United Against Gang Violence

Last weekend’s march against violence in the San Fernando Valley was a stirring reminder of what a community can do when it pulls together.

More than 300 parents, kids, community activists and city and county officials took to the streets in Pacoima in a call to keep those streets safer this summer, when gang violence typically escalates. Doris Castaneda, one of the marchers, eloquently expressed the crowd’s sentiments: “We don’t want violence any more, especially we as mothers,” she told a reporter, “because it’s during the summer that we suffer the most looking for our sons at night.”

Castaneda’s words bring to mind the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who, with white kerchiefs tied around their heads, marched day after day in the plaza in front of the presidential palace in Buenos Aires protesting the disappearances of their sons and daughters in Argentina’s “dirty war.” The mothers seemed frighteningly small in the face of the military dictatorship, but the worldwide power of their message eventually brought the government down.

The violence that these Valley mothers fear is of course quite different from the government campaign in Argentina. But gang violence can be just as deadly. By herself, a mother from the barrio, waiting alone in the night, worrying that her son has disappeared, is frighteningly small. But en masse, mothers and others begin to have a presence that has been shown to stop wars. To stand up and say “enough,” in public, over and over, is no mere symbol.