L.A. Activists Busy Filling Aid Pipeline to El Salvador

One Sunday in November, the Rev. Don W. Lewis was at the altar of St. Edmund’s Episcopal Church in San Marino. He delivered a sermon, served Communion and led the well-heeled congregation in a few rounds of “Amazing Grace.” It was just another Sunday in the life of a suburban priest--with one exception.

Twelve hours later, Lewis was airborne for the front lines of El Salvador, where for three days he would distribute medical supplies, console church workers and, in one especially dangerous moment, camp out with refugees on the floor of a school as mortars and gunfire exploded all around them.

And then, after a five-hour TACA Airlines flight, he was back in San Marino, worrying about next year’s church budget and finance committee meetings.

Lewis is a commuter on the Los Angeles-San Salvador shuttle, one of many. Fueled in part by the wealth of Westside liberals, the flashy activism of Hollywood and the presence of a huge Salvadoran refugee population, Los Angeles has become linked in an extraordinary way to the conflict in El Salvador.

The pipeline that funnels people and material between a peaceful city and a war zone’s capital is fed by legions of Los Angeles activists. They set up blood banks, charter relief planes, stockpile medical supplies. And many take breaks from their daily Los Angeles lives to dash down to El Salvador and deliver money, medical supplies and the like.

“I’m beginning to become a frequent flier,” said Lynne Halpin, a retired aerospace personnel director from Whittier and veteran of numerous trips to El Salvador.

On the Los Angeles home front, they stage press conferences with television actors and rock singers, receive faxes with the latest battle reports from the guerrillas, attend “emergency” fund-raising meetings in comfortable homes in the best Westside neighborhoods. Some work quietly through their churches; others take center stage in spirited sit-ins outside the U.S. Federal Building. Many go to jail. They march on the Salvadoran Consulate, boycott Salvadoran coffee.

The movement found renewed life last month when leftist Salvadoran rebels launched their largest offensive in 10 years of civil war. El Salvador had again become a cause celebre , and entire networks began springing into action.

Some are unabashedly supportive of the Marxist-led guerrilla coalition, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, which is fighting to oust the right wing, U.S.-backed Salvadoran government. Others say they oppose violence from both sides and call for a negotiated peace in El Salvador. While there certainly are supporters of the Salvadoran government in Los Angeles, especially among the estimated 300,000 immigrants from that country, they tend to keep a lower profile than the anti-government movement.

“Los Angeles is an alternative to Washington,” said Richard Walden, an attorney and head of Operation California, a 10-year-old international relief organization located on Melrose Avenue in West Los Angeles. “You can get high-profile people to speak out on issues . . . (and) getting funds together is not a problem here. There’s always enough Hollywood money when it comes to Nicaragua and El Salvador.”

When Walden chartered a DC-8 for a relief mission to Nicaragua last year, after the devastation of Hurricane Joan, it took 24 hours to raise the $40,000 charter fee, he said. And last month, Operation California and other relief agencies airlifted more than 20 tons of donated medical supplies to El Salvador. Even Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony joined the shuttle, personally flying to San Salvador to deliver the material to Salvadoran leaders of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Salvadoran government looks askance at the large number of groups working in Los Angeles. At best, say Salvadoran officials, the activists are misguided romantics who do not understand El Salvador; at worst, they are communist-inspired fronts for the guerrillas.

Lewis, the San Marino priest, arrived in San Salvador late last month to find that the city’s only Episcopal Church had been raided by government troops, its rector and 17 of its lay workers arrested.

“It’s as though they declared war on the churches in El Salvador,” Lewis, 58, said later, recalling the experience.

It was his third trip to the Central American country, but the decision to make this one came only after a good dose of agonizing.

Among those accompanying Lewis on the five-hour commercial flight to El Salvador were two other Episcopal priests from Pasadena’s All Saints Church, Susan Buell and Tim Safford, and Halpin, the self-described frequent flier who represents the United Methodist Church leadership.

Before leaving, the group underwent a three-hour briefing at the offices of a local refugee organization, receiving such pointers as how to clear airport inspections and who to call (the U.S. Embassy, the Catholic Archdiocese, a congressman) if anyone got stopped.

