Summit Planned to Ease Ethnic Tensions

Four months after a Latino youth was stabbed to death, allegedly by three Armenian American teenagers, a coalition of city and nonprofit agencies is sponsoring a conference to quell ethnic tensions that led to the May slaying outside a middle school.

The Planting Seeds of Peace Summit was conceived by two community activists and a police sergeant 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 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 took Raul’s body away May 5, hundreds of teenagers huddled around the stained sidewalk at Toll Middle School throughout the afternoon and into the night.

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Once news broke that Raul was dead, several Latino boys started shouting Armenian names into the night, making accusations and swearing vengeance. Those shrill voices woke youth activist Linda Maxwell from her grief.

“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.”

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. After all, two months earlier, an Armenian boy had been killed, that time by other Armenians.

The trio decided to convene a meeting, but they knew that they would have to go beyond “the choir,” as Young calls them.

On May 30, Glendale’s local elected officials, including City Council members, Glendale Community College trustees and Glendale Unified School District board members held an unprecedented joint meeting to express outrage over Raul’s death.

But that wasn’t enough, said Young, who told Glendale’s various nonprofit, business and occupational organizations: “Send your presidents, but send us three or four real people we’ve never seen before, too.”

More than 400 residents have signed up to attend Saturday’s meeting, and organizers say participants will form a new community advisory committee devoted to promoting 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 in an intercultural cul-de-sac.

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

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 in its first year, said Susan Hunt, a coalition member and Glendale school official, “interest waned.”

Others said the group focused too narrowly on the most obvious manifestation of ethnic strife--hate crimes--while neglecting the roots of intolerance. Maxwell warned that “This effort will be no different than the others” if city officials become complacent once again.

Glendale’s history of racial conflict stretches back to the 1960s when the city was almost entirely white and was a haven for a vocal group of Nazis.

Since then, Glendale has become a polyglot city of 60 languages and 200,000 people--about 30% Armenian, 25% Latino, 25% white and 16% Asian. And 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 Sheldon Baker, Human Relations Coalition chairman.

Arten Manoukian, chairman of the local chapter of the Armenian National Committee advocacy group, acknowledged that there are some tensions, but only among young Latinos and Armenians.

“We don’t see any problem among the older people,” said Manoukian, who called Saturday’s meeting a “youth summit.” “If you go over police records, you don’t see clashes or problems between older Armenians and Latinos.”

“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.”

Some Glendale community leaders say clashes between older Armenians and Latinos are less frequent because they have segregated their lives so completely--unlike their children, who often attend the same public schools.

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Many older Armenians and Latinos do not even speak a common language, further complicating efforts to bridge their differences.

Maria Rochart, executive director of the New Horizons Family Center, complained that even some of Glendale’s most established nonprofit agencies segregate themselves along racial lines, such as Catholic Charities, which caters mostly to Latinos in Glendale, and the Armenian Relief Society, which serves Armenians and people of Middle Eastern descent almost exclusively.

“The kids are a product of adults, and the adults don’t even work together,” Rochart said.

But even in schools, Armenians and Latinos divide into their various ethnic groups.

“From my perspective, there isn’t any problem; they do their thing and we do ours,” Anush said.

Kimberly Escalante, a 13-year-old Hoover High freshman, said she talks to Armenians but does not consider them friends.

“I talk to them in class, but I wouldn’t kick it with them during lunch or something,” said Kimberly, who plans to attend the summit. “They think they’re better--but only one can be better, and that’s us.”