A Neighborhood Answers Bigotry With Harmony

Bea Heisser admits she did not know many of her Westminster neighbors before someone burned a cross in her front yard.

On Sunday, the Heisser family joined neighbors in sponsoring the Westminster Harmony Festival in Indian Village Park to give residents of the ethnically diverse community a chance to meet and understand each other.

Shortly after the August cross burning, about 100 people from the neighborhood showed up at the Heisser house for a potluck dinner. It was the neighbors’ way of showing the Heissers that they disapproved of the cross-burning.

But Sunday’s festival was the neighborhood’s way of showing the public that the Heissers’ neighbors will not tolerate acts of bigotry and hatred.

“I am pleased with the festival,” Heisser said. “A lot of people did a lot of work and they’re all volunteers. The community has to come together. The people, we are the community. Many of us don’t know who our neighbors are, and this will help.”

Organizers said the event will be held annually and hope that the idea will catch on in other county communities.

“The success is beyond our expectations,” said festival organizer Mary Ann Gaido of the Orange County Human Relations Commission.

“Right here in this neighborhood you can see (swastikas) and graffiti on the walls. Having the festival at this location is symbolic. These neighbors are standing up and saying they won’t be intimidated by the few people who are promoting racism.”

The grass-roots project, organized by about 80 residents and church members, was prompted by several incidents that residents believe were racially motivated, including the cross-burning and a Latino man’s fatal shooting by a police officer.

Residents also said swastikas have been painted on their property and the doors of Temple Beth David synagogue and the Westminster Lutheran Church.

The daylong Harmony Festival featured exhibits and live entertainment, ranging from a Jamaican steel-drum band to a traditional Vietnamese 16-string musical group. Up to 2,000 people at a time during the day drifted from booth to booth, nibbling on a wide array of ethnic foods, such as tostados, Vietnamese beef sticks and barbecued ribs.

“This is what we’re striving for, working side by side to create unity with our churches and our community,” said Elena Gonzalez, who was working in a Mexican food booth sponsored by Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church in Westminster. “This is important because we all live together here, and we have to get along.”

Tom Uch and the rest of his Cambodian-American family heard about the festival on the radio and decided to drive down from Montebello in the San Gabriel Valley.

“We enjoy activities that unite ethnic groups together,” said Uch, who has lived in California for 25 years. “I think this idea is very good. It’s overdue. Actions of this sort should be organized and improved, and we should have them continuously.”

Yvonne Wooderts of Orange said she came to support the Heisser family and because she thought the cultural experience would be good for her 9-year-old son, Anton.

“I grew up going to the Watts Festival in Los Angeles,” she said. “There were all kinds of music and activities. I think we need that here because people are so isolated and afraid of each other. Maybe this can bring some harmony in Orange County.”

About 30 agencies and organizations set up booths and handed out information about fair-housing laws and services for the homeless.

One the most popular booths was sponsored by the Westminster Police Department. Children were allowed to ramble through a police cruiser or sit on a police motorcycle.

“This has been a good way for us to reach a lot of people,” said Julie Newell, a Westminster traffic officer. “We’ve given out flyers in Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean and English.”

“People are usually a little standoffish with us,” Newell added. “But when they see a friendly face and kids crawling in and out of our police car, it makes it easier for them. We’ve gotten a lot of questions today from people who probably would not have come to us otherwise.”

Organizers hoped that police participation would help ease tension in the Latino community generated by a July incident in which a Westminster officer shot an 18-year-old Latino man to death during a birthday party in his family’s back yard.

Police have said that three officers were attacked by an angry mob and that Frank Martinez was shot when he charged an officer with a beer bottle. Family members have disputed that account, contending that Martinez, who was unarmed, was shot trying to get up and flee.

Rodney Burge, president of Manos Unidas, a Mexican-American neighborhood organization formed after the Martinez shooting, said: “We want to be the ones who make the first step by going out in the community and working through our problems. Then we will see what the city does.

“The festival gives us a great platform to show people we are not a radical group. We are there to show we will stand up with ourselves and help fight everything and, at the same time, try to help each other.”

The festival was paid for with a $1,500 donation from the city, $1,000 from county Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder and a $500 donation from Westminster Mayor Charles V. Smith.