Lessons in Reality : Campaign Aimed at Aiding Drug-Infested Area Finds Hope Despite Many Challenges

Nearly a month has passed since the Brotherhood Crusade launched a movement to clean up the gang and drug-plagued streets of a single neighborhood in South-Central Los Angeles, and during that time, amid small victories, organizers have learned that it is sometimes easier to set goals than to attain them.

As the “Taking Our Community Back” campaign organizers Saturday celebrated the halfway mark of the 45-day program, they have learned that it is not easy to gain the trust of a community wary of programs and weary from years of violence and neglect. They have learned that just because someone volunteers to help does not mean they will show up.

And they’ve learned that all the flyers in the world announcing free counseling sessions and other classes do little good if the recipients of those handouts cannot read.

Organizers Saturday hosted the second major event since the campaign’s kickoff rally--an African American Marketplace held at Green Meadows Park. Its goal was to get entrepreneurs throughout the black community to come together and do business with one another, organizers said.

Boosted by its success, and armed with the lessons they’ve learned, organizers are going forward, realizing now that although hope sometimes exceeds reality, reality should never get in the way of hope.

“When we first started out, it was trial and error,” said Brotherhood Crusade President Danny Bakewell, whose organization spearheaded the movement. “Not because of a lack of commitment but because of a lack of experience.”

There have been many successes. Police have credited the campaign with helping to solve three murders in South Los Angeles this last week. The efforts of campaign organizers paid off in tips to police about the murders.

Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief William Rathburn, who took the unusual step of calling a press conference Friday to announce progress in the cases, added in an interview that the campaign may lead to “a significant drop in crime” in the 110-block target area. But police said it’s too early in the game to back that prediction with statistics.

And there have been other victories.

Like the time the movement’s leaders persuaded the manager of a liquor store at 89th Street and Central Avenue to remove the blue bandannas that Crip gang members buy.

Since the campaign began, traffic in and out of two neighborhood crack houses has slowed to a trickle, according to Police Officer Wayne Guillary who regularly patrols the target area, which is bounded by 93rd Street, Avalon Boulevard, Central Avenue and Manchester Avenue. And a neighborhood park, long a battleground for the Bloods and the Crips gangs, has again become neutral ground--where no gang affiliation is needed to use it.

“That’s what made me come up here,” said Monique Andrews, 20, who lives within walking distance of Green Meadows Park/Recreation Center with her 2-year-old daughter, Jasmine. “I haven’t been up here in years.”

Andrews said she would drive all the way to Palmdale, where she also has relatives, so that her daughter could play on the swings. But now she and her daughter can walk to the park.

Twenty-nine people have gotten job interviews through the campaign, the closest many have been to employment in a long while; four people have gotten jobs.

Although bolstered by their successes, organizers are nonetheless regrouping in some areas where the campaign has fallen short.

Before the campaign officially began Aug. 12, a call went out for black men to come forward to help “patrol” the target area around the clock.

Campaign Tactics

Flyers were passed out block by block, telling of the free counseling sessions and classes for anyone in the community who wanted to attend. Businesses were asked to offer jobs or job training to neighborhood residents.

But four weeks into the campaign, 275 patrol volunteers do a job originally meant for 1,000. A request that any business give one job to one person has gone largely unheeded. And organizers ran smack into the illiteracy problem when handing out the flyers.

“Either the reading level is low or they can’t read at all,” said crusade spokesman Ralph Sutton.

It is the lack of volunteers, especially among black men, that has perhaps been the biggest disappointment in the campaign--particularly to those men who have volunteered.

“I am disappointed in the respect I think we could do more if we had more,” said Brad Pye Jr., assistant chief deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who spends every Saturday sweeping alleys and cleaning streets with the campaign’s cleanup crew.

But Bakewell, who heads a technical and financial support organization for minority groups, realizes that a commitment to such an effort is not easy. It takes “a Herculean kind of consciousness,” he said, “and a conscious commitment.”

So, in the face of these challenges, movement organizers have learned to improvise.

Instead of waiting for patrol volunteers, now each day of the week is assigned to a church or organization that is responsible for seeing that their men show up, Bakewell said. When the business community did not come forward with jobs, leaders of the Brotherhood Crusade hired three people to staff the movement’s main office.

Pulling together, organizers say, has been the key. That point when 110 square blocks northwest of Watts become more than a target area, and become a community.

“People drive by honking their horns, waving,” Sutton said. You can see the difference “by the way we walk by and the kids yell out ‘Brotherhood Crusade, Brotherhood Crusade.’ ”