Cries and Whispers

Two months later, letters and telephone calls continue to come in, like cries and whispers in the night.

“I lost my daughter to a drive-by shooter . . . “

“My son was murdered by someone fleeing the police . . . “

“My wife was raped and murdered by . . . “

“My little girl was killed . . .”

“He was just seven when they . . .”

I couldn’t keep up with the telephone calls and couldn’t answer most of the mail that followed a September column on violence in the city. There have been so many.

They’ve been filled with grief and anger from those with an emptiness in their lives that nothing will ever fill, children lost who will never grow up and love that will never be returned.

Some wrote “with tears streaming down my face,” others with “hatred burning in my heart.”

Callers spoke in Spanish, Japanese and Korean. No race, no religion and no culture has been untouched by the horror that has darkened L.A.

“We’re Murder City U.S.A.,” a man said sourly. “Whatever became of the good old days when we were just laid-back and loony?”

“We can no longer tolerate the level of violence in our community by viewing it as a ‘consequence’ of our times,” Sheriff Sherman Block wrote.

“When did feelings and compassion disappear?” a woman named Janet Salter asked.

“The fact is,” Steven Levine wrote, “we’re at war and we’re losing.”

The outpouring was in response to a column about the 263 people who died violently in one month--last August--in L.A. County.

They came not only from those personally touched by the mayhem but also from those sickened by what’s happened to a city they once weren’t afraid to live in.

“Even standing in line for a movie in Westwood is an exercise in survival,” Levine wrote.

“I need not tell you about the fear of walking on the streets in broad daylight or riding on a bus or just being in a car,” Edna Shankman said.

An anonymous senior citizen wrote, “Growing old is bad enough. Growing old with murder as a constant companion is a horror.”

Their messages have the consistency of drum beats. Fear, fear, fear . . . Their mail piles up around me. I finally throw away the telephone messages. I absorb the grief like a sponge.

But how much of it, I ask, can I internalize? How much can we all hear about or read about or see on television before we all go crazy? How much blood’s got to run before we realize there’s something wrong here?

James Cleaver, a deputy to County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, is incensed that I raged against municipal government for doing too little.

His boss, he says, offered a $50,000 reward for a solution to the gang problem and has constantly raised the issue of violence.

Fifty grand? It damned well ought to be half the county budget. He “raised the issue”? He should have been screaming his head off.

Was what Hahn did enough? Never. Will any of them ever do enough? Probably not.

Suzanne Lewis became an anti-violence activist when her daughter’s friend was killed by drive-by shooters as he waited for a bus in Woodland Hills.

She’s organized a candlelight vigil against violence Nov. 21 at Pierce College beginning at 5 p.m. What she’s hoping for is that L.A. will turn out by the thousands.

What she’s hoping for is that every member of the City Council and the Board of Supervisors will be there.

What she’s hoping for is that the fear and grief and dangers we’ve been whispering about will become a mighty roar and that ultimately someone’s going to realize it’ll take one hell of a lot more than 50 grand and a raised issue to keep us alive in L.A.

“Strangely,” Andrew Byrne wrote, “the killing of babies, 3-year-olds and pregnant mothers won’t bring a roar of protest. With some cynicism, I suggest it would follow the killing of business executives, members of wealthy suburban families, policemen and donors of large sums to political parties.”

Who’s to blame for it all? Gangs whose existence we tolerate with the excuse of social repression? Citizens who have “pulled the teeth” of the LAPD? Police who “harass and beat innocent people”? The National Rifle Assn.? Poverty? Parents who don’t teach individual responsibility? The school system? The media?

In the 1960s, those who protested the war in Vietnam shouted that they didn’t give a damn what the war was for, they wanted it stopped. It was. It’s time to shout we don’t give a damn what the violence is all about, we want it stopped.

We’ve got to hear the people roar.