[Something I wrote in 1989... and now it is the twentieth anniversary of these events.]
Amazed, sitting in a restaurant and reading of the collapse of the Wall, that vast shift in the meaning of our world’s past. The bizarre responses of people, Easterners who stay up all night and see real, free capitalist stores opening, Westerners bursting into the national anthem, children taking chunks of the Wall for souvenirs. It draws me back into the Jefferson Airplane’s grand anthem: "I smell incense and balloons... People dancing everywhere, people shouting: I don’t care..." Their grandchildren will perhaps see a sort of monument, a mile of the Wall preserved in memory of those who died, those who couldn’t wait long enough – a weather-beaten concrete mass, in front of which their elders become oddly quiet...
Over my chicken teriyaki I am subjected to a subliminal flash, a momentary nightmare that draws out and expands:
Tonight’s edition of News 4/North includes interviews with the citizens of West LA. on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Wall... they speak to our reporters of the strange pressures of living in this opulently capitalist territory, bounded on the west by the sea, on the north by the radioactive ruins of Encino and Tarzana, and on the east and south, by the massive gray concrete of the Wall:
Kimberly: “I had a brother in Culver City before the war; when I was a teenager, we always went down there for Sunday dinners... I get mail from him about twice a year, but most of it is deleted by Orange censors...”
Scott: “My student activist group was really freaked when they started imprisoning the AIDS patients in Silverlake, but we feel that the riots by West Angelenos helped in forcing the Orange government to release them to the North...”
Jason: “We met this old woman in a bar the other night who said she saw the firebombing of Malibu... she said the really big stars used to live there... I don’t know if any of it was true, but we bought her a drink before we went dancing at the club...”
DeeDee: “I was only seven when the Wall went up, right after the War; but I still remember my father being able to drive straight through from downtown to the beach, with no soldiers and no checkpoints... He was one of the ones working downtown, trapped down there when they began the Siege; there was nothing we could do... We heard about him once a few months after the war, but nothing in the years since... I hope he’s still alive somewhere.”
West Los Angeles residents rioted again today along the section of the Wall that follows old Highland Avenue; they were protesting the execution of five East Angeleno workers who tried to escape Orange-controlled East LA at the Santa Monica Boulevard checkpoint... This is the third riot since April, when the Prime Minister in Anaheim instituted the new Race Reform Laws, prohibiting members of the Hispanic population of all Orange territories from Party and management positions... Executive President Brown, speaking from the Northern capital of San Francisco, spoke against what he called “this outrage”...
Citizens of the Free City of Vancouver today declared their solidarity with the workers of West LA in the current airlift crisis. In this declaration, they join Federation officials in San Francisco and the President of the Republic of Greater Texas, who spoke yesterday in Tulsa to a large crowd of supporters... Grateful West Angelenos cheered the announcement at city government headquarters in Beverly Square beneath a memorial statue of freedom fighter Sean Penn... The airlift is rapidly becoming crucial to the life of the city; it is said that a half-pound container of tofu costs four hundred and eighty New dollars, and precious avocados are hoarded by West LA housewives...
This issue of Harper’s/North is dedicated to new young writers living inside the Wall in West LA. Since the Wall went up twenty-five years ago this month, West LA has become the center of the avant-garde in contemporary art and literature... The strange feel of this beleaguered city is captured by young people who have known no other way of life: a city characterized by a frenetic night life, frequent and open drug use, political rallies, all-night parties, riots, and a peculiarly defiant capitalism that has created the highest rates of consumption and inflation of any city in the Northwest Federation, comparable to that of the city of New York before its destruction...
Maybe we already have a Wall.
[11/16/89-11/30/91]
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