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On August 10, 19-year-old Larnell Bruce was run over and killed in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven on 187th Avenue and East Burnside Street. The man driving the car, a documented member of a white supremacist gang, is now awaiting trial for murder, alongside charges that he attacked Bruce because of the color of his skin.
Ever since, people in the community have begun writing messages of sympathy on the store's wall.
Now, a group of high school students, along with local artists, will replace those messages with something more permanent: a mural that will celebrate diversity, unity and inclusion in the form of a tree.
The Gresham Youth Advisory Committee worked with artist Brook Stein, along with youth mentor Rudy Rolon-Rivas, who works in gang prevention programs, and a few Gresham High School alumni to design the mural, which they started painting earlier today.
"We mainly wanted to focus on diversity," says Alysha Hipes, a senior at Sam Barlow High School. "We wanted to do something that would show that [killing] wasn't what Gresham was about."
"The main ideas are people of different racial backgrounds and ethnic backgrounds, and showing imagery that represents hope and equality and inclusion and unity," says Brynn Lerma, also a senior at Barlow. "The MAX and the sculpture above the MAX are there because that's one of the most iconic things we see."
"We had a community meeting at the Rosewood Initiative and we wanted to open it to the public,"says Jessica Harper, the Youth Advisory Committee's faculty advisor. "We posted signs at the scene and asked people who were tagging to come and be a part of the meeting. We didn't have a personal connection with Larnell, so they talked about what they wanted it to look like."
The students proposed the mural as a way to stop the graffiti, and also represent the community as a whole.
"I'm hoping the people that were tagging will see that we put so much work into this and won't destroy it and that we put it there for them and it has more of a meaning than to stop them from tagging," says Lerma. "I think it 's a good opportunity to say what Gresham is about."
Willamette Week