Students Seek Lessons of Peace in Tragedy

School and community groups around Southern California on Thursday marked the first anniversary of the Columbine High massacre, joining a nationwide effort to increase peace among youths.

To the drumbeat of the Compton High School marching band, hundreds of students flocked with community leaders to a youth peace rally designed to prevent violence.

Holding signs proclaiming “Peace Is the Answer” and “Listen to Learn,” more than 400 students packed the Compton Community College gymnasium. From the tiniest elementary school student to the tallest high school senior, they heard a simple message: Anger doesn’t have to lead to violence.

“The majority of young people in the world aren’t violent people. The majority of young people in the world are afraid of violence,” Compton Councilman Amen Rahh told the gathering. “You shouldn’t be a prisoner in your school.”

The message from the rally was carried over into small workshops with such titles as “Be a Peacemaker,” “I’m Peer-Proof” and “Don’t Pick On Me.” The event was organized by the Young Women’s Christian Assn. of Greater Los Angeles and sponsored by the city of Compton and the college.

“This reaches out to kids. It provides hope. It teaches them at a young age to care about others,” said Art Jimenez, 17, a Compton High senior with spiked gold and black hair. “The two kids in Colorado didn’t care. No one reached out to them. They didn’t have this kind of thing.”

As he held a banner nearly as big as he was, 10-year-old Miguel Torres, a Dixon Elementary School student, said he still vividly recalls the television images from Littleton, Colo., of bloody students fleeing Columbine.

“I would have told them that violence wouldn’t make their parents happy,” he said of the two young gunmen.

Too many youngsters today have seen such images, said Elaine Moore, director of community relations for the YWCA. “Unfortunately, they see too much violence in the media, through video games and on the corners where they live,” she said.

In Lancaster, the haunting images of Columbine were on the minds of 650 students at Challenger Middle School. In concert with the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance, they held an “Increase the Peace Day” to remember those killed in Colorado.

Students told their parents, friends and the media that they do not want to be remembered as the generation of youths “who don’t care” and “act violently.”

The Columbine assailants, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were believed to have attacked on Adolf Hitler’s birthday as a tribute to him. This was very much on the minds of the Lancaster students and teachers.

“We decided that April 20 cannot go down in history as Hitler’s birthday,” said Bruce Galler, an eighth-grade teacher and event coordinator. “Instead, it should be a day of positive energy, a day to help people in Colorado heal.”

Challenger students heard from a man who once hailed Hitler as a hero: T.J. Leyden, a former neo-Nazi skinhead who is a consultant for the Wiesenthal Center on battling hatemongers. He encouraged students to accept one another and make friends with people of different ethnic groups.

Galler said events like the ones Thursday are needed to counter the unfair reputation the Antelope Valley has as an unsafe place. “We have our problems like anywhere else, but we have more students that care and want to make a difference,” he said.

A group of Lancaster students will leave today for Littleton to hand the family of Dave Sanders, the teacher killed at Columbine, a pledge to campaign for making April 20 an official Peace Day. They also plan to take their campaign to Congress, said Galler, adding: “We want to deliver a message of hope and honor.”

Compton High School senior Jose Perez, 17, supports such a notion. “They should spend this day in every city each year celebrating peace,” he said.

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Times staff writer H.G. Reza contributed to this story.