Giving Voice to the Silenced

A rose and a card that says “In loving memory of Matthew Simon” sit in a dirty old pair of Nike high-tops with broken stitches and frayed laces.

Several feet away, in some plaid canvas shoes, rests a piece of cardboard on which is scrawled, “I committed suicide with a gun.”

And upfront are some baby sandals with cartoon characters that say, ominously, “We’re doomed.”

These are the shoes of children killed by weapons in California. On Saturday, a couple of hundred pairs were laid out in front of the Los Angeles Children’s Museum in a silent tribute to the young ones who no longer wear them.

The protest, organized by the Violence Prevention Coalition, brought together survivors from all over Southern California who wanted to give voice to their now-silent friends and loved ones.

Carol Ann Taylor came for her son, Willie, who was killed at age 17 after two men opened their coats and strafed a city street with assault weapon fire. The college-bound boy was struck in the back as he struggled to open a screen door.

Later, as he lay in the hospital, Taylor visited him every day on her lunch break.

“The last time I saw him, his eyes were half open and his hands were clasped in prayer,” she said, with tears welling and her voice rising in anger. “He said, ‘Can you close the door?’ I said, ‘Yes, I love you, Willie. I’ll see you later.’

“That’s what guns do!”

Taylor and others at the event complained that the media belittle these violent deaths by simply labeling them “gang killings”--effectively removing the identity and humanity from the victims.

“That was Willie,” she said--the boy she took to Scout meetings, the boy she helped through his asthma attacks, the boy for whom she threw all the birthday parties.

“I listen to my friends at work and they’re setting their kids up in the dorms or going to graduation,” she said. “I don’t want to take away from their joy, but it just makes me sick.”

Now, instead of devoting her time to raising her son, she spends it speaking out for him. She has joined a “silent march” in Washington. She also plans to join one in two weeks, when the coalition will place these shoes on the steps of Bryco Arms in Costa Mesa, a producer of so-called Saturday night special handguns.

The coalition says 669 children were killed with guns in California in 1996, the last year for which statistics are available, and that the rate in Los Angeles County is twice that of the state and three times that of the country. They say legislators wrongly opt for stricter sentencing laws instead of gun control laws, and that the gun lobby and gun manufacturers hide behind the 2nd Amendment to make money.

“I say to the gun lobby, ‘It’s an amendment, not a commandment!’ ” said Joy Turner, rallying the crowd of about 200 people. Turner’s son bled to death after being shot on a sidewalk in Compton in 1989.

“I’m just as angry as the year it happened,” she said. “I’m just as tired as the year it happened. And I’m just as disappointed as the year it happened.”

City Councilman Mike Feuer joined the rally and said the council has recently passed gun control ordinances that include provisions to prohibit guns without trigger locks and magazines of more than 10 rounds. He said the council would visit other local cities promoting the package.

Shortly after he spoke, a girl from Morningside High School in Inglewood took the microphone.

“I’m sad to tell you that I’m 16, and I’ve lost five classmates and I’ve lost three family members,” said Isha Gordon.

She said her cousin was at a party in the Nickerson Gardens housing project when someone knocked on the door. He happened to be the one to open it, she said, and was shot to death.

Sick of the violence and seeing empty chairs in class where her friends and acquaintances once sat, she joined a “peace” club. After the speeches Saturday, she and scores of other youths, mostly from Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, marched away from the shoes, leaving them as silent testimonies.

As the crowd dispersed, Rosie Marie Ceballos stood in front of the shoes with bloodshot, teary eyes. Her 12-year-old daughter’s favorite blue-and-white high-tops sat under a cardboard memorial.

Ceballos said that when she left for work on Feb. 27, her daughter, Vanessa, was to leave for school shortly thereafter. But Vanessa didn’t come home that evening. Police found Vanessa the next day, stabbed to death and hidden in the stairwell of her home.

“I ask myself over and over again, ‘Why?’ ” she said. “I don’t understand.”