COMMUNITY COMING UP ROSES RESIDENTS LOOKING TO PLANT SEEDS OF PEACE.

Byline: Helen Gao Staff Writer

GLENDALE - In the wake of Hoover High School student Raul Aguirre's stabbing death, some 450 local residents gathered at Glendale Community College last fall for a community summit called Planting the Seeds of Peace.

Tonight, those seeds will bear fruit.

Just a few days shy of the first anniversary of Aguirre's death, city leaders will launch Project Flower, a community-building campaign to get local residents to overcome ethnic and socioeconomic divides and collaborate on neighborhood improvement projects.

From 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., Project Flower will be held at 11 school campuses. Publicized widely on fliers in Korean, Armenian and Spanish, organizers hope to draw 200 people to each site.

``The goal is for neighbors to get to know each other better, get to understand what some of their common values are because we believe there are a lot of common values people have, (more) than they think they do,'' said Christine Walters, chairwoman of the organizing committee.

``What we are hoping is that this will start neighborhood meetings and (people) would literally empower themselves to make changes in their neighborhood - changes they think are important versus political changes,'' she said.

Participants will watch a television program at 7 p.m. on government-access Channel 6, featuring an address by Police Chief Russell Siverling and interviews with Aguirre's family and two other families that have lost a child to violence - those of Blaine Talmo and Avetis ``Avo'' Demirchyan.

Aguirre was fatally stabbed in front of Hoover High last May 5 while trying to break up a fight between Armenian and Latino gang members, authorities say.

Talmo was one of two teen-age boys found beaten to death last July at Valley View Elementary School. Demirchyan, another Hoover High student, suffered a fatal gunshot wound during a fight near campus in September 1998.

After the television program, event organizers will hold discussions to identify projects to improve neighborhoods, such as graffiti paint-out, block parties and cleaning up streets.

Like many people helping out with the event, Walters got involved because violence hit very close to home.

Walters is the mother of young children who attend an elementary school across the street from Hoover High and lives just a few blocks from the high school. She saw the death of Aguirre as a wake-up call to do something.

``The city is in a big transition. There has been a very big demographic change in the last 10 or 15 years,'' Walters said. ``The change happened so quickly, (residents) are not sure how to deal with it. We want to offer some opportunities to learn how to deal with it.''

Lenore Solis, who is organizing the neighborhood around Edison Elementary School, has a son at Hoover High who is sometimes afraid to stay in class because of racial tensions.

``(Students) have fights all the time. Usually they are along racial lines,'' Solis said. ``It shouldn't be like that.''

Solis said some residents in the area around Edison already have some ideas on what projects they would like to work on. One of them is installing street lights.

Grass-roots activism is what Project Flower would like to ultimately inspire, said Sgt. Rick Young who came up with the idea for the campaign.

``People have become lazy and complacent, waiting for programs to be given, instead of being charged up, getting involved and getting excited,'' he said. ``With this project, we are trying to reverse that trend.''

MEETING SITES

Project Flower will be launched from 6:30 to 8:30 tonight at the following locations in Glendale:

--Balboa Elementary School, 1844 Bel Aire Drive.

--Columbus Elementary School, 425 W. Milford St.

--Edison Elementary School, 440 W. Lomita Ave.

--Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, 1610 Lake St.

--Glenoaks Elementary School, 2015 E. Glenoaks Blvd.

--Hoover High School, 651 Glenwood Road.

--Rosemont Middle School, 4725 Rosemont Ave.

--Roosevelt Middle School, 1017 S. Glendale Ave.

--John Marshall Elementary School, 1201 E. Broadway.

--John Muir Elementary School, 912 S. Chevy Chase Drive.

--Wilson Middle School, 1221 Monterey Road.

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