War Brings New Meaning to Peace Day : Van Nuys: Annual event marking birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. turns somber as students’ thoughts turn to the gulf.

For seven years the students and teachers at Valley Alternative School in Van Nuys have celebrated what they call Peace Day, joyfully marking the January birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with songs, speeches and lessons on his work and life.

But this year, their nation was at war. “This Peace Day brings a whole different meaning to us,” high school senior Cindy Premus, 17, said at the annual event Thursday.

During past Peace Days the school’s 500 students decorated their campus with posters praising King or celebrating peace. Most posters this year carried other messages.

“No Blood For Oil” wrote sixth-grader Rodolfo Perez, 11, above his drawing of black oil barrels leaking streams of red blood.

Premus, holding a thick felt-tip pen, colored a poster reading “Make Our World A World of Peace.” But as she drew, Premus said flatly, “We can’t have world peace now.”

“Yes, you can,” insisted Belkis Wilson, a 17-year-old junior sitting beside her, whose poster read, “Let’s Bring The Power Of Peace Not War.”

The theme of this year’s Peace Day was “What are you doing to help others?” Some students spent the day working with community service organizations, planting trees in the forest, cleaning a public park or repairing trails at a wild animal refuge in Tujunga. “Our idea was to give something back to the community,” said Rhona Feldman, who teaches English and Spanish.

About 40 students, from fifth-graders to high school seniors, stayed on campus to color their posters, which were hung along a chain-link fence so motorists could see them from Balboa Boulevard and Vanowen Street.

A few students spoke seriously about the war, some sounding like adults as they weighed the political actions that prompted the conflict. “Kuwait blocked Iraq’s access to the sea,” sixth-grader Jesus Cortez said.

Older students watched television news intently. Some younger ones focused on their posters and then, at lunch, ran out to the playground, the war quickly forgotten.

At a morning assembly, ninth-grader Bindu Kallumkal read her essay on King. It recently took second place in a contest sponsored by the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. A native of India, Kallumkal recounted the prejudice she encountered when she arrived in California six years ago.

“They would make fun of my skin color, my race, the way I dressed and looked, my height, and my accent,” she said.

“At times I would sit down and start crying because of who they thought I was.”

She didn’t mention the war, but the somber news from the Persian Gulf, combined with her own story, created a powerful impact on her classmates, many of whom are recent immigrants too. The normally chatty student body fell silent. A few fought back tears.

“It was really touching,” Perez said of the speech.

“It’s all true, too,” said Kurosh Spencer, a sixth-grader of Iranian descent.

The school’s Peace Day traces its genesis to a discussion that teachers had one day on nuclear war, recalled Norah Cunningham, a history and English teacher. As Cunningham recalled the discussion, a teacher suggested that nonviolence become part of the curriculum.

“We need to teach peace,” the teacher said.

To that another teacher replied: “How do you teach peace?”