Gang Members in Second ‘Summit’

Some 50 young men from more than a dozen “sets” of Bloods and Crips stood on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall on Wednesday and pledged to form a network of “silent warriors” to try to convince gang members to stop shooting each other and instead become “positive role models for our younger brothers and sisters.”

Their appeal came after they spent two days in secret talks in a Long Beach motel. The meeting was the second “summit” sponsored by ministers from a Watts church who contend that talks between small knots of gang members can gradually spread peace.

So far the summits have involved only black gangs, which have been responsible for the majority of killings in Los Angeles County in recent years. An estimated 25,000 black gang members make up the 260 Bloods and Crips sets in the county. There are another 40,000 to 50,000 Latino gang members in the county whose feuds are less dramatic but still bloody. So far this year there have been more than 200 people killed by gang members in the county, a pace slightly ahead of the record 387 deaths last year.

As they did at the conclusion of the first summit in late July, organizers declined to say which sets had participated, making it impossible to judge the potential significance of the talks. Organizers said only that the participants came from Watts, Compton, Crenshaw and South-Central Los Angeles.

The next step, said Rev. James Stern, a 24-year-old minister at Tabernacle of Faith Baptist Church in Watts who has helped organize the talks, is to involve older gang members who still exert influence over their sets, even though they are in jail.

The leader of Tabernacle of Faith, Rev. Charles Mims, who in past years has led several community protest marches against gang violence, said the gang members who participated in this week’s summit will no longer be known as gang members.

“They will be known as silent warriors,” he said.

Organizers acknowledged the number of participants in the talks is far too small to bring about anything resembling a formal truce. Los Angeles’ gang deaths stem not only from rivalries between Bloods and Crips but from prolonged fights between numerous Crips sets.

However, Mims said, the participants in the summit “have pledged to put down their weapons.”

Plan of Attack

“These young people want jobs. They want homes. They want wives and children and dogs in the front yard and birds in the back,” he said.

Added one gang member, Anthony Mayberry, a Blood whose nickname is Twilight, “We plan to begin in our schools, parks, churches and homes. . . . We plan to put our words into action by working in our neighborhoods removing graffiti, cutting lawns and protecting senior citizens to put pride back into the areas where we live.”

Participants in the summit said they will work with Community Youth Gang Services, a city- and county-funded agency that promotes peace among gang members.

As he did at the end of the first summit, which involved 12 gang members, Mims emphasized Wednesday that gang members who want to live positive lives need help.

“We cannot do it alone. We need government funding. We need businesses, he said.”