"We gotta sit around at home and watch this thing begin
But I bet there won't be many left to see it really end
'Cause the fire in the street ain't like the fire in the heart..."
Frank Zappa, "Trouble Every Day"
On April 25, 2010, two state representatives called on Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn to deploy the National Guard to safeguard Chicago's streets; Democrats John Fritchey and LaShawn Ford said they wanted Quinn, Mayor Richard Daley and Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis to allow guardsmen to patrol streets and help quell violence.
"As we speak, National Guard members are working side-by-side with our troops to fight a war halfway around the world," Fritchey said. "The unfortunate reality is that we have another war that is just as deadly taking place right in our backyard."
As of April 25, 2010, across Chicago 113 people had been killed, the same number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the same period combined.
At roughly the same time Ford and Fritchey were declaring Chicago a war zone, thousands of protesters descended on Arizona's Capitol to rally against a tough new immigration law they said would lead to police harassment of legal immigrants and U.S. citizens who looked Hispanic. The bill, which has since been signed into law, requires police to question people about their immigration status -- including asking for identification -- if they suspect someone is in the country illegally.
Several organizations canceled planned conventions in Arizona; the American Immigration Lawyers Association announced that it was moving its fall convention, which was originally scheduled for Scottsdale.
"We just felt that given this new law signed by the governor that it would not be right for our association to meet and convene there and take on the issues of immigration in a state that passed such a misguided bill," said George Tzamaras, spokesman for the group.
In 1978, members of the Memphis Fire Department had similar greivances. They said the department treated men like boys. They said they were unhappy about what they called a hostile work environment, about management that presumed employees were guilty until proven innocent, and about unfair charges brought against those who questioned management.
In July of the same year, all the firemen (except the chiefs) went on strike, and to up the ante, they started setting fire to abandoned buildings and houses. The National Guard was called in and curfews were enforced. Still the fires continued with only a handful of chiefs and inexperienced National Guardsmen to fight them. At the height of the strike, an intoxicated worker at one of the city's electric substations threw a switch that turned off a large segment of the city's electric grid; in the total darkness you could see fires burning all over the city. Half the population of Memphis went to bed with their guns, certain that the other half had declared war on them.
Approximately 350 fires were reported before a court order halted the 3-day strike, and during this time, Memphis police and teachers also went on strike.
In Los Angeles, in 1992, after the acquittal of three police officers who beat him within an inch of his life and the city-wide riots which ensued, Rodney King appeared before the television cameras and plaintively asked, "Can't we all just get along?"
"Trouble Every Day" was written about the Watts riots of 1965, but in those words there is a succinct and sober answer to Mr. King's question.
That answer, unfortunately, is No.
The fire in the street-- ain't like the fire in the heart.
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Lachlan Wittick
ronnierayjenkins
Rutilus Extraho
benjamin_the_donkey
Lynda Mercer
DasAlterEgo
Salon.com
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