Families deserve more than a moratorium

Earl Ofari Hutchinson argued in favor of the notion of a 40-hour moratorium on murder in his Blowback, “Saving lives isn’t silliness.” He and other activists who promoted it seem indignant that their concept, approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and passed with revisions by the Los Angeles City Council, was dubbed “silliness” by its critics. Although it was wrapped in remembrances of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. 40 years ago and was an amorphous tribute to peace and nonviolence, the self-described symbolic measure was exactly what communities laboring under the weight of senseless violence did not need -- more feel-good, hollow gestures.

As the former executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization founded by King in 1957, I am intimately familiar with this great man’s desire to work toward a nation free from senseless violence and discrimination. It insults the memory of King to have some assert, as they did in defense of the failed and flawed gesture, that a 40-hour symbolic measure, in the midst of a horrific jump in gang homicide and violence, is something King would have embraced.

While he was a prophetic and visionary figure, King was a practical man, grounded in the necessity of pursuing strategic and tactical efforts that were designed to achieve quantifiable results. The many civil rights campaigns initiated by him and other civil rights greats of that era were never designed to be “symbolic.” The various targets of boycotts, demonstrations or marches were always concrete building blocks that edged the movement toward its lofty goals. Asking gang thugs not to kill each other -- or us -- over a 40-hour span is something I will speculate that King would have sniffed at as unworthy of valuable organizing time and staff.

During the first 12 hours of the moratorium, activists issued a news release saying that the gesture was working. They said there had been no reported homicides, claiming therefore that the measure they had forced on local elected officials was saving lives. However, veteran Los Angeles Police Department homicide detectives know those periods of relative calm are not unknown or unusual. The breaks in violence take place at random, without the benefit of an official resolution banning killing. Apparently overlooked by the moratorium’s backers is the obvious: It is already against the law, as well as thousands of years of morality, to engage in the kinds of mayhem and murder regularly visited on communities by urban terrorists. These thugs routinely ignore such laws. What made anyone believe that gang members, steeped in a culture of violence, would stop to pay respect to King by laying down their weapons until the 41st hour of the moratorium had passed?

Predictably, police reports soon showed the “silliness” of the effort. In separate incidents -- one believed to be gang-related -- two men were shot and killed in South Los Angeles. This was followed by another fatal shooting in Monterey Park and several nonfatal shootings in various parts of the city. Was anyone really surprised by this? After all, the resolution voted on by City Council members, in response to the activists’ proposal, was completely toothless. It called for a symbolic 40-hour period to “promote peace, justice and nonviolence and build a dialogue and awareness of the root causes of violence and killing in our communities.” Did any of the City Council members actually believe that members of the Grape Street Crips, Rollin’ 60s Crips, Mara Salvatrucha or the 18th Street gang would stroll into a dialogue on peace and nonviolence?

Along with many others grieving over the loss of a family member to urban terrorism, Jamiel and Anita Shaw deserved better from the city and county’s elected leaders. Jamiel and Anita are the parents of Jamiel Shaw II, allegedly shot down by an illegal immigrant and member of the 18th Street gang who had recently been released from jail. Families struggling to come to grips with this kind of senselessness need responses from city leaders that at a minimum resemble common sense. Symbolic gestures during times like these do not make sense.

Attesting to the fact that King has callously become a Santa Claus-like figure for all too many, City Councilman Tony Cardenas responded to critics who objected to the useless resolution. Engaging in revisionist history, he argued that dissenters exemplify “the kind of attitude that Martin Luther King had to step over and across to get the job done.”

Yet, while Cardenas and others who have defended the 40-hour symbolic moratorium have invoked his name, in 1968, King, speaking about his agenda for nonviolence, argued prophetically that “this is no time for romantic illusions.... This is a time for action.... What is needed is a strategy for change.”

Rather than vote on a meaningless moratorium, maybe the City Council’s time would have been better spent deciding on how to better organize the city’s anti-gang programs, measures that an audit by City Controller Laura Chick found to be fragmented, disorganized and wasteful. For increased efficiency and effectiveness, she recommended that these programs be centralized under the control of the mayor’s office. Apparently wanting to maintain control over the lucrative contracts related to spending on gang and youth programs, Cardenas, chairman of the city’s ad hoc Committee on Gang Violence, has vigorously fought measures to centralize and rationalize the programs. This is the same Cardenas who thinks symbolic moratoriums on gang violence make sense.

The recent 40-hour moratorium passed in some form by both the City Council and County Board of Supervisors makes these bodies appear impotent in the face of rampant gang violence. It has given the appearance of doing something about the problem while actually achieving nothing. The time is past for empty “symbolic” gestures. It’s time for the heavy lifting to begin.

Joe R. Hicks is the vice president of Community Advocates Inc. and a KFI-AM (640) talk radio host.

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