Peace walks will continue
When Lucille Powell walked through her Pico neighborhood Saturday night, she did so not only to reclaim it but also to remember her son who was a victim of senseless violence.
Powell’s son, Kenneth, was killed in Culver City 12 years ago during a drive-by shooting. He wasn’t in a gang, but the friends he was visiting were.
That’s why Powell joined about 20 others from The First A.M.E. Church by the Sea, St. Anne’s Catholic Church and various community members to walk in a procession through the Pico neighborhood to help suppress violence there.
“(The violence) shouldn’t have ever been allowed to get to this level,” she said.
The eight-square block area — which runs north of the Santa Monica Freeway to Santa Monica Boulevard, south to Pico Boulevard and east from Lincoln Boulevard to Centinela Boulevard — has historically been the center of Santa Monica’s violent crime and drug dealing.
The neighborhood also has been engulfed in a turf war between two rival gangs — the Graveyard Crips and the Santa Monica 17th Street gang. The tension appears to be not only racially motivated between the two groups — one black, the other Latino — but also territorial.
So it was symbolic that Rev. Ronald Williams, from the predominantly black congregation of the First A.M.E church, and Father Mike Guitterez of St. Anne’s — a renown Hispanic leader — joined hands to help end the area’s violence.
The two leaders will bring groups of their congregations together on a weekly basis to randomly walk through the Pico neighborhood. They hope the walks will help reconnect their churches with the community, as well as help suppress the violence.
As the group walked along some of the cracked and upturned sidewalks of the neighborhood, many residents waved from their front lawns and windows. A few even joined in.
“(The violence) should never have been allowed to get to this level.” — — LUCILLE POWELL Pico resident
6C8,“It felt good to do this,” said Doug Willis, a 25-year Pico resident. “We talked to people; several people asked what we were doing and came along.
“Many of us live in this community and take great pride in where we live, and we need to make that presence known.”
At the corner of 17th Street and Delaware, the site of many shootings, the group paused to join hands and say a prayer for peace. Their voices echoed off the surrounding homes, where many residents pulled back their blinds to watch the commotion.
Joining arms, Williams and Guitterez led the procession down the cul-de-sac on 20th Street — where two teen-agers were recently caught in the crossfire of a gang-related incident — before heading back to the church.
On the corner of 21st Street and Delaware Street, a young man approached Powell and asked her what the group was doing. When she told him, he responded by saying he had been struck by a bullet after he was caught in the middle of a shooting a few years ago.
She urged the young man to join the group and walk with them. But he declined and told her to catch up with the group.
“It’s for people like him that we walked,” Powell said. “I definitely think this will work. I have faith this will work.”
While the event was organized by the two churches, the object wasn’t to proselytize or preach. It was to make their presence felt.
“The church is present; it has been present to what is going on,” said Guitterez. “We are here for a purpose and bringing the community together like this is part of the gospel message.”
Mayor Mike Feinstein and Mayor Pro Tem Kevin McKeown, along with a few potential city council candidates and Santa Monica High School’s newly elected student body president marched as well.
11C,“Peace becomes possible when fellowship is forged face-to-face, like we did it tonight,” McKeown said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 3, 2002. Read the original PDF.