Prayers and Pledges Against Prop. 187 : Religion: Interfaith group organizes a vigil at GOP fund-raiser targeting Huffington’s support.

They sang, they lit candles, they prayed, they carried out a carefully planned demonstration against Proposition 187 and Rep. Mike Huffington, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate who backs it.

About 300 strong, waving placards and shouting in response to their pastors’ promptings, members of a coalition of 15 Christian and Jewish congregations across the San Fernando Valley gathered outside a Republican Party fund-raiser Tuesday night to oppose the ballot measure that seeks a state constitutional amendment blocking services to illegal immigrants.

“We are trying to change Mr. Huffington’s heart with prayer,” said Karen Lack of Canoga Park.

Added Susan Guzzardi of a Canoga Park church: “We want to make life better for immigrants’ children, not worse. If we throw them out of schools and deny them inoculations, our own lives will also worsen because street crime and disease will escalate.”

While the candlelight vigil outside the Universal City Hilton had the appearance of a spontaneous grass-roots outpouring, it was actually the result of careful planning by organizers of a group called Valley Organized In Community Efforts, or VOICE.

The group uses techniques developed decades ago by legendary immigrant and labor movement leaders Saul Alinsky, Cesar Chavez and Fred Ross. Ross’ son, Fred Ross Jr., is a principal organizer of VOICE, helping to coordinate events such as the one held Tuesday night with techniques born of United Farm Worker protests.

Bearded, youthful Father Thomas H. Rush of Mary Immaculate Church in Pacoima, one of Ross’ students at VOICE, said the recent revelation that Huffington employed an illegal immigrant as a nanny for years heightened the ecumenical group’s anger at him.

“There is a real double standard on his part,” said Rush. “We’re saying to Huffington: ‘You took Marisela (the nanny) in as one of your own. But what about the rest?’ ”

Huffington, asked about the protesters, said that “it’s entirely appropriate for members of the cloth to pray for what they think is right,” but that he felt more strongly “the prayers . . . wishing me the best in my campaign for the Senate.”

Despite the service’s political nature, it had a strong religious flavor. A central theme was a prayer from Leviticus in the Old Testament read by Father Pat Murphy of Holy Rosary Church in Sunland: “If a stranger lives with you in your land, do not molest him. You must count him as one of your countrymen and love him as yourself. For you were once strangers yourself in Egypt.”

As part of the prayer service, Murphy asked the congregants to shout repeatedly to bemused Republicans and TV camera crews: “Love a stranger as thyself.”

The vigil was one in a monthlong string of events planned by VOICE members to call attention to the ballot measure. In contrast to the high-concept campaign events organized by highly paid political consultants, the VOICE events were devised at small church and synagogue meetings over the past two months.

Instead of sophisticated TV and radio ads to get out their point of view, VOICE members rely on sermons from pulpits and door-to-door campaigning in the barrios and boulevards of the Valley. Teams fan out on Saturdays, going from gas stations to beauty salons to persuade business people to post anti-Proposition 187 signs.

Diane Wildhaber typifies VOICE’s grass-roots orientation. By profession, she is director of a child-care facility in Canoga Park. But she spends 20 hours a week as a VOICE volunteer and has been a leader of the group’s efforts against Proposition 187.

She said that the 15 Catholic, Protestant and Jewish congregations that compose VOICE hold small “house meetings” three times a year to identify political and social issues to rally around.

Each congregation then sends a delegate to a “strategy team” at VOICE that meets twice a month to formulate a plan to deal with those issues.

Wildhaber said a research task force first focused on Proposition 187 only two months ago, after initially “mistakenly” thinking it was a positive measure to limit taxpayer funding of services for illegal immigrants. Team members read the measure carefully, talked to its formal political opponents, then formulated an attack after deciding that the ballot measure was “an effort by politicians to walk on the backs of children to advance their careers,” she said.

“We were so angry about it, we thought: What can we do to make a difference?” said Wildhaber. “And even if we can’t make a difference, this is something that we can just not ignore.”

The group’s most visible events have been two in-your-face confrontations with Proposition 187 co-author Harold W. Ezell. Less obvious but closer to the community have been attempts to organize boycotts of local businesses that refuse to put up posters opposing the ballot measure.

The first confrontation with Ezell, a former regional manager of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, came at the Museum of Tolerance on the Westside, where VOICE joined forces with sister grass-roots group United Neighborhoods Organization.

The second came two weeks ago when a dozen VOICE activists, including several clergy members, shouted Ezell off a stage as he was about to address a group of Republican women. They then hounded him from corner to corner of the room until police arrived.

“We had 48 hours to pull that one off,” Wildhaber said proudly. She said her research team had received a tip about the speech from a Republican member of the group, then designed an action to maximize attention on Ezell’s role in the ballot measure effort.

For his part, Ezell termed the VOICE activists who interrupted his meal “savages” and protested that “the conduct of these people suggests anarchy.”

Wildhaber’s group has sent teams of activists to Valley commercial districts on the past five Saturdays in an effort to persuade business owners to promise that they will not only personally oppose Proposition 187 but also put a VOICE poster in their window.

Wildhaber said 150 businesses have complied. And the ones that refuse?

“We tell the congregations which businesses in their communities signed, and which refused--so they can boycott the ones that don’t support us,” Wildhaber said.

Father Murphy, the Sunland pastor, said that the owner of a Sunland beauty parlor who refused to support the group on a Saturday surrendered to the economic pressure by Thursday.

“Their business had suffered--people had called to cancel appointments,” he said.

Most Republicans attending the $150-a-plate fund-raiser appeared to be unaware of the vigil, or said they were unmoved by it, though not all favor the initiative.

“I will abstain from voting on that measure,” said Tom Rice, a private investigator attending the fund-raiser. “I think the issue needs to be addressed, but Proposition 187 isn’t the way to do it.”

VOICE members considered their involvement to be more about morality than economics. Said Gustavo Valdivia of Pacoima: “I think no human being is illegal.”

* LEGAL OPINION: State counsel questions parts of Prop. 187. A1