In South-Central, a Move to Reclaim the Streets

It is a neighborhood like so many others in South-Central Los Angeles--a community of well-kept homes and battered bungalows, nuclear families and unwed mothers, children at play and gang youths at war.

Here, a mom-and-pop grocery sells candy over a cluttered counter while dope dealers peddle crack through the fortified windows of a nearby rock house.

Unprecedented Campaign

This small neighborhood, located just northwest of Watts, has been targeted by the Brotherhood Crusade, community groups and hundreds of volunteers for an unprecedented campaign to clean up its streets and rid them of drugs, gangs and violence--at least for 30 to 45 days.

“This is not a sophisticated movement,” said Danny Bakewell, president of the Brotherhood Crusade. “It has no fancy titles. It’s about a lot of people getting together, walking somewhere and saying stop.”

Bakewell, who is heading the effort called “Taking Our Community Back,” said the program will open with a rally today at Green Meadows Recreation Center.

Neighborhood patrols will start next weekend, targeting a 110-square-block area bounded by 93rd Street, Avalon Boulevard, Central Avenue and Manchester Avenue.

The patrols, which will be called “brotherhood protection teams” and number at least 10 to a group, will proceed block by block through the area, communicating by walkie-talkie with organizers stationed at a central location. They, in turn, will be in contact with the Los Angeles Police Department if there are any crimes to report.

Cleanup Crews

In addition to the patrols, volunteer cleanup crews will be out in force to paint over graffiti, sweep alleys and even mow lawns if necessary.

Neighborhood residents, meanwhile, will be able to take classes and receive counseling in subjects ranging from hygiene and health to parenting and black history at the Avalon Gardens housing project and Green Meadows Recreation Center.

Organizers also have asked businesses to offer jobs to those in the neighborhood, even if they only have one job to offer.

“I’m looking to show that when we come together as a community, we can control the community in which we live,” said Bakewell, whose Brotherhood Crusade has allocated $25,000 toward the campaign.

Supporters like Bakewell contend that there have been many government programs, task forces and police crackdowns aimed at ending gang violence in South-Central Los Angeles. What makes this effort different, they stressed, is that residents are relying on themselves to save their community.

Home-Grown Effort

“It’s not an outside program,” said City Councilman Robert Farrell, in whose district the cleanup effort will take place. “This is home-grown. . . . That’s the fundamental difference.”

And those who organizers hope will lead the community in this fight are black men, according to Bakewell.

“We need African-American men to volunteer,” Bakewell said. “It is irresponsible to ask our women and children to do what we as African-American men are not willing to do. . . . If I hear someone stirring around my house, I don’t wake up my wife and ask her to go check outside. I don’t ask my children to see what’s wrong.”

Los Angeles police officials have voiced support for the novel program.

“The Police Department cannot solve this problem,” said LAPD Deputy Chief William Rathburn, who has spent nearly 25 years working in South-Central Los Angeles. “The people are going to have to come out.”

Rathburn said he understands the fear that grips those who live in an area that currently averages about one murder a day.

But “as bad as the fear of crime is, there is something worse,” Rathburn said. “And that’s the fear of doing anything about it.”

Ann Johnson, 37, has seen such fear and hopelessness. A volunteer working with the Brotherhood Crusade, Johnson four years ago formed a support group on her block.

“It was being taken away from us,” said Johnson of the street where she raised four children and lived much of her life. “I saw drug dealing, kids who couldn’t (go out to) play.”

Afraid to Leave Homes

The monthly block meetings often had low attendance, she recalled, because residents were afraid to leave their homes. Because of the crime outside their doors, those who came to the meetings seldom talked about bake sales or neighborhood dues.

“There was prayer,” Johnson said. And often at the meetings, a few words of solace from a police officer after he dismally recounted the neighborhood’s monthly death toll.

But Johnson said she is optimistic that the citizen patrols and cleanup efforts will make her street safe again.

The almost nightly news of children and teen-agers murdered on the streets of South-Central Los Angeles spawned the Brotherhood Crusade’s effort and led to the mobilization of a community.

Working with hundreds of black churches and such organizations as the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Nation of Islam, organizers spent weeks drafting proposals, defining strategies and scouting the community.

In June, the call went out for black male volunteers--on the radio, in newspapers and from the pulpits of black churches. The committees pinpointed houses in the area that needed to be painted and rock houses that needed to be eradicated.

By the end of July, they had received pledges from nearly 500 black men. One was a police officer. Another was an ex-convict. Many are teen-age boys.

Seven youths, for example, gave up a day of summer to distribute flyers about the campaign that pledged to save their neighborhood.

But even within their neighborhood, there were streets they could not cross because of rival gangs.

“I can’t go across Central,” said one.

The Gang Factor

“I’m not going across 92nd,” said another, who belongs to a dance group protected by a Crips faction. “I get shot at everytime I go over there.”

Jonae Gladney, a dance group member who was dressed all in blue, said nonchalantly that he wasn’t afraid.

“I can go anywhere,” he said.

But halfway down 87th Place, in the midst of stapling flyers to trees and sticking them in doorways, the youth stopped at his house, exchanging the blue shirt he wore for a white one before he ventured into a neighborhood where red is the gang’s chosen color.

When Orlecter Malone, 79, moved to the Avalon Gardens housing project in 1961, you could wear what you wanted.

“I seen so much,” Malone recalled. “When I first came here there weren’t any gangs. Now they run around here like they’re crazy . . . (but) I’ll do anything to help anybody if it’s right, because I’m for the right.”

Bakewell said he has heard widespread enthusiasm from residents that the program “is already a success.”

CRUSADE IN SOUTH-CENTRAL

The Brotherhood Crusade has targeted a 110-square-block area in South-Central Los Angeles to be reclaimed from the grip of gangs, drugs and violence through a “taking our community back” movement. The movement will have two central offices, in which counseling and other services will be offered, open to the public 24 hours a day. Offices are in the Avalon Gardens housing project and the Green Meadows Recreation Center.

The group’s plan focuses on:

Block-by-block, 24-hour street patrols by volunteers. They will be in contact via walkie-talkie with a central headquarters, which will notify police about crimes occurring in the area. Organizers hope to have at least 500 men participating in the protection squads.

Providing counseling on subjects ranging from parenting and hygiene to cultural and social ethics. Professionals from the community as well as representatives of various organizations such as the NAACP, SCLC and Us will participate.

Identification of businesses throughout the city willing to provide at least one job to a community resident.

A city-supported clean-up effort that will sweep empty lots and alleys, paint over graffiti, have abandoned cars towed away and even mow lawns if necessary.