Protests Take Aim at Guns

Petra Zavala grimaced in pain when she heard her daughter’s name.

Jessica Zavala was one of 143 children who died last year from gunshots in Los Angeles County. Her name, along with 142 others, was read Sunday to a hushed and tearful crowd of about 2,000 at the Million Mom March at the Westwood Federal Building.

“My heart hurts,” said Zavala, clutching her chest with one hand, while in the other she held aloft a picture of her 15-year-old daughter, dressed up for her quinceanera party--a few days before her death in Lynwood last June.

The Westwood march was one of two anti-gun rallies and one pro-gun protest held on Mother’s Day in Los Angeles.

Across town, Carolyn Macias joined about 5,000 others who marched toward Union Station in the afternoon anti-gun demonstration. Macias held a picture of another young woman, Teresa Del Rio, a 20-year-old college student gunned down on a Sunday afternoon last June while taking friends home from an outing.

“We are marching for all the children, whether we know them or not,” said Macias, gesturing to her grandson. “I am marching for all the babies on memorial posters that you see around me, and I am marching so that baby will grow up in a different world.”

The two anti-gun marches originally started out as one massive event, but the groups separated after a dispute erupted over where to hold the event. The Westwood march drew the third protest led by a pro-gun group called the Second Amendment Sisters. Police said that all three marches were peaceful and no arrests were made.

Ann Reiss Lane of Women Against Gun Violence, which organized the morning march, said her group chose the Federal Building because it is traditionally a site of protest in Los Angeles.

Victoria Ballesteros and Dawn Sinko, who organized the afternoon anti-gun march at Union Station, said they chose that site because it symbolizes the birthplace of Los Angeles and is close to minority neighborhoods most affected by gun violence.

Although there were subtle differences, many participants went to both events and the moods were the same, marked by cheering, singing and weeping. Many hugged their children and many begged their youngsters to hold on just a little longer; the walk was almost done, and then they could go home. Almost all signed petitions calling on Congress to enact stricter gun control laws.

Organizers of both events said they were surprised and pleased at the turnout, which they said was massive for Los Angeles, which historically has had trouble drawing large numbers of people to such events.

“We are an army without guns,” Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), a candidate for mayor, told the downtown crowd. “And we will win this battle.”

Many Los Angeles mothers stressed that, though the march in Washington was the main event, the impetus for the Million Mom March was born from a local tragedy that gripped the nation and inspired a New Jersey mother to launch the movement. That was the day last August when a gun-toting white supremacist allegedly attacked the North Valley Jewish Community Center. He is accused of wounding four, then driving a few miles away and shooting and killing a Filipino American postal worker, Joseph Ileto.

Ileto’s mother, Lillian, came with about 10 of his relatives to the downtown march, calling the event “part of my healing process.”

“My son was shot, not once, not twice, but repeatedly. Nine times,” she told the crowd. “I am asking you to reach out and to let your children know that we are all equal. Help our children to be tolerant of each other . . . and let them know that gun violence has no place.”

At the morning march, about 650 Second Amendment Sisters, protesters opposed to additional gun controls, assembled across Wilshire Boulevard from the protest at the Federal Building. Their effort was coordinated by a local National Rifle Assn. chapter.

Facing each other like two opposing armies, the two groups waved signs and chanted familiar mantras in the years-long debate.

“Guns kill babies,” women from the anti-gun crowd shouted.

“Guns don’t kill people. People kill people,” the other side retorted.

Watching the anti-gun marchers as she took a drag on her cigarette, Anne Terrell, 52, called them “A million misguided moms.”

The Santa Monica resident joined the Second Amendment Sisters to tell how a gun once saved her life.

It happened in Mexico more than 30 years ago, while she was being raped and beaten by a man twice her size, she said.

“He was wearing a shoulder holster,” Terrell recalled. “I noticed it, pulled his gun on him and put it to his forehead. He ran away.”

Her story echoed the fears of many of the Second Amendment Sisters at the demonstration. Many said they bought their guns to protect themselves while their husbands were away, or because of increased neighborhood crime.

But across the street, anti-gun advocate Lauren McMahon offered a different point of view.

“Those people think guns are OK,” she said to her son Jasper, gesturing to the demonstration across from the Federal Building. “We don’t think that, do we honey?”