democratic presidential candidate bill clinton said that the violence resulted from the breakdown of economic opportunities and social institutions in the inner city. he also berated both major political parties for failing to address urban issues, especially the republican administration for its presiding over "more than a decade of urban decay" generated by their spending cuts. he maintained that the king verdicts could not be avenged by the "savage behavior" of "lawless vandals". he also stated that people "are looting because ... [t]hey do not share our values, and their children are growing up in a culture alien from ours, without family, without neighborhood, without church, without support." while los angeles was mostly unaffected by the urban decay the other metropolitan areas of the nation faced since the 1960s, racial tensions had been present since the late 1970s, becoming increasingly violent as the 1980s progressed.