Gangs Tell Candidates No. 1 Concern Is Jobs : Politics: 10 hopefuls in Carson’s elections field tough questions from coalition members who created truce.

Tattooed Carson gang members with close-shaven heads, white T-shirts and baggy pants bunching over their shoes sat in chairs in the middle and back rows.

Candidates dressed for success were lined up in a row at the front of the community room.

It was not a run-of-the-mill candidates forum.

Members of four Latino gangs who created a truce more than a year ago sponsored the Monday evening meeting. The coalition, known as the Harbor Area Action Committee, invited candidates running for mayor, City Council, treasurer and city clerk in Tuesday’s election. The response was impressive--only city clerk candidate Samson C. Labasan did not attend.

About 60 area residents, including 40 gang members, turned out to ask questions of the 10 candidates.

The gang members called for community centers and tutoring for dropouts who return to school. But most of all, they wanted to know which of the candidates could find them jobs.

Coni Hathaway and Gayle L. Konig, both running for City Council seats, ventured to answer. “I’m not promising,” Hathaway said. “There is no council person that can guarantee jobs.”

Konig cautioned that developing jobs could take time. “I don’t think it’s going to happen tomorrow,” she said. “The bottom line is that a lot of people here aren’t educated enough to take (many) jobs.”

The candidates emphasized the importance of education and vocational training. A few tried to describe the intricacies of their jobs in city government, but when the discussion focused on whether or not retailer Ikea’s sales-tax revenue was proprietary information, their audience, composed mostly of young men, got restless.

“We don’t want to know about Ikea. We want to know about us,” gang member Aaron Mora said in an exasperated tone.

When Keith McDonald, a council candidate and former professional football player, talked about his off-season training programs in local parks, he got a strong reaction.

“We don’t know nothing about this in the Mexican neighborhoods,” Mora said.

The session started about 45 minutes late because many gang members were wary of entering the Carson Community Center, which is in the same block as the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department station.

But after it got started, the meeting lasted three hours.

Like moderators at other political gatherings, Eugene A. Uriasand other forum organizers struggled to move the meeting along. “People kept talking and taking too long,” said Urias, whose family has belonged to a Keystone area gang for two generations.

The gang members might not appear to have a lot of political clout, since many of them are too young to vote or are ineligible for various reasons to cast ballots. But the Harbor Area Action Committee has emerged as a viable community organization.

Members of the group have been meeting since their truce began, and continue to organize in their neighborhoods. The group, which represents about 600 gang members, has sponsored football and baseball games, barbecues and a car show.

“We got tired of us fighting against each other. We want to get involved with our city--and get programs for our young people,” said gang member Rudy Viveros. “I’ve got a kid now, and I want it to be better for my son.”

Currently the truce does not extend beyond the four Latino gangs that claim about one-third of Carson’s neighborhoods, Mayor Michael I. Mitoma said. Urias said he would like to see other gangs eventually included in programs that the coalition hopes to start.

“When we have everything set up with the city, we’re going to reach out to other gangs,” Urias said, adding that everyone would be welcome at the teen centers that Action Committee members hope to create.

Since December, the gang members have worked with Mitoma and Arthur Caracoza, chairman of the city’s Human Relations Commission, organizing crews to paint over graffiti and discussing what the city can do to help their neighborhoods.

Mayoral candidate James H. Peoples said he was pleased to see more interest in politics by any group, but he questioned Mitoma’s new-found interest in helping the gang members, since he has been on the council for seven years.

“My concern would be, why, after seven years, did we wait until two months before the election to talk with the gang members? . . . It appears to me that our elected officials are trying to use them for political ends.”

Mitoma said that by demonstrating their sincerity through the truce and other activities, the leaders of the Action Committee had gained credibility.

“They came to me--I didn’t go to them,” Mitoma said Tuesday.

Viveros credited Mitoma with coming to coalition events and meeting with gang members to discuss their needs. “He does a lot of things for us,” Viveros said.

But, he added, he wasn’t counting on getting any real results from the candidates.

“Right now, it’s election time . . . some of these people--they’re just out for the votes,” he said.