STANTON : Neighbor Group to Plan Activities

The Standing Together Now neighborhood group will have an open meeting Tuesday night to plan baseball games, cookouts, lectures, dances and trips for the coming summer.

Residents founded the group in 1990 to provide activities for young people in the Benedict Tract, long a Latino neighborhood.

After a 16-year-old resident was killed on her front lawn, Standing Together Now founder Mary Lara decided to confront the increasing violence.

“Our society has somehow left a whole group of kids on the sidelines,” Lara said. The group was instrumental in bringing a handball court to the local playground and now sponsors a yearly tournament there. Another group project is organizing the restoration of a 25-year-old mural in the neighborhood.

Lara said Standing Together Now is seeking nonprofit status and would like to raise enough money to build a community center.

The seven-member board that runs the organization includes Councilman Joe V. Harris and Joan Thomas, director of the Stanton Chamber of Commerce.

As Lara, Harris and board president Terry Vasquez walked around the neighborhood recently, they were greeted by many residents: teen-agers driving by, older men working on a car and families passing by on foot.

“Twenty years ago, everybody here was related to me,” said Vasquez. She can still tell a visitor the names of the owners of every house in sight.

The Benedict Tract was settled about 75 years ago, said Vasquez, who was born in a small house there. Migrant workers caught trains to farms from a station named Benedict and ended up settling around it for convenience. Vasquez’s mother picked strawberries, and her father worked in a foundry.

The area, now populated by about 250 families, is bounded by Katella Avenue on the south, Beach Boulevard on the East and two railroad tracks on the north and west. It is directly across Katella Avenue from the public library, the sheriff’s station and the site of the future Civic Center.

Lara said the area is blessed with a strong neighborhood spirit but suffers from a reputation for gang activity that follows its children to school. “Just because you’re born here doesn’t mean you’re a gang member,” she said.

The group has had strong support from city officials. For a beach trip in 1990, three council members chauffeured youngsters to the shore. “We wouldn’t have done a lot of what we’ve accomplished without them,” Lara said.

Lara has just been appointed to the city’s Community Services Commission, which will work to provide community activities, among other responsibilities.

Standing Together Now will meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Chamber of Commerce, 8381 Katella Ave. Vasquez said that anyone seeking more information or who would like to offer ideas may call her at (714) 828-4531.