“We freely offer up our appetites, wealth, and
pride to relieve the suffering of the world, for the sake of our neighbors and
God’s joy.”
- I will accept with grace any suffering for myself resulting from my affirmations, rejections and witness; I will do all in my power to reduce the suffering in the world, including the suffering of victims and my adversaries in confrontation.
Reginald Denny and the LA Four |
Twenty years ago on the 29th
of April 1992, South Central and Southeast Los Angeles exploded in six-day riots
killing 53 people and wounding thousands in wide spread violence and murder.
The looting and arson cost nearly one billion dollars and destroyed over a
thousand buildings. Long simmering anger over inequitable poverty, segregation,
lack of educational and employment opportunities, police abuse, interracial
violence and unequal services ignited into open rage in the poorest
sections of L.A. the day the court acquitted four of black Rodney King’s white
and Hispanic police assailants.
It was into this South Central inferno that
Reginald Denny, a white truck driver, unwittingly drove. Seeing his brutalization
by black youth on the live helicopter news feed, four separate African-American
strangers sprang from their couches several miles away in the neighborhood to
rush to Denny’s aid out at the intersection of Florence and Normandie.