![]() ![]() In the days that followed, the racially charged atmosphere in Los Angeles exploded in a number of full-scale riots. Naval Reserve Armory marched through downtown Los Angeles carrying clubs and other crude weapons, attacking anyone seen wearing a zoot suit or other racially identified clothing. Partly in retaliation, on the evening of June 3, about 50 sailors from the local U.S. On May 31, a clash between uniformed servicemen and Mexican American youths resulted in the beating of a U.S. Mexican Americans were serving in the military in high numbers, but many servicemen viewed the zoot-suit wearers as World War II draft dodgers (though many were in fact too young to serve in the military). In the summer of 1943, tensions ran high between zoot-suiters and the large contingent of white sailors, soldiers and Marines stationed in and around Los Angeles. Public indignation seethed as warfare among organized bands of marauders, prowling the streets at night, brought a wave of assaults, finally murders.” The Zoot Suit Riots Begin The local media was only too happy to fan the flames of racism and moral outrage: On June 2, 1943, the Los Angeles Times reported: “Fresh in the memory of Los Angeles is last year’s surge of gang violence that made the ‘zoot suit’ a badge of delinquency. Servicemen and many other people, however, saw the oversized suits a flagrant and unpatriotic waste of resources. War Production Board regulated the production of civilian clothing containing silk, wool and other essential fabrics.ĭespite these wartime restrictions, many bootleg tailors in Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere continued to make the popular zoot suits, which used profligate amounts of fabric. entry into World War II, wool and other textiles were subject to strict rationing. Wartime patriotism didn’t help matters: After the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the U.S. Latino youths in California known as “pachucos”-often wearing flashy zoot suits, porkpie hats and dangling watch chains-were increasingly viewed by affluent whites as menacing street thugs, gang members and rebellious juvenile delinquents. Watch this space around Tuesday or Wednesday for a post summarizing the things we’ve discussed, and the beginning of planning for how members of community can get involved in (or spearhead) the things that interest them.As the zoot suit became more popular among young men in Black, Mexican American and other minority communities, the clothes garnered a somewhat racist reputation. ![]() Also, not all the committers had met in person before (and I’d never met Andrew or Peter), so it’s also a chance for us to just get to know each other a little. Since when things like this come up in the IRC dev chat or in various forums there’s inevitably a point at which someone says, “We really need to have here to make a decision,” we thought it would make sense to get together and figure out where everyone stands on all these ideas so that we can move forward a little more efficiently. ![]() We all came for WordCamp Orlando (fun!) and are staying a couple of extra days to discuss the vision for WordPress in the coming year, the merge, canonical plugins, the site, community stuff, and all the other things that are important but that we never seem to have time to address. Just a heads up that Trac commits will be pretty low over the next couple of days, as all the core committers are in Orlando: Matt, Ryan, Andrew, Peter and Mark.
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