SAN BERNARDINO – This hellhole used to be my playground.
It says something about this city that in the days after 14 people were killed and 21 injured in a terrorist attack, some folks here were hoping the media attention might help San Berdoo turn around.
A year from now when the media revisit for anniversary stories, don’t expect anything different. Change for the good doesn’t happen as quickly as change for the bad. The cultural shifts taking place in America don’t favor San Bernardino. They don’t even favor the anti-San Bernardino: Portland, Ore., where I now live.
I worked on The Sun newspaper in San Bernardino for 14 years from 1986 and through the 1990’s, much of that time covering cops and courts.
I happened to be in the L.A. area during the terrorist attack and was at a friend’s house when a radio announcer on KVCR in San Bernardino broke in to say there was an active shooter near Waterman Avenue.
“So what else is new?” I thought.
It turned out this was not like the weekly homicides I used to cover.
A terrorist attack in San Bernardino?
If you’re a terrorist and you want to make a statement about how much you hate Western culture, you do what the terrorists did in Paris. Or what the Boston Marathon bombers did. Or the Sept. 11 hijackers did. You target popular and symbolic places.
There’s nothing popular about San Bernardino. It’s miles of ugly strip commercial development, occasionally interspersed with a few nice-looking office buildings, which often turn out to be public agencies. There is still a variety of housing stock and some lovely neighborhoods in San Bernardino, but the city lacks what Americans call “quality of life.” (That’s not to say there’s nothing to be grateful for here. San Bernardino would look good to a Syrian refugee.)
If San Bernardino symbolizes anything, it’s the “Junkyard of Dreams” that Mike Davis wrote about in his excellent book about Los Angeles, “City of Quartz.”
The junkyard chapter focuses on Fontana, located nearby. Much of what Davis says about Fontana – especially the section “The Mirage of Redevelopment” – applies to San Bernardino — and this was years before the city filed for bankruptcy in 2013.
At the time I started working in San Bernardino, it was already in decline. In its glory days, it must have been like a working-class Palm Springs. Great weather, decent jobs, cheap housing, simple family pleasures, the smell of orange blossoms.
The closing of Norton Air Force Base in 1995 wiped out a huge chunk of middle-class jobs. The former base is now optimistically named, “San Bernardino International Airport.” Years of arguing over how to develop the base translated into lost opportunities, jobs and revenue.
San Bernardino and the surrounding communities increasingly became home to people who worked in L.A. and Orange County but couldn’t afford to live close to their jobs. In some cases, families fled L.A. in the 1980’s and 1990’s for the San Bernardino area in hopes of leaving behind gangs and crime. The gangs and crime followed.
If you want to make terrorism routine, San Bernardino is a good place to start. It long ago learned to adjust to crime.
Not far from the site of last week’s shootout between cops and two radical Muslim terrorists on Richardson Street, is the house on South Elm Avenue where a family of five were murdered by an Asian street gang in a home-invasion robbery.
And here’s the former St. Bernardine Medical Center, now Dignity Hospital, where Diana Wilhite worked as a supply technician, a black mother trying to raise two sons. First 18-year-old Dashay was gunned down. Then a couple of years later, 16-year-old Dontae was shot.
“He just didn’t make it home,” she told me, sounding like a mother who had sent her son off to war.
Farther north there is the McDonald’s where a young Hispanic father, on his way home one morning from a graveyard shift at a pest control company, stopped to get breakfast for his three kids. Waiting in line, he exchanged glances with the wrong person, left without his food and didn’t make it to his vehicle before he was shot dead.
And nearby here’s the old Sizzler Steakhouse where a white man who sat eating with his wife and daughter was shot dead when three black men burst in and robbed the place.
To the west is where a young black man, shot at 6 p.m. on a Wednesday, lay all night between two homes until someone finally noticed his body at 10 a.m. Thursday and reported it.
And there’s where a young Hispanic woman was raped by a recent black parolee who hated Mexicans.
And there’s where Mindy Flores was sitting in her living room, crayons in hand, filling in the lines of her coloring book when a bullet struck her in the head. Somebody driving by had a bad aim and missed his target – the guy on the porch visiting Mindy’s sister.
And not too far away, is where a black school-bus driver answered a knock on her door and took a bullet in the forehead – her thanks for taking in a young male relative.
“You can get shot just for being a young, Black male,” said Bridget Cooper, the sister of a 16-year-old black youth shot as he walked on a San Bernardino street.
