Glendale News Press
28 Sept 2005
Crossing stays open, mayor says
Council members express ire at newspaper article alleging racial motivation
for proposed closure.
By Fred Ortega, News-Press and Leader

GLENDALE CITY HALL — Mayor Rafi Manoukian joined a majority of council
members Tuesday night in opposing a proposed closure of Chevy Chase Drive at
the Metrolink tracks, and he chastised a local Latino newspaper for alleging
that the planned road closure was racially motivated.
Noting that two other council members have expressed opposition to a plan to
use cul-de-sacs on Chevy Chase near the site of last January’s deadly
Metrolink accident to close off the crossing, Manoukian told the audience at
Tuesday night’s council meeting that the proposal is practically dead in the
water.

“I don’t see this happening,” Manoukian said. “[Councilmen Frank Quintero
and Dave Weaver] are on record saying they are against it, and I am saying
today that I will not support it.”
Manoukian then mentioned an article that appeared Sunday in the Los Angeles
Spanish language newspaper La Opinion.
Headlined “Glendale attempts to isolate Latinos,” the article painted the
controversy in stark racial tones, quoting Atwater Village residents who
claimed the proposed closure was an effort by Glendale officials to keep
their Latino residents out of Glendale.
It also alleged strained relations between Glendale’s Armenian and Los
Angeles’ Latino populations.
“To my great sadness I saw the article in La Opinion which described the
situation as a conflict between two ethnic groups,” Manoukian said. “We just
went to Washington to lobby for money for an emergency communications system
for the whole region, not just for Glendale.”
The allegations in the La Opinion article also shocked Councilman Bob
Yousefian.
“I have no idea where La Opinion got its information, but they need to
apologize and write a retraction,” Yousefian said. “Their accusations are
beyond belief. I was at the site of the [Metrolink] carnage, and our rescue
people who pulled the victims out of the wreckage were not looking to see
whether they were black, brown, red or any other color.”
At a meeting last week that drew 500 angry Atwater Village residents,
railing against the proposed closure, there was no mention of race.
Meeting organizer Lenore Solis, a Glendale Water and Power commissioner,
said she went to great lengths to keep people focused on the safety and
access issues raised by the plan.
“I told people that this is not what it is about, to not make it about
Armenians against Latinos,” she said. “This is a safety issue and a traffic
situation, and nothing else. Both the writer at La Opinion and a reporter
for Telemundo who interviewed me tried to make it a racial thing.”