer:
The center of the city, mostly. In fact, 2nd and Broadway, 1st and Broadway. The problem for the police is that the farther they push, the more the crowd wants to get back to where it was.

Question:
Did they get it cleared out in the daytime and then it all comes back together at night?

Answer:
No. At night, people disperse, for the most part. There's no need for them. They did not continue this at night because people would probably get hurt. They'd already had how many people killed? So they didn't see the need for it. Besides, these are ad hoc groups. They may have one or two that come in as leaders, but people would just gather and they would become a group and so they're easy to handle because you can sort of say, "Let's move." They don't have really have a plan or an agenda, so they're easy to control. You just keep saying, "Guys, don't move that close." And the police will let you know. They're here and when you get too close, they'll let you know and so you have to start all over again. That's the way it was. Then at night, even in the afternoon, they'd either get bored, or it's time to go see something, or they'd realize it's time to go do something, time to go to work, and so they'd just disband and the next day they'd come back. Not necessarily the same people, but the same kinds of people doing the same thing. In this particular case, if I remember right, we had pockets of people in the center of the city, so we had to really start working with them quickly. Not two of us, but several of us doing the same thing. Not all of us use the same techniques, of course. Others would sit there and philosophize and that kind of thing, and other people would sit there and talk about the weather and what happened in "last night's ball game" and that kind of thing. But the goal was always getting the attention away from what they really wanted to do, which would almost certainly cause people to get hurt. They're not willing to give up that machismo thing.

Question:
Where did you feel the danger in that particular situation?

Answer:
At night coming back from some assignment and having to cross the National Guard lines. The police, they know how to control themselves. The National Guard, though.....they are just citizens, and I just don't trust their trigger-fingers. So when they'd come up and talk to you, you'd just hold your hands up. Then they'd let you through -- we had to remind them that our hotel was within the restricted area so they would let us in. Once we got past them, there was no problem.

Question:
Did you wear anything that identified you as CRS?

Answer:
Yeah, we wore CRS caps. It was a blue cap with a yellow CRS on it. And they wanted us to wear those silly jackets with CRS emblazoned all over them but we didn't.

Question:
When you say "we"...Washington?

Answer:
No, "we" is my partner and I. But Washington was insistent on it, not so we could be identified so the cops didn't shoot us, but to advertise that CRS was involved. So we, when I say "we," I can only talk for me and my partner, I don't know what the other ones did. I suspect that most of them didn't want to wear them and didn't. But we refused to wear them. You know, get the cap so that someone can see that there are some officials involved. I usually wore a T- shirt like this and at night I wore a white one, not a black one and during the day, color so that you're visible. That's all we did as far as special clothing.

Question:
Did you witness any violence?

Question:
You know, it's interesting because the media didn't portray it that way. This is a whole different image than what I'm hearing from you, because it almost sounds sane, the way you're saying it. But the way the media presented it is that something is out of control, these are people that you cannot have a conversation with, people who are determined to kill you. I'm getting a different feel from you, that you were able to approach the people, have a discussion with them -- that they were receptive to what you were saying.

Answer:
Even that poor guy that got his head bashed in, that truck driver -- even that area wasn't as bad as they say made it seem. We drove through that very area a few days after that happened, and nobody ever hurt us. Nobody ever threw rocks at us. In fact, they waved at us. At night the LAPD would, if four or five African Americans were gathered on a corner, say "Alright, call the SWAT people out because we sense a potential problem." So that kind of activity gave the newspaper people and the people on the radio a real sense of mayhem. But nothing was really happening. I remember one time we responded to a call, and we got there and we couldn't find any problem at all. A bunch of people, ladies and kids, were running around with sodas in their hands, laughing. They had the cops sitting up there and they didn't do anything about it.

Question:
I would imagine during these discussions with these people there, that you got to a lot of the underlying issues. Yeah, of course you had these riots, the fires, and things like that, but by talking to them you were able to get at some of the underlying issues that they felt were problems in their community. Did you help them sort of organize their issues together, say, "Hey, that's a good point, you should do something. Follow up on this"? Or were you just a sounding board?