It is an honor to be here at Southern University. It is a privilege to stand with so many of our leading mayors from across this country. Whether it's a small town or a big city, the government that's closest to the people is the one the people count on the most.
Our mayors are on the frontlines when it comes to housing, education, job creation, and finding new ways to strengthen our families and communities. They are some of the hardest working people in America and when a disaster strikes: a Katrina, a shooting, or a six alarm blaze — it's city hall we lean on. It's city hall we call first. And it's city hall we depend on to get us through the tough times.
Last weekend, I attended a service to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the LA Riots. After a jury acquitted 4 police officers of beating Rodney King — a beating that was filmed and flashed around the world — Los Angeles erupted. I remember the sense of despair and powerlessness in watching one of America's greatest cities engulfed in flames.
But I want to start today with an inspiring story from that tragic event — a story about a baby who was born into this world with a bullet in its arm.
We learned about this child from a doctor named Andy Moosa. He was working the afternoon shift on April 30 at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood as the second day of violence was exploding in the streets.
He told us about a pregnant woman who had been wearing a white dress. She was in Compton and on her way to the supermarket. Where the bullet came from nobody knew. Her sister-in-law noticed a red spot in the middle of her white dress and said that I think you've been shot. The bullet had gone in, but it had not exited. The doctor described the ultrasound and how he realized that the bullet was in the baby. The doctor said, "We could tell it was lodged in one of the upper limbs. We needed to get this baby out so we were in the delivery room."
And here's the thing: the baby looked great. Except for the swelling in the right elbow in the fleshy part, it hadn't even fractured a bone. The bullet had lodged in the soft tissue in the muscle. The baby was fine. It was breathing and crying and kicking. They removed the bullet, stitched up the baby's arm, and everything was fine. The doctor went on to say that there's always going to be a scar to remind that child how quickly she came into the world in very unusual circumstances.
Let's think about that story. There's always going to be a scar there, that doesn't go away. You take the bullet out. You stitch up the wound and 15 years later, there's still going to be a scar.
Many of the students in this room were just learning to read and write when the riot started and tragedy struck the corner of Florence and Normandy. Most of the mayors here know that those riots didn't erupt over night; there had been a "quiet riot" building up in Los Angeles and across this country for years.
If you had gone to any street corner in Chicago or Baton Rouge or Selma or Trenton or Arcola, Mississippi — you would have found the same young men and women without hope, without prospects, and without a sense of destiny other than life on the edge — the edge of the law, the edge of the economy, the edge of family structures and communities.
Those "quiet riots" that take place every day are born from the same place as the fires and the destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and the deaths. They happen when a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates. Despair takes hold and young people all across this country look at the way the world is and believe that things are never going to get any better. You tell yourself, my school will always crumble. There will never be a good job waiting for me to excel at. There will never be a place that I can be proud of and I can afford to call my home. That despair quietly simmers and makes it impossible to build strong communities and neighborhoods. And then one afternoon a jury says, "Not guilty" — or a hurricane hits — and that despair is revealed for the world to see.
Much of what we saw on our television screens 15 years ago was Los Angeles expressing a lingering, ongoing, pervasive legacy — a tragic legacy out of the tragic history this country has never fully come to terms with. This is not to excuse the violence of bashing in a man's head or destroying someone's store and their life's work. That kind of violence is inexcusable and self-defeating. It does, however, describe the reality of many communities around this country.