Marchers Shout Slogans Against Gangs, Crime in Neighborhood

More than 100 men, women and children marched through a graffiti-marred Van Nuys neighborhood Saturday morning shouting anti-crime slogans as a protest against gangs, drugs and crime.

“We’re going to go out and wake up the gang members,” said Mary Lou Holte, founder of Town Keepers Community Watch, the Neighborhood Watch group that organized the march. “We’re going to get them out of bed.”

Some residents of Delano Street peered out windows and doors of apartment buildings and houses as the marchers noisily proclaimed “no more gangs” and “no more drugs.” Others on the sidewalk and in yards stopped what they were doing and stared at the marchers.

“I hope this helps,” said one marcher, Miguel Coronado, 17, of Canoga Park. “But the gang-bangers are just going to laugh at this. It won’t bother them. This march is a temporary kind of thing to them; the gangs are forever.”

Miguel, who will graduate this month from Taft High School, said he joined the march because after four years in a Los Angeles gang, “I’m tired of it.” He said he wants to join the Marines and eventually become an undercover police officer.

Before the march, a group of youths from Victory Outreach Church sang over and over, “Once I was a gang-banger, but Jesus set me free” as they waited for a rally to begin in front of Van Nuys City Hall.

A group of elementary school students from Bassett Street School held up a homemade anti-gang banner. Holte and others cheered the march participants. “How many of you are fed up with gangs?” Holte asked. The crowd responded with a muffled “yes.”

“You’re not loud enough,” Holte said. The marchers’ response was louder and more emphatic.

“Gangs are not what’s happening,” shouted a teen-ager.

Richard Alarcon, Mayor Tom Bradley’s newly appointed liaison to the San Fernando Valley, also spoke at the rally.

“If the community does not get involved, the problem will remain,” he said. Alarcon said he was wearing his “Turn the Tide” T-shirt, a memento from a large anti-crime rally last month in downtown Los Angeles.

“But this today is how we’re going to turn the tide,” he said. “It is not going to be rallies in Los Angeles that’s going to do it. It will be the small community groups such as this one.”

Also lending their support to Holte’s effort were representatives of Councilman Marvin Braude, the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. and the Haddon-Mercer Homeowners.

The group marched from Van Nuys City Hall along Sylvan Street, Van Nuys Boulevard and Delano Street from Van Nuys Boulevard to Noble Avenue and ended at Delano Park for another rally, food and live music.

Holte, who had two ribs broken in an assault in October, 1988, founded the Town Keepers last year because, she said, law-abiding citizens have to take a stand and actively fight crime in their neighborhoods.

She said she was disappointed that more people did not attend Saturday’s march. “I’ve worked real hard on this for two months. I had commitments from 400 people.”

Los Angeles County gang worker Manuel Velasquez said the event was the largest of three or four marches Holte has organized. But, he added, “there should be 300, 400, 500 people here.”

Velasquez challenged participants to each bring 10 friends with them to the next rally.

“We need to back each other up like the home boys,” he said.

Velasquez said there have been 14 deaths attributed to gangs in the Valley so far this year.

“Last year, my partner and I went to 18 gang funerals,” he said. “There are almost 200 gangs in the Valley. It’s getting worse and it’s not going to get better unless we do something about it.”