Dinner Tonight!

T.J. Leyden used to cruise the streets of the San Fernando Valley with a carload of skinheads and a case of Budweiser as he looked for somebody to beat up. He would get a rush, he said, from leaving a man bloody on the curb.

But after being arrested and stabbed and, most important, getting married, Leyden said he gave up that life, and on Tuesday he transfixed an audience of 200 as he expounded upon the roots of hate.

“We used to go to middle schools and recruit young kids--I’m talking 11 or 12 years old--to join the White Power movement and they loved it,” said Leyden, 33. “Never underestimate how impressionable young minds can be to learn to hate.”

Leyden was the keynote speaker at a meeting of the San Fernando Valley Hate Crimes Alliance, a group led by the Los Angeles Police Department and the district attorney’s office. The town hall meeting at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Northridge was the group’s second.

The purpose of the event, Leyden and other speakers said, was to encourage greater responsiveness to racism and prejudice, especially among children. Juveniles are responsible for the vast share of racially and ethnically motivated crimes, said Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, and it’s up to parents to teach tolerance.

“If your kid says a racial slur, talk to him. Encourage your church, your synagogue, your mosque to hold forums and work through community organizations to talk about these things,” Garcetti said. “In this evolving Valley, with more minorities moving in, these are issues we all need to deal with.”

Police officials and others asked people to join Neighborhood Watch groups and help report crimes associated with hate, such as racist or anti-Semitic graffiti and hate-based assaults. Fliers were passed out and the meeting closed with small groups gathering around tables to discuss with facilitators ways to prevent hatred from developing.

Last August’s incident in which an avowed racist allegedly shot five people at a Jewish summer camp in Granada Hills, then killed a Filipino American mailman, was discussed by many of the groups. Hate is here in the Valley, people said, and for some families, it has turned lives upside down.

“I always knew there were disturbed people out there,” said Donna Finkelstein, a discussion leader whose daughter, Mindy, was among the five shot at the Jewish Community Center. “But did I ever think for a moment my daughter would be shot for being Jewish? No way.”