Pat Wandling: LA violence brings to mind the Five Points ‘Riot’
Daily news coverage of the unruly mobs in Los Angeles brought to mind my own experience covering the infamous Five Points Gas Riot in Levittown on June 24 and 25, 1979.
Many say they never saw anything like today’s protests and riots, which made me think about our local “riot,” and how some simply evolve, while others are well-planned and managed.
As a reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times, I had a front seat on the short-lived uproar in Levittown. I covered an afternoon meeting of local, independent truckers whose wives were headed to Five Points to protest the high cost of diesel fuel and its impact on their families. The truckers were going to pass by in a convoy and, hopefully, attract more media attention, while blasting air horns and using the CB radio to get supporters to the Five Points intersection in the heart of Levittown.
I went along in the truck cab and saw how a small, peaceful demonstration escalated into a “carnival,” as one police officer said, erupting into chaos the next day.
The truckers managed to get people to Five Points in good faith. And they came in cars, on bikes, and on foot, and the police soon lost control of the streets, as they would later say. A hundred or more arrived in an instant and no one was raging violently against the price of fuel or attacking the Five Points gas stations. A few hours later as the crowd swelled and cars kept circling through Five Points, a couple of kids were tossing watermelons and cantaloupes from the roof of a produce stand and laughing all the way, until police parked them on the curb.
It actually escalated when the police started arresting the unruly. Eventually — close to midnight, as I recall — it was quiet.
The news reports of those two days were of an outraged gas-guzzling citizenry, working class Levittowners who weren’t gonna take it anymore! Like the complaints in California, some blamed the mayhem and violence on the arrival of a large number of police. It was later reported that the arrival of the city cops on the second night inflamed the crowd, but other observers said it was the arrival of the rows of marching Philadelphia police that marked the beginning of the end of the infamous riot.
In retrospect, I was witness to the rise of a mob, or perhaps the birth of a riot. But there is no comparison to the violence, destruction, and looting that started in Los Angeles six days ago. But with the deluge of news people, cameras, and mics, we know what is going on and don’t have to rely on the politicians or officialdom. We, too, can see the anti-American ugliness that can spring from an arguably good cause, albeit mismanaged and manipulated. That’s the gift of journalism and live coverage. Keep it up.
The LA riots were organized with the help of outside interests and money, we’re being told. That’s ominous. Are Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass aware? But we don’t need their assessment; we can see for ourselves the dangerous situation out there and the power of the far left.
Newsom is aimed at higher office — the White House — and that seems to have preempted his leadership.
Pat Wandling hosts Speak Your Piece, from which this commentary is adapted, weekdays at noon on WBCB 1490.
