Park, Paint and Pride

Sometimes the difference between pride and despair can be 100 gallons of paint.

And a real challenge.

Mayor Tom Bradley had the paint--and a check for $1,500--with him when his car pulled up at the Morton Place entrance to Elysian Park for a meeting with two dozen youth gang members and for a firsthand look at the mural they have been painting there.

Young men and women from the vicinity, many of them gang members, are hired by a community services organization called El Centro del Pueblo to work on the mural (which depicts various episodes in Latino history) in an effort to relieve gang tensions while beautifying the neighborhood.

The money and the paint were both from the Mayor’s Corporate Challenge for Youth, an organization of businessmen attempting to address school dropout and gang violence problems.

There were speeches and ceremonies.

And there was the mural.

“It tells the history of a proud people,” the mayor said. “And when you have pride . . . nobody can tear that down.”