They met again at a restaurant table in the international terminal of the Los Angeles airport shortly before the flight’s midnight departure. Buell and Safford chewed Pepto Bismol tablets while Lewis mentally went down a checklist of things to do, people to see.

Ultimately, the three Episcopalians made it to El Salvador’s Comalapa International Airport and rode into the capital in a taxi festooned with white flags to ward off hostile gunfire. They then carried out their mission, reduced to 2 1/2 days because of the fighting and concerns for safety.

But Halpin was stopped by immigration authorities at the Salvadoran airport and deported to Guatemala. She figured her past participation in the resettlement of returning Salvadoran refugees had put her on a blacklist.

Safely back in his San Marino parish, Lewis concluded that the venture had been worthwhile, if only because it raised awareness.

“It got a lot of attention from people who weren’t paying a lot of attention,” he said.

Many of the groups that form Los Angeles’ Salvadoran network have in-country representatives. Based in the Salvadoran capital, the representatives generally try to keep a low profile to avoid what they perceive as harassment by authorities.

They send information back to the home office and administer any aid or money donated to the cause. Several of these people felt forced to leave the country last month after they apparently became targets of a government crackdown in which scores of church and humanitarian agency workers--suspected by security forces of helping the guerrillas--were arrested or expelled.

One such activist was Eileen Rosin, formerly of Silver Lake, who for the last two years coordinated projects in San Salvador for a Los Angeles-based group called Medical Aid for El Salvador.

Rosin, 35, returned to Los Angeles early this month after her office was ransacked and equipment, files, crutches and other supplies were stolen. According to Rosin’s neighbors, the culprits were government troops.

“This makes me feel like hell,” Rosin said as she sat dejectedly in the lobby of the Camino Real Hotel in San Salvador a few hours before boarding a commercial flight to Los Angeles. “The internationals are getting the hint we are not wanted here.”

Upon her return, Rosin gave a press conference to tell what had happened.

The fervor of this burgeoning breed of Los Angeles activists was illustrated by the recent pace at El Rescate, a refugee-assistance agency originally founded by Salvadorans.

As soon as heavy fighting broke out in the Salvadoran capital, the people at El Rescate activated what they call an “emergency response network.” All staff members plus extra volunteers were summoned for round-the-clock duty, and a second fax machine was brought out and plugged in.

In the agency’s computer, hundreds of signatures are ready to be signed automatically to telexes of protest. In this case, the telexes--condemning army strafing of civilian neighborhoods and the government backlash against church workers--were dispatched to key U.S. and Salvadoran officials, including Presidents George Bush and Alfredo Cristiani.

“We (were) busy day and night in this crisis,” said Diane Jacoby, executive director of El Rescate. “There has to be a voice out there, . . . a pressure. It brings the information out and lets people know there is a response.”

The Los Angeles-San Salvador network again leaped into action when the dreaded Salvadoran Treasury police intercepted leftist politician Jorge Villacorta at the Salvadoran airport and hauled him away one night this month. Barely an hour or two after his disappearance, supporters in Los Angeles were telephoning journalists and others in San Salvador in an effort to find and rescue him. He was released the next day.

The movement also has managed to bring out stars, priests, senior citizens and students every Wednesday morning at the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles, where they wave placards, demand an end to U.S. military aid to the Salvadoran government and chant slogans.

Proudly, they point to 326 arrests in the five weeks they’ve been staging the protests.

“It’s a profound statement,” said Mary Brent Wehrli, who heads the Southern California Interfaith Taskforce on Central America, one of the coordinators of the demonstrations. “It’s a big leap in faith and an outrage for these people” to go out and face arrest, she said.

Many compare the surge in activism surrounding El Salvador to the Vietnam War-era protest movement, with Central American causes becoming the rallying point for new generations of activists.

“I’ve been to El Salvador twice and it changed my life,” Melissa Goddard, a movie producer and representative of the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee, said during a recent fund-raiser at the fashionable Brentwood home of a leading Westside restaurateur. “You just have to take a stand,” Goddard, 27, said. “It’s hard not to be political now.”