A Monument to Peace
At Compton’s busiest corner--where one can buy cheeseburgers, gas, movie videos, Mexican-style broiled chicken, postage stamps, a city permit or a trip on the Blue Line--a plea for ethnic understanding and peace will join the mix.
City workers are putting the final touches on a 30-foot-high tower, patterned after the Washington Monument, that officials hope will send a signal from Compton Boulevard and Willowbrook Avenue that Compton believes in peace.
The monument, built at an estimated cost of $100,000, is designed to honor the words and deeds of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez. Marble panels next to the structure will feature the words of the two men.
For now, it will be known as the Renaissance Monument, named after the adjacent Renaissance Plaza shopping center, which features an El Pollo Loco chicken outlet, an athletic shoe store, a bank and a newly opened Superior market.
In a town where gang warfare is constant and relations between Latinos and African Americans are difficult, most welcome the monument, which is scheduled to be completed by late February.
“Nobody’s against it,” Shelby Lawson, a security guard, said recently as he kept watch over the Renaissance shopping center’s parking lot. “A lot of people ask me when it’s going to be done.”
Alfredo Durazo, who was waiting for a Blue Line train to take him to his janitor job in downtown Los Angeles, thinks the monument is a good idea because gang violence has long afflicted Compton. “It’s good for the city to promote peace,” he said.
The monument is an odd mixture of design and symbolism. It includes, for example, two columns that aren’t needed to support the main tower. The two columns, which officials say represent the Latino and black communities in Compton, join together at the tower to show that they can come together.
A replica of a bell, with an electronic chime, is set into the side of the main tower. Electronically produced chimes will proclaim the call for peace.
Lights shine from atop the tower. Originally, a beam of light shooting straight into the air, reminiscent of one at the Luxor hotel and casino in Las Vegas, was envisioned. The lights now move like search beams, aiming to show the way to freedom and peace, officials said.
Finally, there are statues of three lions in front of the structure.
The driving force behind the monument is Mayor Omar Bradley, who drew a rough sketch of it during a City Council meeting about three years ago.
Bradley said he was troubled at the time by the shooting death of an elderly Latina who was warmly praised by blacks and others in the neighborhood for helping young people.
“I decided to do something about it,” he said.
Bradley proposed to turn a patch of grass and benches next to the El Pollo Loco into a monument to promote understanding and peace between Latinos, Compton’s new emerging majority, and blacks, who have held political power in the town since the 1960s.
The squabbles, he said, even extend to the area’s gangs.
“Black gangbangers will say, ‘Well, the Latino gangs hit us because we’re black,’ ” the mayor said. “No, they hit you because you’re gangbangers. It has nothing to do with race.
“I want this monument as a reminder of the possibilities of man’s greatness. This is a symbol of who we are and what we stand for.”
Few argue with Bradley’s intentions.
“I think it’s a tremendous gesture,” said the Rev. Jerome Fisher of Little Zion Baptist Church, who was one of the first black ministers in Compton. “The race issue between Hispanics and African Americans or whatever community it happens to be is a cloud that hangs over Compton and over America. In my mind, there should be some kind of neutral ground for uniting each other.”
Others are more suspicious.
Recently, a coalition of some Compton ministers and priests banded together to combat the perceived anti-Latino bias in the city, where no Latino sits on the City Council. They have said Bradley is partly to blame for the problem. With municipal elections coming up in April, the coalition thinks it may be time to vote Bradley out of office.
A closer inspection of the monument turns up some ammunition for anti-Bradley forces. A quote from Bradley, which praises men and women who “manage to live their lives beyond the divide” of disunity, is prominently displayed directly in front of the monument. The quotes from King and Chavez are on either side of Bradley’s.
The mayor is not bothered by the criticism. “I grew up in Compton and I went to school with Latinos,” he said. “We’d go out together.”
For a while, some veterans organizations were put off by the monument because they coveted the spot for a monument honoring local men and women who served in the U.S. military.
“I’m not against it,” Bob Davis, commander of Compton’s VFW Post 5394, said of the Renaissance Monument, “but I think it would be a good site that we can all use.”
Bradley has promised to find an appropriate spot farther south along Willowbrook for a veterans memorial.
Some worry that the monument won’t be noticed at the intersection.
The corner is a congested one because the city’s Civic Center is there. City Hall, the post office, a county courthouse, the library and the old Police Department building now occupied by the Sheriff’s Department are part of the complex.
Also, two shopping centers, the Renaissance and the Compton Town Center, generate additional traffic. Add the bus passengers at the nearby Martin Luther King Jr. Transit Center, rail traffic from the Blue Line and the occasional freight train that rumbles along Willowbrook, and the intersection gets downright noisy and congested.
The mayor isn’t concerned.
“There are [many] Blue Line riders a day who go through here,” he said. “They’ll carry the message to downtown, to Long Beach, to everywhere, that Compton believes in peace.”