Youths Tell Forum of Peers Their Fears, Frustrations : Pacoima: Boys and girls 7 to 17 vent their emotions at a gathering in the wake of several fatal shootings.

Like most 17-year-old boys, Marquis Moody is worried about girls and finishing high school. But unlike past generations, he’s even more concerned about getting shot.

“I have more of a chance of getting hit by a bullet than getting AIDS,” said Moody, a senior at Granada Hills High School. “I mean, you got to have sex to get AIDS. But I could get shot anytime.”

His comments came Saturday at a forum for young people who were encouraged to release emotions ranging from confusion to anger to fear. Held at the Boys & Girls Club of the San Fernando Valley in Pacoima, the forum allowed 40 kids ranging in age from 7 to 17 to express thoughts that many confessed they had never told anyone.

“We wanted to give kids a chance to vent their tensions,” said Barbara Perkins, a parent and event co-organizer. “We wanted to hear from them.”

And what they heard was painful.

“I see people who get beat--shot too--just because of the clothes they wear,” said a boy, clad in the baggy pants often associated with gangbangers.

“I can’t count how many funerals I’ve gone to,” said another boy, dressed the same way.

When Marquis said matter-of-factly that he feared being shot, a few adults in the crowd gasped. The other kids just nodded.

The forum was organized mainly by the San Fernando Valley chapter of the National Council of Negro Women, which hopes to make it a monthly event. The free event had been publicized through schools, youth groups and word of mouth.

It offered no panaceas or conclusions. But the chance to speak frankly, without fear of rebuke or embarrassment, offered the children some solace.

In a series of sessions from 10:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. the youngsters vented their frustration about teachers, drugs, gangs, racism, sex, love and parents.

“You are the stars of this show,” moderator Dwan Smith Fortier told the kids. “We want you to tell us how to get together. We want you to learn from all of you.”

At the beginning, each youth held hands with a person they had not met before.

Fortier said: “Look each other straight in the eye. . . . I want you to make a connection. I want you to say ‘I care about you. I love me. I love you.’ ”

The embarrassed kids--accompanied by much blushing and shuffling of feet--nervously complied. But the kids, most of whom had not met one another, loosened up noticeably during the day.

About 15 adults also attended to move the discussions along. They included teachers, probation officers, a flight attendant, a recording engineer, a free-lance writer and an RTD manager. Parents were only allowed to attend discussion groups where their kids were not present in the belief that their presence would stifle their children.

“It’s like community parenting,” said Perkins. “We’re all learning from this . . . I think we may have learned more than the kids.”

The event evolved from discussions among community members after 12-year-old Tiffany Dozier was killed in January by a stray bullet from a gang confrontation as she waited for a ride home from a dance at the Boys & Girls Club.

Several of the kids in the audience knew either Dozier or Michael Shean Ensley, 17, a student shot to death at Reseda High School last month.

“I don’t want to end up like Tiffany,” one girl said.

Occasionally, the discussions departed from gloom and doom to eternal themes of adolescence: love and sex. The students were asked what they wanted most in a relationship.

“I want respect,” one girl said. “I want someone I can trust.”

“I want companionship--someone I feel comfortable with,” said a girl sitting next to her.

But the boys eagerly embraced male stereotypes.

“I just want sex,” boasted one boy, as other boys cheered. “I already get companionship from my friends.”

But the talk inevitably steered back to weightier themes. The high school kids, who were all black and Latino, decried racism, as well as peer and parental pressure against interracial dating. Some complained that their teachers favored Anglo or Asian students.

Lewis Johnson, 17, said when he arrived on campus at Granada Hills High School one morning two years ago, the first thing he saw was a racial epithet scrawled on the wall.

Many of the kids admitted that they told the group things that they would otherwise never discuss.

“I’d never tell my parents that I had a gun pointed at me at school,” said one boy. “No way.”

“The only ones I can really talk to are friends,” another boy added. “There’s a lot I don’t even want to tell them.”