How does L.A.’s racial past resonate now? #BlackLivesMatter’s originator and 5 writers discuss

When I coined the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter in the hot summer of 2012, racial healing, reparations and transformation were heavy on my mind. Black people’s lives have remained vulnerable and unprotected by the very government that abolished the institution of slavery. Just as studies were showing that COVID-19, too, was discriminately killing black people, a video of George Floyd’s final eight minutes and 46 seconds in America exposed the untreated virus of racism. Below is a condensed version of my Zoom conversation with Luis Rodriguez, former poet laureate of L.A.; Walter Mosley, bestselling author of the Easy Rawlins mysteries; Jean Guerrero, investigative journalist and the author of “Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir”; University of Houston professor Gerald Horne, whose many books include “Fire This Time”; and Jervey Tervalon, novelist and editor of “Geography of Rage: Remembering the Los Angeles Riots of 1992.” As we all know, Los Angeles has a long history of racial turmoil and uprisings. I think people really get there’s something fundamentally vital in our country that goes back to what Dr. Horne was saying, the origins of who we are.