Symbols of the Slaughter : Weary of the Violence, People Are Sending Shoes to Washington to Spotlight the 35,000 Killed by Guns Annually

Lorna Hawkins is sending four pairs of shoes to the cause, two for her sons who were gunned down, two more for the surviving sons of those sons.

The shoes will be a reminder of the dead and those who must go on. And when the thousands of shoes are finally brought together in Washington from around the nation this month--an expected 35,000 pairs in all--they will be used to show in grim fashion how many American lives gun violence has claimed in the course of a year.

The mountain of shoes will be piled beside the capital’s Reflecting Pool on Sept. 20 to draw attention to the staggering number of people killed by guns each year in the United States. California, with an estimated 5,000 annual deaths by gun, accounts for nearly 15% of the nation’s gun-related homicides, suicides and fatal accidents.

For Hawkins, founder of the Los Angeles public access cable TV program “Drive-by Agony,” two pairs will represent sons Joe, who was 21 when he was gunned down six years ago, and Gerald, who was 20 when he was shot to death the day before Thanksgiving in 1992. The other two pairs will be for grandsons Joevon and Gerald Jr., both now 5, both without fathers. “The awareness has to get out there about crime and the effect it has on families and the communities,” she said. “I think anything that brings awareness is effective.”

The use of shoes to depict the number of dead is an idea borrowed from the Holocaust Museum in Washington, where a display of about 4,000 shoes seized from victims of the Maidanek concentration camp bespeaks those terrible days.

Gun control advocates borrowed that technique for the first time last year. When Sen. Joseph D’Amato (R-N.Y.) would not meet with the group New Yorkers for Gun Control, members piled up about 250 pairs of shoes of gunshot victims on his office doorstep.

Enter Katina Johnstone of Staten Island, N.Y., who came to believe that shoes could be an effective way of making gun violence a national issue. Johnstone has reason to champion the cause. Her husband, David, was gunned down in 1992 as he was walking through a quiet neighborhood in San Francisco. He died a month later.

“Not only do these homicides shame me, but so does the silence when it is children being killed by guns,” she said in a recent interview. “There is no public outcry.”

Johnstone said the idea for a nationwide drive stemmed from discussions about how attention could be called to the gun issue without asking thousands of people to descend on Washington for a march. The upshot was the shoe campaign, which ran short notices in a number of magazines that target women and teen-agers.

In Los Angeles, the campaign is being run by Women Against Gun Violence, formed last year and overseen by former Los Angeles Police Commissioner Ann Reiss Lane. She said people who donate shoes are being asked to include a short statement about how guns have affected them.

The campaign has attracted the likes of Hawkins, who vividly remembers both moments when she learned that her sons had been killed. In the case of Joe, she recalls finding out that he was not the intended target. The people who told her this, she said, were the gang members who did the shooting. They went to the hospital to apologize.

“They came to the hospital and said they were looking for someone else,” she said.

Carol Ann Taylor has joined the campaign as well. Her 17-year-old son, Willie, was shot and killed March 15, 1993, at Vermont Avenue and Imperial Highway. Two men, brandishing AK-47 machine guns, sprayed what was later estimated as 34 shots into the intersection.

“It didn’t appear anyone was being singled out,” she said. “As my son reached the door of his friend’s house, one bullet hit him in the back.”

Taylor said her son’s death opened her eyes to how dangerous the world of children is today--how, for many, leaving their front porch is like embarking on a perilous journey.

“They can’t even ride the bus from one part of town to another,” she said. “Even the innocent ones are carrying guns because they’re scared.

“We’ve got to make some noise,” she said. “And we’re going to make it a woman’s issue, since no one else wants to touch it.”

Joy Turner, too, has joined the fight. Her son, Hank, was 19 when he was shot in the street five years ago. She said she never got the full story about why he was killed.

The hurt from his death was compounded by the fact that a gunfight between rival gang members broke out during the funeral. She lay on the ground, hoping she would not be hit as the two sides fought it out.

“I didn’t want his death to not mean anything,” she said. “They have to see that these shoes belonged to someone out there, that they represent a life.”

At the Korean Youth and Community Center, one of six places in Los Angeles where shoes are being collected, coordinator Kris Choi led the way to a small room. There were no more than 50 pairs, because the campaign had only begun.

One package had been sent by mail and in a short letter a teen-ager bemoaned the death of a classmate named Ochari D’Aiello, killed by a friend during an argument.

“The murderer had just picked up his mom’s gun on the way out that night,” the letter said.

Another note, tucked in a pair of tennis shoes, said simply: “I pray that something will end all the violence before we lose all our children.”

There were also the shoes of Shin Dal Kang, delivered to the center by his wife.

“Because of the lack of police protection at the time of the (1992) riot, my husband and our family lost all our personal and business savings,” the note inside the shoes said. “We’re now without a home. Crime must be punished and hard-working people like us must be protected. My husband committed suicide because criminals had more rights and benefits than he could obtain after the riot. This is truly a travesty of justice.”

The six collection points are:

The Korean Youth and Community Center, 680 S. Wilton Place; Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 4182 Southwestern Ave.; Drive-by Agony, 2555 Industry Way, Suite D, Lynwood; Mothers and Men Against Gangs, 1107 Papeet St., Wilmington; Venice Family Clinic, 604 Rose Ave., Venice, and the office of state Sen. Charles Calderon, 400 N. Montebello Blvd., Montebello.