About 300 attended the Unity Over Hate Rally — representing a cross-section of the diverse Los Angeles community — all braving the intense August sun to share their support for peace, both locally and across the nation.
The main focus was to commemorate the events of Aug. 10, 1999 in Granada Hills. The families of those wounded that day in the shooting at the North Valley Jewish Community Center, and the family of Joseph Ileto, the Filipino-American postal worker gunned down by the same perpetrator, came up to the podium and tried to bring meaning to their personal tragedies. Alongside the stage stood a poster of Ileto, with his first name used as an acronym for Join Our Struggle [to] Educate [and] Prevent Hate.
Ismael Ileto, Joseph’s brother, gave the morning’s most moving speech, noting that it had been a year of heavy losses for his family.
“It is one thing to [lose] a father from a heart attack. It is another to lose a brother to a senseless attack,” he said. He spoke about Joseph’s always being there to offer a helping hand, of his pride in working for the postal service and his love of chess.
“He was at the right place at the right time, doing what he was supposed to be doing, delivering mail. His killer, on the other hand, was at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong set of moral values.” Ileto urged those assembled to keep pressuring government representatives to pass hate-crime legislation.
Donna Finkelstein, mother of Mindy Finkelstein, the then-16-year-old camp counselor wounded in the JCC attack, told the crowd she would never forget receiving the call from Holy Cross Hospital that day.
“Some Jew-hater had shot at and tried to kill my daughter. I will never understand how anyone could [do this],” she said. “We must never forget that hate crimes exist and must be stopped. Education is the only solution.”
Since the crime, Finkelstein has become active with the Million Mom March organization.
Sunday’s event was organized by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) along with the Anti-Defamation League and other organizations. Sherman is a co-author and major proponent of H.R. 1082, the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 1999, which has been stalled in the House Subcommittee on Crime for more than a year. Rabbi Yitchak Etshalom of L.A.’s Simon Wiesenthal Center gave the invocation and the Rev. Zedar Broadus of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the NAACP gave the benediction.
L.A. Police Chief Bernard Parks, looking thin and drawn, said: “What makes hate crimes such an insidious type of crime is that it affects the entire community. When this man attacked the JCC, he went after our two most precious commodities: our children and our religion.”
With the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, rally organizers had hoped big-name politicians would attend, but received only one out-of-town visitor, Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.). He praised Sherman’s efforts to gain passage of H.R. 1082. Holt, a former arms-control expert for the State Department, spoke of the dual need for hate-crime legislation and tighter gun-control laws.