Acting on the Outrage

It’s different this time.

This time, it happened in front of a high school. This time, it was a teenage girl. This time, the community is really coming together.

So went the optimistic refrain voiced Thursday as a crowd of mourners, activists and politicians gathered to protest the shooting of another young person at the hands of an alleged gang member.

Over and over, participants who had gathered to honor 15-year-old Deliesh Allen-Roberts, who was critically wounded by a stray bullet as she was leaving Locke High School on March 18, tried to give this latest shooting meaning.

Speakers promised to hold onto their outrage over Deliesh’s shooting, though they acknowledged such protests were becoming something of a ritual in South Los Angeles. The community, after all, rallied after 14-year-old Byron Lee was shot 19 times in October; after 13-year-old Jessy Lizaola was killed last June in a drive-by shooting; and when City Councilman Bernard C. Parks’ granddaughter, Lori Gonzalez, was fatally shot five years ago.

“We’ve gathered here way too many times,” said Councilman Martin Ludlow.

“There’s something about this one that made more of us say: ‘This has to stop,’ ” added Councilwoman Janice Hahn. “I think we’re going to come up with a plan this time.... I don’t know, it just feels like we’re going to take action on this one.”

But the heavy history of gang violence left some participants wondering whether the aftermath of Deliesh’s shooting would actually be different. Once the news cameras leave and the politicians move on to other things, will anything change?

“The same thing has been going on for the longest,” said J.S. Smith, a 34-year-old South Los Angeles resident at the protest. “We need to stop it, but we aren’t going to stop it. This stuff [has] been happening since you were little.”

Karla Edward, a substitute teacher at Locke who also attended the protest, was similarly skeptical. “What’s different about this? I don’t really know. Maybe it’s that we’re talking about it,” she said. “I don’t know. What’s different about this time? Well, I’ve never been out here before. That’s different.”

The crowd that gathered at the west gate of Locke High School was relatively small: about 30 demonstrators and an equal number of city officials, activists and reporters. This chagrined organizer Najee Ali, who noted that there was a far larger crowd gathered several weeks ago after the fatal shooting of a teenage motorist, Devin Brown, by police officers.

One man held a banner asking: “Where is the Outrage?” Across the street, a billboard being pulled by a truck proclaimed such crimes “The Black Holocaust.”

The march was supposed to proceed two blocks south from Locke High School to Imperial Highway, but organizers called it off after only a few feet because Deliesh’s aunt and guardian, Nina Roberts, felt ill and was eager to return to the hospital where Allen-Roberts is listed in grave condition with a bullet wound to the head. (Authorities say she was struck by a stray bullet fired by a gang member who is now in custody.)

After a prayer in the middle of the street, the crowd quickly dispersed.

Hahn and Ludlow promised new resources to fight gang violence. Nation of Islam leader Tony Muhammad announced a new commitment to provide security.

Activists such as Earl Ofari Hutchinson and Islamic Hope’s Ali promised to continue to demand accountability from city officials.

“We’re going to hold a candlelight vigil, but we need something else,” Hutchinson said.

There were new suggestions, such as installing cameras in schools, creating traffic zones to close streets around schools and organizing a citywide gang prevention summit.

There were new faces in the crowd, like substitute teacher Edward, who was so concerned that she stayed at the protest site long after others left.

Mike Lansing, a Los Angeles Unified School District board member, promised more school police officers at 30 troubled campuses and more sharing between the school system and local police agencies.

But he was less optimistic that Deliesh’s shooting would be some kind of tipping point against gang violence in South Los Angeles.

“The only way this is going to turn into some kind of movement is if the outrage continues to grow,” he said. “Often we see these things spark up, then die. I don’t think we have any big movement yet. But there are pockets.”

While some community activists demanded help from police and the city, others in attendance called on people in the community to step up. L.A. Unified official Sylvia Rousseau said black men must mentor younger males.

“All of us have to look at ourselves and ask, what more do we need to do?” she said. “I feel like we’re a community that has forgotten to love our children.”

Father Greg Boyle, founder of the Homeboy Industries gang intervention program in Boyle Heights, didn’t attend the march. But over the years, he has been one of the city’s most passionate voices against gang violence.

Boyle said community outcry after such periodic tragedies could sometimes seem repetitive and hopeless.

But after 20 years of gang prevention work, he said he still had faith in the redemptive quality of communal outrage.

“There are so many deaths that have momentarily galvanized the community,” Boyle said. “You always hope that out of this unspeakable thing can come new insight, new resolve. That’s not without precedent. Every tragic moment holds another moment where people might embrace a strategy that might actually work.”

Boyle said progress against gang violence is usually slow and incremental.

He noted that public awareness of street gangs had increased, as had multi-agency approaches to the problem. He also said homicide rates had declined from peak levels in the early 1990s.

“For me it’s not about success. It’s about fidelity. If you stay faithful to approaches you know work, and have confidence, pretty soon that becomes contagious,” he said. “And soon the gang problem dissipates and is gone.”