Former Gang Members, Minister Call for Jobs to Keep Post-Riot Truce Alive

Tony Thomas could hardly believe it when a pack of rival gangsters marched uninvited into his South Los Angeles housing project one afternoon a few months ago.

Thomas never ventured outdoors in daylight because it was too dangerous for a self-described general in his neighborhood’s violent street wars. But this sight was too bizarre for him to ignore.

“They didn’t come with no guns, they didn’t come with no knives,” Thomas, 28, recalled incredulously. “They came with their mothers and their kids. . . . It was like stepping into a weird land somewhere. We had been fighting these people for so long. It was like it wasn’t happening, but it was happening.”

Thomas was among four former gang members who spoke candidly and passionately about their violent, not-so-distant past at a symposium on post-riot Los Angeles on Saturday in Inglewood. An architect of the countywide truce between Crips and Bloods gang members, Thomas, a Crip, was sharing his story with a roomful of strangers in hopes of building interest in the problems of his impoverished neighborhood.

“Give us a chance. That is all we are asking,” Thomas said to several hundred lawyers, alumni and community residents at the University of West Los Angeles, which sponsored the session. “We (have been) successful in drug selling and killing all of these years. Why can’t we be right?”

The racially mixed crowd responded with a standing ovation, shouts of approval--and even a few tears.

“That’s right, brother! Go teach!” one emotional black man shouted from the back of the room.

Thomas spends his days trying to keep the peace by defusing flare-ups between gangs--he is alerted to hot spots through a cellular telephone and a network of informants--and drumming up interest in Hands Across Watts, a nonprofit corporation formed last month by the Bloods and Crips to provide job training, child care and recreational programs.

The other former gang members said they also have rejected the violence of the streets and want a chance at living a more peaceful life. But they complained that they and other gang members face seemingly insurmountable obstacles because of lengthy criminal records and a wary business community.

“Now that the killing has stopped, there are no jobs,” said unemployed former gangster Tyrone Baker, who said he once earned up to $10,000 a day dealing drugs. “People are standing around wondering what is next. We have to support our families. Are we going to start robbing each other?”

Baker called on employers to stop discriminating against ex-convicts and to “come down” to South Los Angeles with “something real” to offer. “We need some long-term jobs, not McDonald’s,” he said.

The session with the gang members was part of a half-day symposium, “After the Verdict,” which included seminars on the social, political, economic and legal issues arising from the verdicts in the trial of four white Los Angeles police officers charged with beating black motorist Rodney G. King.

In one discussion, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and other black community leaders talked about efforts to win federal assistance for the city’s poor neighborhoods. In another, Deputy Dist. Atty. Alan Scott Yochelson, co-prosecutor in the King case, and attorney Paul DePasquale, who represents one of the officers, were among several experts who discussed problems in prosecuting police misconduct cases.

The discussion of gang cooperation was before the entire group.

The call for assistance by the gang members was echoed in a blistering speech by the Rev. Cecil R. Murray of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church. Murray called on “white American males” to stop treating African-Americans as outsiders and to put aside age-old prejudices.

“The white American male is going to have to stop ‘dissing’ everybody and make room,” Murray said. “He is going to have to understand that the nigger in his head ain’t the nigger in front of his eyes. The nigger in his head was put there by the media, by movies, by bigoted politicians.

“The white male in America controls the power,” Murray added. “He must stop telling Bloods and Crips that you are welfare people because even a simple survey would reveal a majority of people on welfare are white people.”

In a speech that emphasized the accomplishments of blacks in America, Murray said that African-Americans “have a right to be here” and demanded that whites recognize it. He called on whites to stop stereotyping blacks as criminals.

“The first thing a white person coming to L.A. learns is when you get on the Harbor Freeway, get on and don’t get off until you get to the end of the freeway,” Murray said.

In drawing what he called a lesson from the riots, Murray blasted critics who have referred to the rioters as criminals, murderers and thugs.

“Those thugs (are) survivors,” Murray said. “If white people had to put up with what black people put up with, there wouldn’t be enough mortuaries in the world today.”

In his closing prayer, Murray was somewhat more conciliatory, calling for a series of job and social programs in the city’s troubled neighborhoods. “We need the technical help of those who are not afraid to share,” he said.