Meeting Aims to Quell Glendale’s Ethnic Strife

As three Armenian American teenagers await trial in the stabbing death of a Latino youth, a coalition of city and nonprofit agencies is sponsoring a conference to quell ethnic tensions that led to the slaying outside a middle school.

The Planting Seeds of Peace Summit was conceived by two community activists and a police sergeant on the night 17-year-old Raul Aguirre died. The meeting will take place at 9 a.m. Saturday at the Glendale Community College Auditorium and will address issues such as youth violence and cultural conflict--particularly between Armenians and Latinos, two of Glendale’s largest and newest ethnic groups.

Long after the ambulance carried Aguirre’s body away May 5, hundreds of teenagers huddled around the stained sidewalk outside Toll Middle School throughout the afternoon and into the night. Once news broke that Aguirre’s heart had failed, several Latino boys started shouting Armenian names, making accusations and swearing vengeance. Those shrill voices woke youth activist Linda Maxwell.

“There was all this rage between the races--Armenian and Latinos,” said Maxwell, who along with Jose Quintarar runs We Care for Youth, a nonprofit organization that helped plan the summit. “So I asked them if their anger was any different than the rage that killed Raul. They settled down after that.”

Aguirre was standing in front of Hoover High School when he was attacked as he tried to break up a scuffle between two Armenian boys and a Latino youth. The fight at some point moved across the street to the middle school.

Rafael Gevorgyan, 15, allegedly clubbed Aguirre in the face with a tire iron, and Karen Terteryan, a boy who was 17 at the time, is accused of stabbing Aguirre with a knife. Anait Msyran, 14, allegedly drove the pair to the scene and tried to help her boyfriend, Terteryan, escape afterward. All three have been charged with murder.

As they watched the teenagers trying to make sense of the tragedy, Maxwell, Quintarar and Glendale Police Sgt. Rick Young started talking about how to prevent such violence.

More than 400 city residents have signed up to attend Saturday’s meeting, and organizers say participants will form a new community advisory committee to promote intercultural unity in Glendale.

But even some event planners acknowledged that they had gone down the road of reconciliation many times before, only to find themselves stuck in an intercultural dead end.

After a spate of hate crimes in the mid-1990s, including the defacing of an Armenian store, a church and the city’s only synagogue, then-Mayor Eileen Givens formed the Glendale Human Relations Coalition.

Now many say the coalition, which sponsors monthly community discussions and an annual art contest “to celebrate diversity,” has lost much of its relevance. After a flurry of activity and a series of well-attended meetings during its first year, interest waned, said Susan Hunt, a coalition member and a Glendale school official.

Glendale’s history of racial conflict goes back to the 1960s, when the city was almost entirely white and a haven for a vocal group of neo-Nazis. Since then it has become a polyglot city of 60 languages and 200,000 people--30% Armenian, 25% Latino, 25% other white ethnicities and 16% Asian. But despite its recent problems, Glendale is also among the safest cities of its size.

“There are tensions in our community, but we have accepted these changes far better than most communities,” said City Councilman and Human Relations Coalition Chairman Sheldon Baker.

Arten Manoukian, chairman of the local chapter of the Armenian National Committee, acknowledged some tensions between Latinos and Armenians but said they were limited to youths.

“I think he’s wrong,” said Anush Orudzhyan, a 17-year-old Glendale High School student who said she will not attend the summit. “Most Armenian parents try to influence their kids to be with Armenians. We have this thing where you have to stay with your race.”

Kimberly Escalante, a 13-year-old Hoover High freshman who plans to attend the summit, said she talks to Armenians in class but doesn’t consider them friends. “They think they’re better--but only one can be better, and that’s us.”