The War Zone, Bubble Gum Machine Man Summary

Allen Cooper, also known as Big Al, is an ex-gang member and ex-convict involved with the national truce movement. He refers to the men tried for beating Reginald Denny as the L.A. Four. He questions the government's actions in charging them with a crime. He believes that Denny may have been trying to intimidate the neighborhood by driving his truck down a residential street. He thinks Denny was trying to prove something.

Cooper says that his people are expressing the way black people are treated in this community through the beating of Denny. He criticizes the media for handling the situation like a soap opera. When Rodney King was beaten, it was just the most recent of twenty to thirty years of black people suffering from beatings from law enforcement...