Ritual Column
By Frank J. Gruber
Three weeks ago I was writing about my frying pans -- the news in Santa
Monica was that slow. I said that history had come to a halt. I took
some time off. Now with another young man -- 20-year-old Miguel Martin
-- murdered on Pico Boulevard, what am I supposed to write -- that everyone
loved my latkes?
But history does seem stuck. In a rut. For 25 years or so, young men
have been killing other young men (and children) in Santa Monica. People
always remark how much Santa Monica has changed, but you know about
the more things changing.
Our post-Renaissance, post-Enlightenment civilization is supposed to
be characterized by rationality, but here in Santa Monica when confronted
with mindless violence, what we see are rituals. The candles and the
photos at the murder site. The grim statements by public officials --
Chief of Police, City Manager, Mayor. The even grimmer statements by
community activists who say no one cares. The car wash to raise money
for the family. The marches and the vigils.
Not to mention the tried and true ancient rituals -- the masses and
the funeral.
And there are the news articles, the interviews with bereft loved ones,
and the column. Yeah, include me. Writing a column after a gang murder
is ritual for me now, too. I've been doing it for six years; for six
years I've been writing that gang violence -- not homelessness, not
traffic, not parking, not development -- is Santa Monica's biggest problem.
Maybe I'm guilty of special pleading. I am the father of an 11th-grader
at Samo who has olive skin, and it's more than annoying, given the popular
conceptions of Santa Monica as leafy suburb or sleepy beach town, to
have to tell him not to wear a hooded sweatshirt and to be careful when
he's on Pico or crossing Lincoln Boulevard at night coming home from
visiting friends.
Rituals serve many functions, but they don't solve social problems,
at least not by themselves. Yet I am not so cynical that I can't admit
that recently some of the response to gang killing has gone beyond ritual.
Over the past two years the City of Santa Monica, with help from our
State Senator, Sheila Kuehl, has turned much more of its attention to
gang violence. The City Council declared two years ago that ending gang
violence was the City's highest priority, and the City and Senator Kuehl
sponsored a series of conferences in attempt to formulate a comprehensive
strategy against gangs.
You could call these efforts ritual, too, but they considerably exceeded
previous rhetorical responses to violence in their scope and in the
concreteness of the proposals that emerged from them. Various stakeholders
in the community, both public and private, have committed themselves
to various efforts both to head off gang activity and deal with the
roots of the alienation that gangs represent.
But these efforts haven't solved the problem either. Not that any actions
could on the short term, but the murder of fifteen-year-old Samohi 10th-grader
Eddie Lopez was the most shocking event of 2006, and after that there
were intermittent non-fatal shootings all year leading up to Miguel
Martin's murder two weeks ago.
It has always seemed to me that there are three dimensions to solving
gang violence -- crime control, social and economic development, and
community ethos.
Crime control -- i.e., police work -- is the most obvious solution
to crime, but also the most limited. It is essential to catch murderers,
not only to mete out justice, but also to forestall gangs from taking
their own revenge. But it is folly to believe that with the vast numbers
of potential gang killers in the region, the police can prevent gang
murders. Not only that, but police always have to walk a fine tactical
line between catching criminals and alienating law-abiding residents.
Social and economic development, which includes education, is the long-term
solution -- but I emphasize "long-term." Street gangs are
an old story in American cities, and since the Irish arrived in the
1840s poor young immigrants have formed them. Usually, by the second
generation, gangs are not a big factor among the young (although we
are all aware how in some circumstances street gangs evolved into organized
crime).
Most of the "solutions" proposed at the City's anti-gang
conferences involve social and economic development. While the schools
and the City's social service providers can and should target children
who are at risk of falling into gangs, if they miss even a few, gangs
will continue to recruit enough new members to continue the violence.
School Board Member Oscar de la Torre, who founded the Pico Youth and
Family Center and who knows the gang scene, has said that in all of
Santa Monica there are only a handful -- perhaps half a dozen -- violent
gang members. These are typically young men with layers of issues --
alcohol and drug addiction, lack of education, criminal records, unemployability
-- that are difficult for social service providers to penetrate. It
only takes a few of them, however, to both wreak havoc and attract violence.
The third dimension to solving gang violence is for the community within
which the gangs operate to create an ethos that does not tolerate gangs.
This is not easy to do within a bigger popular culture that celebrates
violence, money, and even criminality itself. It is also not easy for
immigrant or impoverished communities to reject their own.
However, it is essential. There are gang members in Santa Monica who
are doing something -- something that is never reported on within Santa
Monica or disclosed by the police -- that attracts gangsters from outside
who come into Santa Monica and shoot at young Latino and black men.
(Whether the victims are gang members is not the issue.) Santa Monica
police, educators, businesses, social service providers, clergy, politicians
etc., can do little or nothing to stop this.
It's up to the community itself not to tolerate gangs and the gang
life.
What I'm talking about was summed up by a statement Miguel Martin's
half-sister, Marlyn Martin, made to Lookout reporter Olin Erickson
at a vigil for Miguel: "There's a lot of opportunities out there
and I think there's a lot of guys who just go around and hang out, and
I think they should just try to become better people."
Gang members by their nature are not going to respond to admonitions
from those they distrust -- only from those they love.
Notices:
The Santa Monica Public Library and the City of Santa Monica's Environmental
Programs Division are sponsoring four "Green Prizes for Sustainable
Literature." The purpose is to encourage and commend authors, illustrators,
and publishers who produce quality books for adults and young people
that make significant contributions to, support the ideas of, and broaden
public awareness of sustainability. Entries are due April 30. For details,
here's the link: http://www.smpl.org/greenprize.htm.
The agenda
for the City Council meeting Tuesday evening is one of those impossible
documents that make me wonder if the Council just does, or tries to
do, too much. On the Council's plate that night are the following major
items, all of which deserve serious deliberation and any one of which
could easily consume hours of meeting time:
(i) an update on homeless services and a study session on the evaluation
of the City's continuum of care and strategic five-year plan for the
homeless;
(ii) an appeal of a Planning Commission approval;
(iii) first reading of a controversial ordinance that would exempt
certain affordable apartment buildings from development review;
(iv) a discussion of the financial forecast for the next five years
and budget priorities for the next fiscal year; and
(v) last but not least, a staff proposal to build a "temporary"
municipal office building -- that might stand for 20 years -- between
City Hall and the Public Safety Building.
History has started up again with a vengeance.
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