Week 18

• beatings on march 3, 1991
• April 29, 1992 a Ventura County jury acquitted three of the four officers (Koon, Wind, and Brisenio) and did not reach a verdict on one (Powell).
• acquittal led to the 1992 Los Angeles riots and mass protest around the country

a term used to attribute the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies, equaling the military industrial complex that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of in his famous 1961 farewell address

• a 15 year-old African-American girl who was shot and killed on March 16, 1991 by Soon Ja Du, a 51 year-old Korean store owner
• Du saw Harlins putting a bottle of orange juice in her backpack
• Du concluded that Harlins was attempting to steal, because she evidently did not see the money in Harlins' hand
• Du attempted to grab Harlins by the sweater and snatched her backpack. Harlins then struck Du with her fist three times, knocking Du to the ground
• After Harlins backed away Du then threw a stool at her
• Harlins then picked up the orange juice that dropped during the scuffle, threw it on the counter and turned to leave
• Du reached under the counter to retrieve a handgun
• Du then fired at Harlins from behind and shot her in the back of her head, then fainted
• Du's husband, Billy Heung Ki Du, heard the shot and rushed into the store
• After speaking to his wife, who falsely said she had been robbed, he dialed 9-1-1 to report the shooting. Paramedics soon arrived, but Harlins was dead, her two dollars still in her left hand
• The jury found Du guilty of voluntary manslaughter with a 16-year prison sentence recommendation, believing that Du's shooting was fully within her control and she fired the gun voluntarily. The presiding judge, Joyce Karlin reduced the sentence to probation of five years, four hundred hours of community service, and a $500.00 fine
• exacerbated already existing tensions between African-American residents and Asian-American merchants in South Central Los Angeles resulting from the 1992 riots

the la 4 beat him up the first day of the riots

document theatre- twilight: los angeles 1994

• Supreme Court case decided on December 12, 2000
• The case effectively resolved the 2000 presidential election in favor of George W. Bush
• In a per curiam decision, the Court in Bush v. Gore ruled that the Florida Supreme Court's method for recounting ballots was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
• Florida's 25 electoral votes gave Bush, the Republican candidate, 271 electoral votes, defeating Democratic candidate Al Gore, who ended up with 266 electoral votes (with one D.C. elector abstaining). A majority (270) of the electoral votes is needed to win the Presidency or Vice Presidency in the Electoral College

• a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States on September 11, 2001
• The destruction of billions of dollars worth of office space caused serious damage to the economy of Lower Manhattan.
• The damage to the Pentagon was cleared and repaired within a year, and the Pentagon Memorial was built adjacent to the building
• Blood donations across the U.S. also saw a surge in the weeks after 9/11
• The attacks had a significant economic impact on the United States and world markets. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the American Stock Exchange (AMEX), and NASDAQ did not open on September 11 and remained closed until September 17. When the stock markets reopened, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) stock market index fell 684 points, or 7.1%, to 8921, a record-setting one-day point decline
• long term health effects, unity of country=common enemy