She gave me that published quote 20 years ago; it might as well have been yesterday. (Bowing to pressure from local civil rights activists, my newspaper’s editor at the time required us to capitalize the word Black when referring to race.)
Even on a nice stretch of Hospitality Lane (which intersects Waterman Avenue), I couldn’t help but recall a co-worker in the advertising department at The Sun whose wife was raped in her workplace.
At one point, the San Bernardino Police Association sold T-shirts showing two vultures sitting on the city’s “Welcome to San Bernardino, The All-American City” sign, only “All-American” was crossed out and replaced with “Murder City.”
The T-shirts weren’t just a way for the cops’ association to make money or a ploy to get a pay raise. Some of the cops were as frustrated and angry as the residents.
At the same time, the cops also experimented with wearing “soft uniforms,” which looked less militarized. Sound familiar?
How about this: Two San Bernardino police officers attended the city’s multi-racial, multi-ethnic Human Relations Commission to seek help locating a killer who shot a Hispanic man and his nephew repairing a bicycle in the uncle’s front yard. Commission member Valerie Beauregard, the daughter of a black San Bernardino city councilwoman, rebuffed the cops.
“Everybody in the neighborhood knows who did it,” Beauregard said.
This was 20 years ago. Some of these stories could be written right now in Portland, Ore., which has all of the good food, drink, comedy clubs, theaters, book stores and gushing New York Times’ travel reviews that San Bernardino has never had. In its own way, San Bernardino has been on the cutting edge of American culture. It was showing us the future 20 years ago.
But so did a small community in central Oregon, if we are willing to remember. It’s now practically forgotten, but in the early 1980’s followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a guru from Poona, India by way of Montclair, N.J., committed what some consider to be the first act of domestic terrorism in the U.S.
The Rajneeshees took over Antelope, Ore., renaming it Rajneesh. For a time, the commune attracted glowing media reports of peace, love and progressive farming. Well-educated professionals, including doctors, lawyers and professors relocated there, renamed themselves and “worshipped” 14 to 16 hours a day, in many cases as laborers. (The Rajneeshees believed that working was worshipping.) Rajneesh himself was known more for driving around in one of his many Rolls-Royces.
However, there were conflicts with ranchers and ordinary families who objected to the Rajneeshees attempting to take over the school board, etc. In 1984, some cult leaders visited salad bars and salsa bars in restaurants in a nearby town and sprayed salmonella bacteria in dressings and salsa.
More than 700 people became ill. Initially, it was believed that food handlers were the problem. When then-Congressman Jim Weaver blamed the Rajneeshees, the news media did not take him seriously. He was accused of being a “Rajneesh-basher.”
Eventually an investigation by the state’s Attorney General led to charges and plea deals with cult leaders, primarily Ma Anand Sheela (real name, Sheela Silverman, and a nurse practitioner by profession).
Sheela served only two and a half years in prison. She was deported in 1988 and ordered to stay out of the U.S. for at least five years. Then-state Attorney General Dave Frohnmayer was not told of her release because of a “communications foul-up.” Sheela left owing more than $269,000 in restitution, and the AG’s office believed she had assets to pay it.
To paraphrase President Obama, it is too easy for people to harm Americans — whether or not they buy guns.
America talks tough when it’s dropping bombs on other countries. We equivocate and apologize when confronted face-to-face with persons who use America’s freedoms to kill and maim.
The leading presidential candidate for the Democratic Party (and a more serious candidate than anyone the Republicans have offered) is in a quandary about the death penalty. This grandma can’t bring herself to confront executing somebody whose guilt isn’t even in doubt. She’s going to fight terrorism?
Meanwhile the Republican candidates have more in common with radical Muslims when it comes to women’s rights.
Our glorious First Amendment has produced a media that grovel for forgiveness when they descend on the townhouse of two terrorists who killed 14 and wounded 21 others.
Our maligned Second Amendment has been used to distort the issue of gun control. A ban on civilian ownership of military-style assault weapons is reasonable, until you realize that a person who is motivated can take a simple hunting rifle, and reconfigure it to resemble the weaponry used in San Bernardino.
For all the publicity about how heavily armed Americans are, it didn’t discourage Syeed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik from bursting into a conference room and taking aim at their coworkers.
Think about it: If you were a terrorist, would you be afraid of setting up shop in America?
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
Related:
I would challenge your assertion that the Republican Party shares similarities with radical Muslims except my wife and daughter agree with you.
