Slain Man’s Family Marches for Hate Crimes Law

The family of slain postal worker Joseph Ileto led about 30 people Wednesday in a march along Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles to ask lawmakers to pass the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which is stalled in Congress.

“This is the type of action we need across America to educate people,” said the victim’s brother, Ismael Ileto, 36, of Chino Hills. “We are all different people, but we should be able to stand together.”

The group began south of USC and marched several blocks to a post office where a prayer was said for Ileto, a Filipino American who was shot nine times on a route in Chatsworth last week, allegedly by white supremacist Buford O. Furrow Jr. The shooting occurred about an hour after Furrow allegedly walked into the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills and opened fire, striking three children and two staff members.

Saying that hate crimes against all people should be treated equally, Ileto charged that his brother’s death went largely ignored by the media and public officials until it was connected to the shooting at the community center, where no one died.

“My brother lost his life, and it seems like there was no focus because he was Filipino American,” Ileto said. “President Clinton did not acknowledge my brother at all.”

Ileto said he was delighted that other ethnic groups came to support his family, including African American activists and representatives of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The event was organized by Najee Ali, executive director of Project Islamic Hope, and Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a writer and radio host.

In front of the post office, Hutchinson left flowers for Joseph Ileto and called for the Los Angeles mayor, City Council and County Board of supervisors to sign a resolution in support of the hate crimes bill. The legislation, which would allocate more funds to combat hate crimes and would increase sentences for them, passed in the Senate but is stalled in the House Judiciary Committee.

“We have certainly seen, with the family of Joseph Ileto, the pain and suffering that hate violence can bring on,” Hutchinson said.

The marchers called for educators to teach tolerance and the virtues of diversity, and asked for the sheriff’s and police departments to step up their hate crime task forces.

Ali said the march was held in South-Central L.A. because violence there is a daily concern, and Latinos, African Americans and Asian Americans occasionally clash over cultural differences.

“I was shot because I had a different color shirt on,” said Ali, showing scars on his arms from a long-ago gang shooting. Ali is a former gang member and an increasingly prominent activist who was the spokesman for the mother of Sherice Iverson, the 7-year-old girl killed in a Nevada casino.

After stopping at the post office, some marchers continued down Jefferson Boulevard to the Hillel Jewish Center for another prayer. Isabelle Gunning, a law professor at Southwestern University, said she joined the rally because it brought together groups that often are victims of hate crimes.

“It’s an attempt to bring the different targets together,” she said, “instead of standing alone and being picked off one at a time, and breathing a sigh and saying, ‘Thank God it wasn’t us.’

“It’s always all of us.”