Students Turn to Sweet Tradition to Help Get Guns Off Their Streets

School’s out on a breezy afternoon in El Sereno, and a giggling, bouncing mass of 13-year-old saleswomen are honing their skills at an all-American tradition.

They are selling World’s Finest chocolate bars door-to-door, using such tried-and-true sales pitches as: Pleeease and It’s for a good cause, Mister.

But for Ernie Delgado’s history classes, the timeworn tradition of selling candy for charity comes with a twist of an unfortunate modern-day reality. They are raising money to buy guns that are wreaking havoc in their northeast Los Angeles community.

More than 100 students at El Sereno Middle School have taken up the effort to get weapons off the streets, and most say the campaign is desperately needed.

“Sometimes when you’re sleeping, you hear gunshots,” said Jennie Morelos, 13. “If you’ve lived in this neighborhood long enough, you don’t even wake up anymore.”

The classes will pay $100 for any gun voluntarily relinquished by its legal owner. Under the supervision of officers from the Los Angeles Police Department, the buybacks are expected to start this week at a local church. The students hope to raise enough money to buy 20 guns, which authorities will destroy.

The effort is one of many in recent years to disarm America by offering such inducements as cash, car washes, dry cleaning, concert tickets, even psychotherapy. However, Luis Tolley, western director of the nonprofit organization Handgun Control, said the El Sereno effort was the first such campaign by students he could recall in California.

“There aren’t huge numbers of weapons confiscated in these buybacks,” he said. “But they do educate people. It’s about getting people to talk about whether they want deadly weapons in the home.”

Officers from LAPD’s Hollenbeck station are trying to solve some potential glitches in the plan. Sgt. Mike Peterson said police would have to do an ownership check of each gun and would confiscate without payment any guns found to have been used in a crime. Such investigations can take time and preclude paying money on the spot.

“Ideally it would be good to have gang members bring them in,” Peterson said, adding that the weapons must be operable. “Bringing an old rusty gun that you couldn’t fire if you wanted to would defeat the purpose.”

Delgado, the history teacher and organizer, said some parents and students opted out of the chocolate-for-money-for-guns project because it was too sensitive in an area with many gangs.

A former legislative aide to Los Angeles City Councilwoman Rita Walters, Delgado said the fund-raiser is a way to show students they can improve their community. He tries daily to come up with activities to stimulate their interest in the world--from giving after-school fishing lessons to helping students stage local candidates’ debates and voter drives. In April, he took a group to Washington, D.C.

The buyback is a history lesson, he said. “People who make history are people who go out and take a risk doing something different,” he said.

The students say they appreciate his encouragement and creativity. “He’s the best teacher we’ve ever had,” said Lina Rodas, 13.

The students first hit the streets with their chocolate and nut bars on a recent afternoon.

They headed down Eastern Avenue, which is the heart of El Sereno, a predominantly Latino working-class community. They swarmed potential customers on sidewalks, shrieked across quiet, shady lanes and smiled sweetly through steel screen doors.

While they flooded the sidewalks, only an occasional cholo walked by, and there were few gang graffiti tags to be seen on walls and fences.

At night, it’s a different world, students said. Many parts of El Sereno become the feudal battlegrounds of one of the city’s more notorious gang neighborhoods.

“I had a neighbor who was a drug dealer,” said Jennie, as she walked on her sales mission. “One day I saw his gun and I had nightmares for a week. I thought he’d shoot my dad or something.”

She approached a bus stop as her friends strategically moved toward a street of well-kept homes they considered good sales territory. “Wanna buy a chocolate?” Jennie said--five times--once to each person on the bench. The simple pitch was fruitless until she explained the gun buyback. One woman took the bait and forked over a dollar for a candy bar.

“I think it’s a good deal,” said customer Sherry Jones. The gang members “sure aren’t going to give them up on their own.”