Taking Care of Business : Gang Youths Turn to Post-Riot Programs, New Ventures

At the Homeboy Tortilleria, hands that once clutched drugs and guns on the Eastside now roll out thousands of corn tortillas in downtown’s Grand Central Market.

In South-Central, High-T and Ray-Ray sit under a large gray tent surrounded by dozens of athletic shoes, practicing different sales techniques than the ones they used on the streets years ago as Grape Street Crips.

Since the riots, a small but growing number of African-American and Latino gangbangers have left behind drug deals and drive-bys for eight-hour-a-day jobs or to start a variety of ventures. These men make up just a fraction of the 115,000 gang members in Los Angeles County, but their fledgling efforts are flashing a sign that gang members can have a place in the economic mainstream.

“Some young brothers are doing better now--we’re mainstreaming now. I feel good to get up in the morning and unload my truck and open this business,” said Ray-Ray, 24, who got involved selling sneakers through the Amer-I-Can anti-gang program.

About 20 Latino ex-gangbangers from the Aliso-Pico neighborhood have been involved in job training programs through the Dolores Mission of Boyle Heights since May, while about 100 African-American ex-gangsters have become involved in various other programs, according to several youth gang leaders.

Anti-gang programs have been working for years to rehabilitate gangbangers by rebuilding their self-esteem and getting them jobs. But the civil unrest brought a wave of corporate-sponsored job programs to the Eastside and South Los Angeles. And though some of the programs failed, gang members were encouraged about the new opportunities.

“The young people we had been dealing with before the riots, in their minds there was no ability for them to picture success. Since the riots, that’s changed,” said Steve Valdivia, executive director of Community Youth Gang Services. “There’s been an expression of hope.”

But Valdivia and other youth anti-gang leaders are skeptical of post-riot projects. They don’t believe anything substantive has been done.

“I haven’t seen anything that’s come out and offered these kids a permanent job with an hourly salary. It’s all on commission,” said V. G. Guinses, co-founder and executive director of SAY YES, an anti-gang youth program.

“This is the same thing you had after the Watts riots when companies had kids selling Afro Sheen on commission. They lasted three months and were gone,” Guinses said.

High-T and Ray-Ray have had better luck. Since June, they have run their shoe shop inside a gated lot at the corner of 88th Place and Figueroa Avenue as part of a contract between Eurostar Inc., a local athletic shoe company, and Amer-I-Can, a self-esteem course for gang members and ex-convicts founded by former NFL star Jim Brown.

Eurostar agreed to pay rent, supply merchandise and train gang members to run the shoe store themselves.

“This is a chance for us that might not come around again, so you take it when you can get it and make the best of it. That’s what we’re doing,” said High-T, 29.

Every day but Monday and rainy days, Ray-Ray and High-T unload folding tables and boxes of shoes from a yellow truck--loaned by Eurostar--and set up shop.

Business is slow early in the day, when homeboys and people from the neighborhood come to hang out and browse. It picks up about 3 p.m. as children and their mothers stop by after school to look for sneakers.

Others, such as the Rev. R. J. Bradley of Compton, have stopped by after hearing about the shop from others.

“I heard you all were doing some good business out here, wanted to come by and check you all out. Why don’t you hook me up with some shoes there, brother?” said Bradley, who left with a pair.

Ray-Ray said the business has averaged about $6,000 in sales per month, and the men said they are beginning to make a decent salary, although they would not say how much.

High-T and Ray-Ray said years of drive-bys, robberies, time in jail and burying their homeboys took their toll. They wanted out, and the Amer-I-Can program took them in. Now they want to make a difference for their communities.

“We’ve got to come together. You can’t have black brothers killing each other,” Ray-Ray said. “That’s why when we open our store we’re going to put things together for the community.”

Ray-Ray and High-T plan to open a store of their own at 5th and Florence avenues later this month. They also want to install a basketball court behind the store for after-school games.

A Eurostar store managed by gang members may also be opening in Boyle Heights. The Dolores Mission, whose Jobs for a Future program opened the Homeboy Tortilleria in September, has been talking to Eurostar about a store site since last summer.

The mission is working with actor Dennis Weaver’s Love Is Feeding Everyone food program, or LIFE, to train 100 gang members a year in various skills to be hired by at least eight participating corporations.

“For these guys to start a business of their own would’ve been a lot harder” than getting a job through the church’s programs, said Father Tom Smolich, who heads the mission. “I look at something like this as a legitimate shortcut.”

The church-funded Jobs for a Future program led Carlos de la Torre from gangbanging to the tortilla business. Every weekday morning, the 19-year-old is up to his elbows in masa at the tortilleria. His rolled-up shirt sleeves reveal the tattoos of his gang, the Clarence Street Cutdowns of the Aliso-Pico neighborhood.

At the end of the steel tortilla maker and oven, Jose Nieto, 21, and three other ex-gangbangers stand poised, holding open plastic bags as steaming piles of tortillas roll off a conveyor belt.

De la Torre and the other men who work at the tortilleria still belong to their gangs, but they say they are no longer active in gang violence. At the tortilleria, rival gang members work side by side, a new lesson in learning how to get along.

