What Did You Think Was Going to Happen?: The Betrayal of South Central

Injustice. Black America. Media. Corruption at the highest levels of government. Only one dollar. This is the case you’ve never heard of – until now. In the City of Los Angeles v. Preferred Communications, the US District Court, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the US Supreme Court agreed that the City had violated the civil rights of half a million people for ten years and had refused to comply with a 9-0 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. Like a made for TV movie that’s all too real, this injustice to the Black community includes a corrupt big-city mayor, unethical city and county officials, and a dishonest federal judge who deprived the poorest citizens of Los Angeles the right to have cable television. When the case was finally settled decades later, the side of the right won and the author and his minority business investors were awarded a dollar in damages. One dollar. Yet the true cost was the loss of free speech and free press (education and internet) to the impoverished citizens of South Central Los Angeles – as generations of injustice were perpetuated and continue to play out on the mean streets of one of America’s largest cities. What did you think was going to happen?