A CITY IN CRISIS : Multiethnic Brigade Begins Hard Work of Cleaning Up : Volunteers: People came together spontaneously for their own purposes: To make a statement, to confront their fears, even to ease their consciences.

A polyglot army of tens of thousands of Southern Californians--burghers from Brentwood, Korean-Americans, a carload of Tongans--moved in Saturday with their dustpans to the riot-ravaged neighborhoods of Los Angeles in a show of hope, unity and community catharsis.

Equipped with an arsenal of shovels, brooms and pitchforks, and fueled from a vast commissary of donated sandwiches, volunteers prayed, sang, swept and scrubbed together in a spontaneous cleaning fest whose greatest value might have been symbolic.

“It’s sad that it took destruction to get people from Encino here,” said Jan Marrero, 31, of the Crenshaw district. “But it’s a helping hand. We need it. If we can get in the muck and the mire together, then we can get together in our lives.”

People streamed in from Ventura County, Long Beach and Riverside County. Anglos, Asians, Latinos and African-Americans worked side by side. Contractors donated rakes, gloves and shovels. Catering trucks pulled up to give away food.

In many areas, the labor produced little more than a pristine margin of sidewalk, skirting the ubiquitous rubble. Bulldozers would be needed. But in the meantime, everyone seemed to have a private purpose--to make a statement, overcome fear, perhaps ease their conscience.

“I think I owe it, being a human being, to be here,” said Edythe Young, 78, of Encino. “I find it difficult to believe young people would do this to other people. But if I wasn’t here, I would be at home sitting around the pool. That wouldn’t be right.”

In Koreatown, about 7,000 people rallied on a baseball field near the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Normandie Avenue. Prayers in Korean and English poured from the loudspeakers: “We will not retaliate. We will wait with patience. We will forgive with love.”

The group struck out along Olympic and turned onto Western Avenue, led by a National Guard Humvee. Behind the guardsmen were a dozen Korean-American teen-agers dressed entirely in white, clattering cymbals and ceremonial drums.

“We want to clean up everything,” said Nam Soon Rhee, a 32-year-old Hacienda Heights resident who had brought her two small children in a stroller and a supply of brooms, gloves and trash bags. “I know we can’t. But we want to try.”

South of there, Jo Taylor, 42, an elementary school teacher from West Los Angeles, and her friend, Kendra Gorlitsky of Brentwood, arrived with their dustpans and brooms to volunteer at the First AME Church, only to be directed to drive deeper into South Los Angeles.

“We were at home and feeling fearful,” Taylor said. “ . . . I didn’t want to sit at home with my fears.” The church had been inundated with volunteers and donations and was now dispatching them to another office even deeper into the riot-torn neighborhood.

“Now we have to see if we can get up the nerve to do that,” said Taylor, who added that her husband would have worried had he known what she was up to. “We’re nervous. But people live down there with fear on a daily basis. They’re moms with kids too.”

Toetuu Maama, 32, an airline cargo agent from Inglewood, brought his entire eight-member Tongan-American family to clean up rubble in the ravaged area. “We woke up this morning and prayed,” he said. “People getting along together is the only way to solve this problem. That’s what we prayed for.”

Denise Wheeler, a 33-year-old writer from West Los Angeles, arrived at the AME Church in a new Lincoln Continental, its rear seats packed with food. It was Wheeler’s third grocery delivery of the day for riot victims; she estimated she had spent $300 on the food.

“I’m pregnant with twins and my husband won’t let me sweep,” she apologized. “But I’m born and raised in this city and I can’t believe this has happened.”

On nearby Western Avenue, David Adams and Astron Vasquez rolled up to the still-smoldering Venice & Western Shopping Center on bicycles. They are working as Morman missionaries in Los Angeles, and they were wearing white shirts and ties as they joined in the cleanup there.

“We can’t give money because we don’t have any. But we can give our labor,” said Adams, 20, of Pleasant Grove, Utah, population 15,000. Added Vasquez, 22, of the Dominican Republic: “When I write home, it will be very hard to explain what I’ve seen here this week.”

Heavy equipment operator Robert Casteel, 44, pulled up in a huge water-sprayer tank truck at the Crenshaw Square shopping center on Crenshaw Boulevard. He was washing soot and ashes off curbs and sidewalks. “Black, white, Hispanic. People are coming together today,” he said. “Too bad an act of desperation did it.

Nearby, Young, who described herself as a wealthy Jewish woman from Encino, worked and chatted with Marrero, 31.

Sheri Armstrong, 34, had driven in from Pacoima, drawn by the sight of “other humans in need.” She was working in front of a burned Chinese restaurant. Hilda Teel, a 58-year-old retired manager for IBM, was helping clean up the soot and ash.

“I’m surprised and angry and disappointed in people,” said Teel, who lives five minutes away in Baldwin Hills. “But it’s heartwarming to see people from different communities come to help everything get right.”

“I felt like I had to do something,” said Robert Gossett, an actor from mid-Wilshire, who said he believes that racism is the root of the country’s problems, including its inability to build a good car. “But how can you build a car,” he said, “if you can’t live next door to the man you work with at the car assembly line?”

More than 2,000 people turned up at the intersection of Slauson and Western avenues, where they began picking their way through a five-mile-wide area, carrying chunks of rubble, fire-brigade-style, into dumpsters, and singing as they worked.

Up the street, at the intersection of Jefferson Boulevard and Western, utility crews under armed guard were attempting to restore power to the traffic signals. Carlton Shigg, 33, an off-duty traffic control officer from Compton, had stopped by to help.

Wearing a hospital scrub shirt and his traffic-control officer’s white gloves, Shigg kept the traffic moving with a mime’s rhythmic dancing of hands.

“It’s my day off, but this is my community,” said Shigg, who said no on-duty officers had been sent in, for fear of danger. By late afternoon, the sidewalks along Vermont and Normandie avenues had been cleared, the debris shoveled into the gutted and smoldering storefronts. At Florence and Normandie, where the rioting began Wednesday, 50 people had helped Tom Suzuki repair his looted liquor store.

“Neglect and guilt have brought people here,” said Mark Allen, 28, of South-Central Los Angeles. “People haven’t been paying attention.”

Nearby, Lillian Robinson had a different reaction.

“I’ve had tears in my eyes all day,” said Robinson, a veteran of two devastating sets of riots in Los Angeles. “I saw trucks filled with whites and Mexicans who have come to help us. . . . This kind of thing didn’t happen after Watts, you know. . . . Maybe there is hope.”