A Sudden Silence in Watts

Calvin Shears used to drive a star-spangled car through the streets of South-Central L.A. to impress on anyone who saw him that the American dream was alive and well.

He’d tell kids on the street to believe in themselves and believe in their country and everything would be all right.

He promised gang members if they’d turn in their guns, he’d get them jobs and a new start, because new starts were a reality in a free society.

He told them violence wasn’t the way and drugs weren’t the way. He told them hope wasn’t dead, but they would be if the gunfire didn’t cease.

Shears gave up a successful singing career to do what he was doing and moved from a Westside condo into Watts to prove he was sincere.

Because he’s black, the kids listened to his message of new dreams and began turning in their guns for the second chance Shears promised.

Then it all fell apart.

It happened when Shears gained the attention of USA Today last February and arranged for five gang members to turn in their guns for a photograph. But the newspaper failed to say they were turning in the weapons they held before the camera and ran a story that warned of possible new riots in L.A.

The implication was strong that the men in the photograph were elements of that potential violence.

USA Today admitted that the picture-story combination was “misleading,” but Shears says the explanation did no good. The gang members, he says, felt betrayed by him and ordered him killed. Although the contract was lifted, he says his credibility on the street vanished.

Now he wants it back.

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I met with him the other day in the Watts neighborhood where he rents a room. The flag-painted car, one tire flat, sits in the driveway, its colors fading in the sunlight.

Shears, 46, who used the name CaShears when he sang, still believes in the American dream, but bellows with anger at the circumstances that brought his one-man crusade to an end.

“I gave up five years of my life for my city, my country and my people,” he says, “and USA Today has no right to do this. It validates what black kids have always heard, that there’s a white conspiracy against them.”

Born in a Cincinnati housing project, Shears came to his crusade by way of an epiphany. He was the opening act for Tina Turner in South Africa and, while there, visited an orphanage in Soweto.

He saw black children without food, blankets or medicine and it did something to him. He held a little girl in his arms and her face hovered on the edge of memory long after he returned to the United States.

“I asked God one night what he wanted me to do,” Shears says, a gold cross hanging on a chain around his neck. “He told me.”

He gave up singing, moved to Watts and began his crusade. Videotape shot by a television station shows him telling gang kids, “We can’t keep on blaming America for what we’ve done to ourselves.” It shows him saying, “We’re in danger of losing something beautiful. . . . “

“I was raised by a mother who told me to love America,” he said, bringing out an etching of Betsy Ross and the flag. “This picture hung over my bed as I was growing up. I believe in this country.”

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Shears says the only reason he’s alive today is because mothers of gang members in Watts spoke up on his behalf. He’s helped many of them raise money to prevent eviction from their homes.

“But I’m still scared to death,” he says. “Suppose a gangbanger stays after me for what happened? The other day a kid pointed his finger at me like a gun and went ‘Pow, pow, pow!’ I’m always looking over my shoulder.”

Shears doesn’t go out much anymore. But he refuses to leave the neighborhood, because running would be an admission that he did, indeed, betray the gang members in the photograph.

Gone, however, is his presence on the street. Gone are condolence visits to the families of youngsters killed by gangs. Gone are collections of money and clothing he undertook to help others. Gone is the voice that shouted “Listen to me!” to anyone willing to hear.

Shears promises that his fight with USA Today isn’t over. He’s talking about legal action. He’s talking about writing a book to “expose” the newspaper. But mostly he wants to regain the trust of the gangs and continue his crusade in an area that needs his kind of voice.

“All I do these days,” he says, “is dream and mope. I’m broke. I’ve got nothing. I live in one room of somebody else’s house. I ask myself, is it all over?”

I hope not. His was only one voice, but it rang with promise. And promise is at least a beginning.