“What’s on the street we keep on the street. We don’t bring it to work,” de la Torre said. “It’s just respect.”

The idea for the tortilleria arose well before the spring riots. But the unrest speeded up the process of getting this project and others off the ground in the Latino community and directed some corporate attention to the Dolores Mission’s efforts in Boyle Heights.

None of the men knew how to make tortillas before they started at the tortilleria, but they take their work seriously.

The goal is to have the gang members run the tortilleria themselves, said Sandy Perluss-Lejeune, manager of the tortilleria and assistant director of the jobs program. For now, it is a confidence builder, he said.

“I know I’m doing something good for myself now. I know this is what people expect of me,” said Angel David Gomez, 19, an ex-gang member from the Cuatro Flats Countdowns in Aliso-Pico. “I’m finally working with my hands. These are working hands, not selling dope hands.”

It has been four months since Gomez was released from jail for assault and carrying stolen property and a weapon. Now he packages and sells tortillas. His $200 weekly salary at the tortilleria is hundreds less than he took in selling drugs and committing burglaries.

“But I feel better earning this kind of money. And my mom and dad, they’re proud of me that I’m not doing what I was before. That makes me happy,” Gomez said with a smile.

Soon after the riots and the gang truce, companies were eager to help in the black and Latino communities and wanted to increase their exposure there.

One such venture, which called for gang members to sell a waterless car wash product, failed after a dispute over how it would be sold. Company officials at Enviro-Tech wanted the product sold from a corner kiosk, but gang members wanted a store, said Tony Bogard, an ex-Crip from Imperial Courts who was involved in the venture.

Enviro-Tech founder and President Jonathon Goldsmith said he had donated more than $7,000 worth of materials, including $3,000 in cash, to get the program off the ground. He said he did not think a store was necessary to sell the product.

The transition from hard-core gangbanging is awkward for some, but it is a decision many gang members have made before they enter youth programs, Guinses said. About 75% of the gang members who enroll in anti-gang programs or get jobs through them stay in the mainstream, he said.

For several African-American gang members, the Blood-Crips truce signed weeks before the riots inspired them to explore starting their own businesses.

Truce meetings brought Cameron Bonner together with others from his Southwest Los Angeles neighborhood to form his fledgling hip-hop clothing company, Over the Edge Style.

Bonner, 27, is one of the few ex-gangsters who started a business without money from corporations. A former Raymond Avenue Crip, Bonner escaped hard-core gangbanging at 15, but he is still linked to his brothers in the ‘hood and wanted to create something to help educate them.

He came up with an idea to sell baseball hats called Jimmy Caps--a slang word for condoms--last year after hearing them mentioned in several rap songs.

Friends in the fashion industry and other businesses in downtown Los Angeles helped Bonner design and market the flashy baseball caps, adorned on the side with a clear pocket carrying a black condom.

His hope is that the caps will teach young African-Americans about safe sex by getting them to talk about it. Bonner sold more than 400 Jimmy Caps at the Black Expo last month for $15 each and has sold several dozen since then. He is currently selling them by mail for $20.

The success of the caps has propelled Bonner and the other members of his company to another level, he said. “We’ve gone from being brothers in the ‘hood to being somebodies,” he said.

The success of some business ventures has made several gang members believe they also are “somebodies” and inspired them to help their communities.

“We’re talking about ourselves, raising money for the black people. What about the people?” said Tony Bogard, an ex-Crip who started the nonprofit group Hands Across Watts with ex-Blood Tyrone Baker and other ex-gangsters after the truce.

Bogard and Baker have been working on several ventures, from marketing a truce T-shirt to appearing on talk shows and working on a book about their lives. The men, who hope to make enough money to start community-based businesses in Watts, earned $700 selling T-shirts at the Black Expo last month. They will appear on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” next month to talk about gang truces.

Members of Hands Across Watts and gang members from three other organizations--South-Central Blackness, Phase Two and American Self-Help Assn.--have joined to form a truce council that is working with the Brotherhood Crusade to build a hamburger stand employing Bloods and Crips, as well as starting other small businesses in the community.

“We’ve got to try and give people who’ve had a different lifestyle, but are very talented, some outlet to do positive things,” said Danny Bakewell, executive director of the Brotherhood Crusade.

Latino and African-American ex-gangbangers agree that if more young people could get job training and had good role models, they might stay away from gangs.

“I really feel strongly about these kids being good kids, staying that way. They just need encouragement. That’s what I got and it made a difference,” said Luis Valencia, 17, an ex-gangster of the Clarence Street Locals and a worker at the tortilleria.

But the work will be arduous, and gang members will constantly have to prove themselves as viable businessmen once they are no longer a novelty as fledgling entrepreneurs, said Jim Brown, the Amer-I-Can founder.

One of their biggest obstacles will be being taken seriously and not looked upon as thugs who got an easy break, he said.

“These young men are making an attempt to change their lives,” Brown said. “They’re trying to become part of a capitalistic system, and they’re going to have a rough time proving themselves like every other new business.

“What the ex-gang members have to do is work their butts off. These businesses have a long way to go, and these boys have a lot to learn.”