Post-college and pre-law school, I took a road trip that included the old Route 66 right through San Bernardino. I remember fast food joints and a motel made out of Indian teepees. I also had an encounter with some of the denizens when I stopped to use a pay phone.
This was way before cell phones. While I was in a phone booth, four black guys approached my car. This was on a sunny afternoon. I didn’t feel in danger. Neither did I feel entirely safe.
They wanted to know where I was from, how much I paid for the car. I tried to be conversational. “Where’s a good place to eat around here?” I recall askiing.
A police car pulled up. They scattered. The cop didn’t follow or act concerned. He did say it wasn’t the best pay phone in town.
The Wigwam Motel! How could I forget. On my recent trip I did not cruise by to see if it was still there. According to Google, it is. When I lived down there, I believe the Wigwam was considered to be in Rialto, not San Bernardino. The two cities are next to each other, and the city boundaries may have been adjusted over the years.
Imagine a Wigwam Motel in Portland — protests about cultural misappropriation would shut it down. In Rialto/San Bernardino there are more important things to worry about.
Actually the current crop of Republicans (not that the Dems are anything to write home about) have a LOT in common with say, Wahabi version of Islam. That’s the version the Saudi government mandates which forbids women to drive, etc.
Never mind the ISIL jihadists for the moment, but claiming that abortion is murder, that the threat is from “foreign influences,” that our “great place in history” is just around the corner.
Sounds like Trump or Rubio or the King of Saudi Arabia!
Do most Republicans really want to outlaw abortion, or are they appealing to the religious right who faithfully vote. Outlaw abortion and watch millions of women like my wife and daughter take to the streets. It could force an end to the Republican Party. Not a bad thought.
The Dems say supportive words on women’s issues and then urge tolerance of those opposed to women’s rights on religious grounds, provided the religion is Islam.
Republicans and Dems both offer weak defense of women’s rights.
“Little by little the look of the country changes because of the men we admire.” That’s a Melvyn Douglas line from Hud. Good script and Patricia Neal – well…
Anyway, the writer was on to something. Here’s another good one, although this was spoken/written by the authors:
This isn’t a fight I’m expecting to win, and I must write, if at all, in the spirit of the Elizabethan churchman, Richard Hooker, “Though for no other cause, yet for this; that posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream.”
These are bad times that witnesses the small exalted and the shabby elevated. I write to remark and protest it when I can but know that it will not effect any pull back nor moderate folly’s rush.
But, I know that we can be better and besides, who really wants to live in San Berdoo? Had a tenured college teacher leave some years back for a biker. She’d come to think Sonny Barger a heck of a guy and I’d long thought him a blood Prince of San Bernadino.
You’re wrong about Republicans and abortion and just nuts with the Wahhabi stuff.
I’ve paid for two scrapes in my life and sleep alright. But, as I’ve gotten older and observed the women I was involved with I come better to understand the cruelty of our blithe acts. No, abortion must be kept legal and will be (even with an all Right Supreme Court), but the callous digestion of life created and excreted should be, to use Hooker’s phrasing “not allowed to pass away as in a dream.”
My perception is that we who jump like a gut shot cat over the slightest criticism of any abortion practices are closer to the ISIS/Wahhabist/Lord of the Dark Ages POV. Gosnell passed unnoticed and unremarked by most of the mainstream.
Your observation, “Our glorious First Amendment has produced a media that grovel for forgiveness when they descend on the townhouse of two terrorists who killed 14 and wounded 21 others.” is spot on. I saw yesterday that YouTube had suspended Sheryl Atkisson’s Full Measure account.
Today they’ve restored it (after public push back one suspects).
There is a tacit complicity among “right thinking” people and the media and schools and institutions that boxes in unfettered thought and expression nowadays with a ruthlessness and thoroughness McCarthyism never approached.
There’s plenty of criticism directed at abortion. It wasn’t that long ago that Planned Parenthood was accused of selling body parts.
When abortion opponents extended their opposition to even the morning-after pill, it was clear that the issue wasn’t life. It was controlling females. Nothing can ruin the life of a girl or a woman faster than an unwanted pregnancy. Pregnancy is something males can inflict on females.
For a male, being drafted into the military and losing the right to his own body might be the closest analogy to a female being pregnant and losing the right to her own body. But at least with military service a man gets the G.I. bill; with an unwanted pregnancy, a woman may get a lifetime of regret and misery.
With or without abortion there has always been a “callous digestion of life created and excreted.” One of the unintended consequences of pro-life propaganda has been young girls and women thinking they should get pregnant, that it’s life-affirming. In some cases, they’ve turned pregnancy into a weapon.
