Hate Crime Victims’ Kin Meet Clinton

President Clinton met with relatives of the victims of last year’s Jewish Community Center shootings Friday at the White House, and pledged to work “until the last day” of his presidency on getting federal hate crime legislation passed, the relatives said.

“It was very encouraging and uplifting to hear that he is going to be fighting for this bill very strongly,” said Ismael Ileto of Chino Hills, the brother of Joseph Ileto, a Filipino American postal worker who was shot to death, allegedly by white supremacist Buford O. Furrow Jr. Furrow also is charged with the attack the same day in August on the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills.

If passed, the Hate Crimes Prevention Act would give local law enforcement agencies access to federal resources such as the FBI crime lab. It would allow the federal government to prosecute a hate crime if local law enforcement is unable to do so, said David Smith, of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

Others at the meeting included relatives of Matthew Shepherd, a gay college student from Wyoming who was beaten to death, and the family of James Byrd, an African American man from Jasper, Texas, who was dragged to death behind a pickup truck.

Eleanor Kadish, whose son Benjamin, now 6, was the most seriously injured child in the Jewish center attack, said, “It was nice to be together, but it was somewhat sad to see that we are all together because of hatred in the world. It would have been nicer to be together under better circumstances.”

The highlight of the meeting for Benjamin Kadish was meeting Buddy, the president’s Labrador retriever. “I asked him if I could see his dog and he brought him in,” Benjamin said.

Friday’s meeting came just hours after another apparently racially motivated rampage, in which authorities said a white man shot and killed five people and wounded a sixth in suburban Pittsburgh. Two of the dead were Asian, two were Indian and the fifth was African American. A Jewish woman found dead at her home nearby was also believed to be a victim of the gunman, who was in custody late Friday, police said.

The Kadishes and the other families are in Washington this weekend for Equality Rocks, a concert being sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation today at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium. On Sunday they will speak on the importance of passing federal hate crime legislation at the Millennium March on Washington, an event advocating gay rights.

Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the foundation, who attended the meeting, said Clinton “reiterated his very driven, strong commitment” to the legislation.

“I think it meant a lot to be surrounded by all these families, all with different stories, but at the same time their grief is the same.”

In public appearances recently, both Clinton and Vice President Al Gore have spoken out against hate crimes, and have pressed for stricter controls on handguns.

Earlier in the day, Clinton traveled to the District of Columbia’s police training school and offered his support for a federally assisted program that pays people to turn weapons over to local police.

Last year, the program took 3,000 handguns off the street, Clinton said.

“Every one of the guns taken out of circulation could mean one less crime, one less tragedy, one more child’s life saved,” the president said.

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Times staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.