Reader remembers King's words

Philosophers wrote freedom-ringing essays to say it. Theologians preached love-thy-neighbor sermons to say it. Civil rights zealots looked guard dogs in the eyes and marched to say it.

Rodney King took a beating, then said it better than anyone else: "Can't we all get along?"

Hearing yesterday's report that he had died, I remembered that day after many days of chaos in LA, when bewildered, uneducated, and ill-prepared to be the spokesman for any cause, King stood there in front of those intimidating microphones and uttered from his heart that compelling phrase.

Behind him an uncontrollable mob vented agonizing frustration. Retaliating because they had seen police wielding batons on King with the same baseless and lingering hate that drove others to drag young black men from their houses in the middle of the night and hang them after terror-loosened bowels tore at their dignity.

Adding fuel to the fires, 1980s Reaganomics had done little to erase the mob's DNA memory of family photo albums containing pictures of railroad Pullman porters, cleaning ladies, shoe-shine "boys" and an occasional boxing champion. Pictures of holes dug in the ground in which to keep food cool and asphalt streets which ended just before entering tar-papered shack black neighborhoods. Pictures when "adjusted for inflation" hadn't changed much for the residents of south-central Los Angeles.

So when a repentant looking King pleaded with us on that terrible day: "Can't we all get along?" he reminded us there is an invisible chain which links all human hearts, and hate-filled violence erodes it, whether racial in LA or religious in Afghanistan.

And that neighbor Christ's color-blind commandment told us to love?  Well it isn't just the person living next door.

Darrell Moss

Moses Lake