Venice Citizens Urged to Fight Back Against Gangs

Community activist Alex Cota says it is time for Venice residents to fight back against the “cowardly termites” who he says have taken over the Oakwood neighborhood and stripped law-abiding people of their civil rights.

“Atrocities committed by gangs are violations of our civil rights, the right to walk and talk freely in our streets,” said Cota, president of the Eastside/Westside Concerned Citizen’s Committee, a grass-roots group that raises funds for youth organizations.

The committee’s belief that violence in Oakwood has diminished the quality of life there will be discussed at a public meeting at 7 tonight at the Oakwood Recreation Center, 767 California Ave.

UCLA law professor Cruz Reynoso, a former California Supreme Court associate justice and current vice chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, is scheduled to speak.

Reynoso said he hopes the community forum will motivate residents to work together for solutions. It is unfair, Reynoso said in an interview, when people “can’t enjoy the Constitutional freedoms we have; the right to free speech and movement.”

The meeting comes in response to fighting between black and Latino gangs in Oakwood that in 10 months has killed at least 17 people and injured 55, many of whom were bystanders.

“If you feel like going to the market, you shouldn’t have to worry about someone gunning you down in the street,” Cota said. “We don’t want to surrender to the gangs.”

To advertise the meeting, Cota distributed hundreds of flyers with photos of grieving Latina and African-American women and images of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez. “We must follow their example and continue their work to strengthen freedom,” the message read.

“They would be appalled at the dirty race war being conducted in the Venice-Oakwood area.”

In a related move, representatives from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development are expected to meet privately this morning with the owner of the Holiday Venice apartment complex in Oakwood and with LAPD officers to discuss security complaints. During the 1970s, the city approved construction of the complex, which consists of 15 HUD-subsidized apartment buildings.