Giving Voice to a Common Purpose : Festival to raise funds for anti-gang effort makes a statement about community’s spirit

This past Sunday in the northern San Fernando Valley was as good a day as any to have headed to the beach or the cool confines of any air-conditioned space. There was that ever present Valley heat to contend with, and the air near the San Gabriel Mountains was just short of awful. That is why we were so pleasantly surprised by the huge turnout at the Hansen Dam Recreation Area for an anti-gang fund-raising event. It was hardly predictable.

Just last month, for example, the Valley Community Legal Foundation and a group of judges and lawyers sponsored a big crime prevention fair at Cal State Northridge. Twenty-eight Los Angeles Police Department units and citizen support teams were amassed to offer all manner of advice to a supposedly crime-crazed populace. But so few showed that a reporter assigned to the event said “police in uniform outnumbered citizens by a margin beyond calculation.”

By contrast, 40,000 people showed up at the Hansen Dam Latino music festival designed to raise money for the LAPD’s Jeopardy project. Jeopardy is an invaluable program designed to prevent youths from succumbing to the violent lure of street gang life. Jeopardy also offers career counseling and job placement.

Of course, many showed up for the music, which included the likes of Carla de Leon (pictured here before the crowd), and many others. But there was a clear sense of community at the event as well, along with a collective sense of its purpose.

“Everybody wants to help. We are all tired of the guns and gangs and things like that,” Elizabeth Palacios told a reporter at the festival.

This kind of civic interest and generosity is even more important now, given these tough fiscal times and the fact that other sources of funding for Jeopardy are, well, in jeopardy. This event has done its share, and its sponsors can justifiably look back on it with great pride.