LOS ANGELES GANG MEMBER URGES COMMUNITY SERVICE, NOT PITY

Teen-ager finds summer of service valuable to self and neighborhood.

Danny Bravo, 20, was part of President Clinton's summer of service. Nearly 1,500 young people served in 11 cities this pilot year. In June, participants from 16 sites were trained in San Francisco to provide service in the areas of health, education, public safety and the environment. In exchange, each volunteer received a minimum-wage stipend and an education or job-training scholarship.

Bravo did his work in violence-torn areas of Los Angeles. When Children's Express recently interviewed him by phone, we expected to hear how he brought joy to children in those poverty-stricken areas.

Instead, Bravo explained how the violence was inescapable and that the best he could do was to help children cope with it.

The atmosphere of anger and fear was apparent even in his assignment - he was trained by the American Red Cross to teach kids how to handle themselves if they witness a shooting. As he saw it: "I was teaching kids basic aid training, which is the first steps that a kid should do instead of . . . screaming and crying."

Bravo also revealed he had a special kinship with the kids he worked with - like them, he lives in a low-income area of Los Angeles, and, like many of them, he is a gang member. This is his story:

Why youths turn to gangs

I'm your average gang member. My hobbies consist . . . of doing some art, painting murals, whatever, or just going out to the shooting range - something you pick up when you're in the streets.

(In my) community, most of the families around there either have their kids in the gangs or the young kids grow up into the gangs.

All the time I was growing up, I kept on hearing they were gonna give us a center . . . where we could go swim, box, do art, give us shops to do. They were telling me that when I was a little kid.

Now my little brother's growing up and they're telling him the same thing they were telling me. . . .

Wherever you go, they hardly have things for you. That's one of the reasons most of the kids that grew up with me went the way I went, either into the gangs or they started taking drugs.

I was your average little kid who grew up in a gang dealing drugs, guns, everything. Except for drugs - I never did drugs in my system.

I grew up in different juvenile halls. . . . you know, the youth authority. Most of my life was spent in the system.

A lot of people never thought of me growing to be this old or growing to be the person I am now.

But the only thing I always had on my mind was school. I went to school. I read books. I loved history.. . .

There is this lady teacher . . . and she was always bugging me, you know, "Let's go here, let's go there." She was always into the indigenous way of life, the native American or the Mayan way of life.

She kind of tricked me to go to a camp, where I thought we were going to be camping. But it wasn't a campground. It was a workshop that the Indians were having. . . . They made your eyes open. They made you think.

I started changing the way I looked, the way I spoke.

There's people out there that will help you become what you are now, people who helped me become what I am now. I'd like to return that gratitude and help other people become the way I am, with their mind expanded and other views of life. . . .

These kids don't know nothing but poverty. . . . I ran into their stories, hearing what they've been through. . . . Actually, I heard everything that I grew up with when I was a kid. You know, the accidents, the falls, the cuts, the shootings.

Little things like that you get to hear, makes your mind think again. It opens your mind to other possibilities and a better way of life for them.

Kids just refresh your mind. They show you that you were like them.

If you will look at some of these kids, some of these kids are really hard-headed. . . . They don't care about nothing. Their minds are screwed up to the point where gangs is a life for them.

You tell (a boy) he's poor, he's gonna believe you. He's gonna act poor. They become what other people call criminals. They start stealing, they rob, they sell drugs just to become rich, just to have another dream, just to wake up the next morning with money in their pockets.

Escape from reality

They escape to that 'cause they see that it's been going on for generations.

If you would see the way some of us grew up, some of us already have our families who've been indebted to gangs. You know, they came, they had kids, their kids grew up in the gangs.

The media always makes (gangs) look bad - they're killers or they're drug dealers or they're this or that. Actually, that's a way of survival for them.

(These kids) are escaping from reality. . . . They're scared and they want to prove themselves that they are cowards to no one. That's where you begin your life of crime and end up in the system.

If you ask a gang member why are they there, they're gonna tell you different answers every time. . . . Some of them stay there 'cause they believe that they own that, that's theirs, they grew up there, and they ain't gonna let nobody from the outside come back in and try to take it.

Or they're selling drugs on this street, and some other gang wants to come and sell drugs there. I mean, how are you gonna come and take their business?

So it's like that for them. It's an every day going-on thing for them. They grew up doing it, so they're gonna kill for it.

If you start making the young men or the young women who live in a community start doing things like (volunteering), start showing them that there's life outside of the gang, show them other places beyond their own community, then you're going to give them hope and a little bit of love, so they could go and learn and become something.

(I would) make more community kids work in their own communities instead of bringing different people into their area. . . . It should be done by them and not nobody else. I mean, that's pity for them. I don't believe in pity.

Giving something back

You recruit your friends who you grew up with, who've gone out of the gang life . . . to come back to where they lived, to where they grew up, where they committed their crimes, to come back there and give back something in return. . . .

To tell you the truth, I don't even know if I might go back to jail or back to any kind of lifestyle, 'cause I don't know that. I just live day by day.

Right now, everything I've been doing has been paying off. . . . I'm getting paid to go to school, and to go beyond school. My mind's opening more and more.

EDITED BY: Leah Kidwell, 17