Leaders Call for Easter to Be Free of Gang Killings : Rally: Entertainers and clergy urge residents to reclaim the neighborhoods from the hoodlums.

Singing hymns and exhorting gang members to “stop the madness,” residents of central and South-Central Los Angeles rallied Saturday at Leimert Park, where they pledged that Easter weekend would be a “no-killing weekend” in Los Angeles.

Organized by First African Methodist Episcopal Church, Saturday’s rally attracted a crowd of nearly 500, including Stevie Wonder, actor Taurean Blacque and Los Angeles Raiders defensive end Nolan Harrison.

Plans for the Easter weekend no-killing campaign, which will involve law enforcement, church and community leaders, will be set during a meeting Monday, organizers said.

Rally participants gathered at one of the city’s troubled parks, a tiny plot of land near the Crenshaw-Baldwin Hills Plaza. With no organized recreational programs and no movie theaters in the neighborhood, the park has become a magnet for teen-agers who have been blamed for a rise in graffiti and other crimes in what has long been considered a lovely middle-class black neighborhood.

One by one, singers, entertainers, politicians and preachers stood up to urge the crowd to reclaim their neighborhood from gangs, to stamp out drugs, to show respect for women, to encourage children to excel at education and to bring an end to gang violence that claimed a record 771 lives in Los Angeles County last year.

“Look around you at these children,” Harrison said. “Do you want these children to disappear? If we’re not careful, they will.”

One of the hopes of these rallies is that black men in the community will begin “to take a stand,” said the Rev. Cecil (Chip) Murray of First A.M.E.

“We’ve all heard the statistics,” said Joe Hicks, executive director of the local branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “There are more black men in prison than on college campuses, more women heads of household than men. . . . We have to bring our community together.”

The goal is within reach, said Mark Whitlock, a rally organizer. “If birds can teach birds to fly and fish can teach fish to swim,” he said, “then surely the African-American male can start teaching its youth to be responsible men.”