Victims’ Families Protest Violence : Demonstration: Nearly 1,000 people take part in emotional march in Downtown L.A. They share memories and the pain of lives cut short by guns.

Barbara Schwab’s days of pain are etched in her face, and her tears flow freely when she describes her daughter Anitra (Jollie) Watson, a 17-year-old Dorsey High School cheerleader shot and killed last year in Inglewood.

“She was a dream,” Schwab said. “She would’ve given her life to help anybody. She couldn’t wait to get away from all the madness and agony around here.”

Instead, Watson became a victim.

Schwab joined close to 1,000 demonstrators--relatives and friends of victims--who marched Sunday in Downtown from Olvera Street to the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration several blocks away to protest gun violence.

The march, called “Stop the Violence Now,” was started three years ago by 43-year-old Lorna Hawkins, who has lost two of her sons to shootings.

Hawkins’ oldest son, Joe, was killed in 1988 when gunmen mistook him for someone else. Another son, Gerald Roberts, was killed in 1992 when armed robbers tried to take his car. After her second son was killed, Hawkins founded a group called Drive By Agony and began hosting a cable television show of the same name.

She said her anger over the violence that plagues the Southland has helped the march, which started out with just a few hundred people, become a rallying point and day of therapy for thousands of survivors.

Many of those attending Sunday’s march held up signs with their loved ones’ birth dates and the dates they were killed. Others wore T-shirts with images of slain family members or showcased artwork depicting the necessity for peace in the streets.

The rally was part of an effort to put faces on the thousands of young children, teen-agers and adults who may represent statistics to most Los Angeles residents but are constant, painful memories for these families.

“The pain never goes away,” Schwab told the emotional crowd outside the Hall of Administration.

Lonnie Washington, 27, was one of the lucky ones. He was shot three times in an attempted carjacking in 1992. He survived, but is now in a wheelchair. He donates much of his time to warning young people about the dangers of guns.

“I target the kids,” Washington said, “because we have a better shot at getting to them and letting them know that what happened to me can happen to them.”

Huddled together near the podium, two mothers of young star football players killed recently urged the crowd to embrace peace.

Irma Irving’s son Kasun Charles, 21, a linebacker at Long Beach City College, was killed just four blocks from home. A tearful Irving was embraced by Lula Tave, the mother of 17-year-old Dupree Tave, a highly recruited football player from Banning High School in Carson who was killed as he waited for relatives to help him fix a flat tire two weeks ago.

Irving and Tave stood in a line that reached almost to the back of the administration building’s courtyard. It was filled with people eager to share just a few minutes of their agony.

“We know of a different kind of domestic terrorism,” Rabbi Laura Geller of Temple Emanuel told the crowd, alluding to the recent bombing in Oklahoma City. “And it is the kind of terrorism that has created a culture of violence that we all live with every day.”