ranks, the Interstate 5 freeway was closed for 2 hours, and there were loads of looting, smashing and burning in downtown Seattle. Similar events occurred in Atlanta, where tear gas failed to stop the rioters. In Rochester, New York, a curfew was imposed after a cop car was flipped over. Leftists tried to stop looting and openly allied themselves with the police at the demo in Minneapolis. There were smaller riots in Riverside, California, Denver, Miami, and Peoria and Springfield, Illinois. Riots broke out in various locations in Maryland, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Alabama. At a march of 1,000 people in New Brunswick on May 1st, a truck driver plowed through a crowd, but retreated as an angry mob quickly materialized. It is possible that theattack on the truck driver in LA. was sparked by a similar provocation.

In spite of a very small number of atypical and stupid racist incidents, the riots have been for the most part an overwhelmingly affirmative series of events, explicitly anti-police upheavals leading in the areas of the revolt’s dominion to a widespread temporary overthrow in market relations and a crack in the totalitarian reality of contemporary America. The riots have been an explosive reemergence of class warfare in the United States on a scale surpassing the heroic revolts of the 1965–71 period. The recent riots were more racially mixed than the urban uprisings of that period and were a reaffirmation of the war between social classes. The war between the rich and the mass of exploited and