The long answer is that it introduced the idea of a truce in the minds of younger gang members on both sides. They grew up to lead both the 1988 peace summit (which included a brief ceasefire) and the 1992 truce. The truce, and the Rodney King Riots which coincidentally started the very next day, fundamentally changed gang life in LA, making the streets safer, dropping the murder rate, and increasing illegal drug profits for about a decade.
He was fucking wonderful and did wonderful things for people without ever asking for credit for it.
Photo: Michael and some Crips!
MJ is a great example of how black celebrities try to use their opportunities and fame to help the black community. I want modern black artists to act like him.
#BlackExcellence #BlackPride
People act according to the way they experience the world. If you can understand their experience, you can understand their behavior.
— “This morning she sent for me, that I might be with her at such time as she received the good Lord, to the intent I should hear her speak as touching her innocency always to be clear. And in the writing of this, she sent for me, and at my coming she said: ‘Mr. Kingston, I hear I shall not die aforenoon, and I am very sorry therefore, for I thought to be dead by this time, and past my pain’. I told her, it should be no pain, it was so sottle. And then she said, ‘I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck’, and then put her hands about it, laughing heartily. I have seen many men and also women executed, and that they have been in great sorrow, and to my knowledge this lady has much joy in death. Sir, her almoner is continually with her, and had been since two o’clock after midnight. This is the effect of anything that is here at this time, and thus fare you well.” [Letter from Sir W. Kingston, Constable of the Tower, to Thomas Cromwell]
I started leaving the US in fragments, through small undoings that came with each trip away over the course of two years. Each time, I stepped out of the country and remembered that there were other ways to live and to be seen in the world.
secretive dreams 