"May Sun stood on Wilshire Boulevard in Koreatown on Tuesday morning, looking through the fence at the memorial she and another artist designed to honor Robert F. Kennedy near the site of his 1968 assassination. Graffiti smeared the monument. Scattered trash included a potato chip bag, a smashed beer bottle and a sneaker. Weeds poked up from neglected garden beds and dozens of orange sandbags sat on ledges and columns, for no apparent reason."
"The memorial sits on the edge of the K-12 RFK Community Schools at the site of the former Ambassador Hotel, where an assassin shot and mortally wounded Kennedy on the night of June 5, 1968, after he'd won California's Democratic presidential primary. The condition of the memorial is shocking but unsurprising, I told Sun, given the state of disorder and disrepair in many parts of the city. And it represents a kind of surrender."
May Sun stood at the memorial on Wilshire Boulevard in Koreatown, peering through a fence at a site she helped design to honor Robert F. Kennedy near his 1968 assassination site. The monument and adjacent park show graffiti, scattered trash including a smashed beer bottle and a sneaker, weeds in neglected beds, and dozens of orange sandbags sitting on ledges and columns. A temporary fence with graffiti on the "no trespassing" signs blocks access and prevents traditional tributes on RFK's birthday centennial. The memorial was unveiled in 2010 after years of planning and careful wording. Bureaucratic buck-passing between the school district and city, lack of accountability, inertia, ineptitude and tacit acceptance have allowed its decline.
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