As for Kermit Gosnell, I went back and reread the Atlantic essay on him from a few years ago. The writer felt the way you did, that this was a major story that had been ignored by the media. I believe had Gosnell been a white doctor abusing black women, it would have been a huge story, even with the abortion issue. But he was a black doctor. That’s what killed the story.
It’s too bad the media didn’t dig deeper into Gosnell, including why those women waited until their third trimester for an abortion. Despite all that has been said and written about abortion, many people don’t understand that abortion can still be costly and difficult to obtain. Part of the difficulty is pro-life preaching, which adds to a poor woman’s torment and delay.
I am a little surprised that the comments seem to be Republican defense. Evidently, I read a different story.
When I first read about the San Bernardino terrorist attack, I couldn’t believe it. Why there.
I lived in california for more than 30 years, traveled all over the state. Even lived in LA for a while. But I could not tell you one thing about the city not even what part of the state it was in.
But to shift slightly, I realise that Portland may not be San Bernardino, but when I read about the graduation rates at Oregonlive, and the gang issues, the homeless, etc., – is Portland going in the right direction?
Anyway, I always appreciate your blog.
Thanks, Larry.
I’ll tell you one way San Bernardino has Portland beat: Fewer homeless. The only homeless I encountered in San Bernardino during my recent visit were three guys sacked out on the dried lawn of the Norman Feldheym library in downtown San Bernardino. (Also, unlike Portland, San Bernardino enforces a strict no-food/no-drink rule in its library.)
Portland is so proud of its politically progressive reputation. Look at how the mayoral candidates all claim the title of “progressive.” Considering how the city has been going under progressive leadership, maybe it’s time to try something different.
Rajneeshpuram was the name of their ville. The bleak rascals has concealed their machinations behind a mask of jolly youth homme and femme du monde affluence.
I remember seeing the Rolls Royce’s double parked 6 deep downtown popping out good looking Europeans and East Coasties swathed in purple drapery and shopping swank. This was before merchants had fled town for the suburban malls and a surprisingly adult group of men and women inhabited and ran this town.
However, the foreign bastards threw dough around like a drunk Saudi and sex, sex, sex was always the sea they floated in. I used to go to their saloon Zorba the Buddha to troll for the easy and exotic.
Took a Dutch woman home out of there once. Morning pillow talk told me that after you punched past the pseudo-religious rubbish (she’d declared me a teacher of some sort conjured forth by the cockamamie sexual spirituality the ‘neeshees professed)she was really a troubled young mother trying to hold on to her husband.
She was an attractive 30 something who’d once had a lovely home in rural Holland of which she’d been very proud. She and her husband had a child or two (it was a long time ago)and she was very animated in talking about this vanished life. Then the Bhagwan’s people had swung through her neck of the woods (or flood plain, it was Holland). It boiled down to her husband getting a taste of the young females that always swam around the Big B’s aura. Her husband was off to the races and her marriage opened up, like it or not. To carry on this vivacious new life he’d demanded that they sell their home and become citizens of the world.
It was pretty clear she’d longed for the way it had been before the mister had started rogering teens and early twenties and she had to put up with my nonsense.
A little down the road I was in Washington county visiting with a friend of mine shooting his Thompson. A high school pal, he’d become a fireman in Portland. He told me the story of the night that nutty guy came to town and blew his hands off in the Rajneeshee hotel. Seems his wife had run away w/the Bhagwan’s circus and pretty much for the same reason my Dutchie had. Only his response was attempted assassination rather than bunking with one night stands.
The bombing plot had gone wrong and I can’t remember if the guy lost his face as well as his hands. My friend was part of the emergency team. Funnily enough he was cited in his divorce papers for wearing high heels, lipstick and red lame which just goes to show that cause a guy can box pretty good and run a Thompson sub-machine gun it don’t mean he’s got limited interests. I guess.
Anyway, the media had all local skeptics of the the Bhagwan down as hicks and religious bigots who didn’t care for fun. Some things don’t change, hein?
Swathed in purple? You sure they weren’t in red? The Rajneeshees had a thing for red.
This past summer I flew over the former site of Rajneeshpuram. You can still see the outlines where some of the buildings were. It’s now home to Young Life, a Christian camp.
Guess I mis-remembered it somewhat. Them dang Muslims again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaat_ul-Fuqra
I’m pretty limited in my words for colors. I think you’re more right.
http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/ku_klux_klan/#.VnYnclIlkwe
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