Controversial Black Panther Mural OKd

The walls of Los Angeles are accustomed to controversy in the form of murals, but few proposed pieces of art have gone through the gantlet of scrutiny that Noni Olabisi’s tribute to the Black Panthers--titled “To Protect and Serve”--has endured.

After three rejections by the Cultural Affairs Commission and nine months of effort on the part of a city-funded mural program, the work featuring a gun-toting Huey Newton was approved Thursday by all six of the seven commissioners present.

“We’re new commissioners and this was a learning process,” commission Vice President Jayne Levant said after the vote. “It was a joy to be able to vote for this.”

The approval apparently closes the first sticky controversy faced by this panel, appointed by Mayor Richard Riordan. But not everyone at the meeting was happy with the decision.

Rik Violano, a director of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, strongly objected to the mural, saying it glamorizes a group that had a history of violently resisting the police. “Here we are subsidizing a mural of a group that has been known to assault the police,” he said after the meeting.

Supporters of the mural had come to Thursday’s meeting prepared for opposition. Officials of the nonprofit Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), which commissioned the work, an ACLU official, a minister from the First African Methodist Episcopal Church and other backers filled the commission’s small Downtown domain.

At issue was whether the panel had overstepped its bounds in turning down plans for the mural to be painted at 11th Avenue and Jefferson Boulevard on the west-facing wall of a beauty shop. Because the commission regulates signs, any such artwork funded by a city contract must get the commission’s approval.

In this case, supporters had accused commissioners of judging the work on its content, which a city ordinance expressly forbids them from doing.

Although Newton is a primary figure in the 40-foot-long mural, there are also scenes depicting the Panthers’ free breakfast program and other social projects the militant group undertook.

“It’s a historical piece painted by a young African American woman,” said the group’s Judith Baca.

Group staffers said commissioners were reacting to the art’s content during their first meeting in February when they turned down the project. “As soon as we opened up the rendering, they were aghast,” said one staffer. “All the discussion centered around the Black Panthers and why we were glorifying them.”

Allan Parachini of the ACLU called the commission’s initial rejection “a case of classic censorship.”

But Levant said Thursday that the work was troubling only in that it might have stoked tensions already existing in the neighborhood between residents and the police. “I was never opposed to the mural,” she said. “I think all of us had concerns that the mural might--might, I say--be a public safety issue.” “I think the work is very high quality,” said Cultural Affairs Department general manager Al Nodal. “We’re making a big mountain out of a molehill. We already have a mural very similar to this on 54th and Western which hasn’t caused any riots.”

That mural, which depicts sorrowful faces reacting to the first King beating trial verdict--and includes the figure of an anonymous man being beaten by the police--was also done by Olabisi.

In the end, supporters of the Panther mural came armed Thursday with a petition listing900 neighborhood residents, as well as a map of the area they had scoured for the names. The commission had wondered if the neighborhood had truly been consulted about the mural.

But Baca was only five minutes into her impassioned speech supporting the project before the commission president interrupted her and the panel voted to approve it.

“I saw it as a good mural and an expression of what the community wanted,” said commissioner Lee Ramer.

Olabisi, weary of the battle, is reluctant to talk about her beleaguered project, much less explain her reasons for including, among the myriad images, a familiar rendering of Newton with a gun.

“If you know our history,” she said referring to the Panthers’ rise to prominence in the 1960s, “you know it was when we started fighting for our rights.”