Rift Over Locations Yields 2 Anti-Gun Protest Marches

While Sunday’s Million Mom Marches around the country are supposed to unify women behind gun control, cross-town debates in Los Angeles about ethnic differences and the event’s location have resulted in two local demonstrations, one in Westwood and one downtown.

Of the more than 65 cities in the nation holding Million Mom events, Los Angeles will be the only one fielding two such demonstrations on the same day, according to planners in Washington.

There wasn’t supposed to be a Westside-Eastside split in Los Angeles, especially since the idea for the event grew out of last August’s shootings at the North Valley Jewish Community Center. In that incident and its aftermath, one person was killed and five others were wounded in what police say was a white supremacist’s rampage.

At first, Los Angeles march organizers worked together, planning one big Mother’s Day event to coordinate with events around the country. But then arguments erupted about whether to hold it downtown near minority neighborhoods most affected by gun violence or near the site of many other historic protests, in front of the federal building in affluent Westwood. Accusations and denials of elitism and racism flew back and forth, both sides recall.

Now, there will be a morning march on the Westside and an afternoon one in the area of Union Station and Olvera Street downtown.

Though recently they have tried to coordinate the two events, some organizers wonder how they are going to change society’s attitude toward guns if they can’t even get along with one another.

“We can’t solve all the problems of this fractured city. What we’re trying to do is deal with the issue of gun violence,” said Ann Reiss Lane, head of Women Against Gun Violence, a 7-year-old group that originally led Los Angeles’ march but in January started planning a separate march on the Westside.

Victoria Ballesteros, one of the organizers of the Olvera Street march, said she and many of her co-organizers were deeply offended by the thought of a Westwood march.

“I don’t know how any organization that wants to make a difference on this issue can at the same time say: ‘We don’t want to work with communities of color,’ ” said Ballesteros. “And that’s essentially what they are saying when they say they don’t want to go east.”

After considering several locations, including the North Valley Jewish Community Center, the site committee for the Southern California Regional Million Mom March voted Dec. 13 to hold the march downtown, said co-chairwoman Dawn Sinko.

“I am a white, Westside mom, but we are really aware that this issue has been going on in communities of color for a really long time,” Sinko said. “We chose Olvera Street because it serves people from five different counties of Southern California, and it’s the birthplace of L.A., and that’s very much in keeping with our theme of birth and motherhood.”

Women Against Gun Violence decided to hold another event in part because many expected participants who live in the San Fernando Valley and on the Westside are unfamiliar with downtown and afraid to venture there, Lane said.

“There are some women who think that everything east of La Cienega is as crime-ridden as the Rampart Division,” she said. And for other women, making the long trek downtown on Mother’s Day is simply too much trouble. The Federal Building in Westwood, situated at the busiest intersection in the city and traditionally a site of protests, offers a perfect venue, Lane said.

Ballesteros and other downtown organizers charged that a shift to the Westside smacked of racism.

Lane said she was “deeply hurt” by those charges and strongly denied them.

Women Against Gun Violence has African American women on its board of directors, has Latina members and works in minority communities, said Lane, a longtime political activist and former member of the Los Angeles Police Commission.

White women who live in Pasadena may find it more convenient to march downtown, while Latino women from Santa Monica will probably find it is easier to head to Westwood, added Lane, a Hancock Park resident.

“We live in a vast area of 10 million people . . . a city divided, where people live in enclaves,” Lane said. “I see this as an opportunity for as many people as possible to participate, by giving them two locations at two different times.”

The Westwood march will begin at 9:30 a.m. with a rally. Politicians and celebrities, including Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, school board President Genethia Hayes and first lady of California Sharon Davis, will read the names of Los Angeles-area children who died of gunshot wounds in 1999 as children place flowers on a giant funeral wreath.

But Ballesteros said the idea of having two marches is “sad and ridiculous.”

A homemaker who lives in the Los Feliz area and has a 1-year-old son, Ballesteros went to planning meetings and immediately felt that Latinas were not as well represented as white and African American women.

She began a campaign to draw them in, faxing Spanish-language radio and television stations and visiting churches and grandmothers groups on the Eastside.

This alienated some other planners, said Joy Turner, an African American mother who started working with Women Against Gun Violence after her son Hank was shot to death in 1989.

“It’s not the Westside march, or the downtown march. It’s the Million Moms March,” said Turner, who plans to be at both. “It’s just like a wedding. Everyone’s mad now, but they’ll be overcome and overwhelmed by the life force on Sunday. This is about preventing our babies from dying.”

The downtown march will begin with a rally at 12:30 on Alameda Street across from Union Station. Women will listen to speeches while children can attend a flower-making activity at the nearby Los Angeles Children’s Museum.

Joyce Black, an African American businesswoman who co-founded the pro-gun control group Mothers Advancing Racial Connections in Harmony, which will participate in both demonstrations, said she is confident the tensions will heal.

“We have to understand that in order to solve this problem of gun violence, women have to unite with harmony. Our children are watching.”