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Life & Times Transcript

4/04/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Gangs are nothing new in Orange County, so why are police especially concerned about this one?

Brian Levin>> First and foremost, I would say that this is a criminal syndicate that is dressed up in White Supremacist garb.

Val Zavala>> And then, rare treasures offer a glimpse into centuries of Chinese art and culture. Did bells sound the same in 700 B.C.?

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val Zavala>> If you think gangs are made up of blacks and Latinos from the inner city, think again. Police are targeting a gang that started in Long Beach, spread through Orange County and all the way to the Arizona border. Besides the usual guns and drugs, this gang cloaks itself in White Supremacy. Orange County reporter, Roger Cooper, has our story.

Roger Cooper>> There's a gang operating on these streets of Costa Mesa, a gang not quite like any other. Part White Supremacist, part criminal enterprise, Public Enemy Number One has been growing in numbers, spreading and getting a lot of attention.

Melissa Carr>> We have taken an interest in Public Enemy Number One, the PENI skinhead group, because they are a dangerous element in the community.

Roger Cooper>> Founded in Orange County and Long Beach, the gang is known for its ever-present tattoos and it goes by a number of names. Public Enemy Number One, PENI, PENI Death Squad and Needle Nazis.

Brian Levin>> This is a dangerous group. It really has to be kept on the radar screen of law enforcement.

Roger Cooper>> And the gang rocketed to the top of the radar last December. That's when investigators discovered an alleged gang hit list with the names of a district attorney and five police officers.

Melissa Carr>> And that raised the activities and the interest in the PENI group to a completely new level. When you start to target law enforcement, you've crossed a line.

Roger Cooper>> Melissa Carr is with the Anti-Defamation League in Orange County. It's been researching and tracking Public Enemy Number One for the past year. The ADL has just released a report on how the gang operates.

Melissa Carr>> They have introduced a neo-Nazi ideology into part of a gang mentality that we have yet to see. Their activities transcend typical gang activity and they also transcend what we usually see in a White Supremacist organization, so they've become a hybrid.

Roger Cooper>> Costa Mesa Police Lieutenant, Clay Epperson, has a lot of experience dealing with Public Enemy Number One.

Lieutenant Clay Epperson>> It doesn't act like a traditional street gang. It's not turf-oriented. In other words, it doesn't take a couple of city blocks and hold it and defend it.

Roger Cooper>> Lieutenant Epperson says that, although it has racist dogma, PENI's prime focus is crime.

Lieutenant Clay Epperson>> And they also have this racist ideology which tends to intimidate and cause a lot of fear, but the reality is that they rarely act out on this racist ideology. They're really a less evolved form of organized crime. They're drug dealers. They're thieves. They're experts in identity theft.

Brian Levin>> First and foremost, I would say that this is a criminal syndicate that is dressed up in White Supremacist garb.

Roger Cooper>> Brian Levin is Director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino. He says the PENI gang operates both on the streets and inside prison.

Brian Levin>> The significance of Public Enemy Number One is that they're filling a void that has been left by the incapacitation of a large number of members of other hate groups that have been based in prison. These include Aryan Brotherhood and Nazi Low Riders.

So PENI, or Public Enemy Number One, is a group that has been undertaking criminal activity ranging from drug trade to counterfeiting to a variety of other types of crimes in large part filling that void left by increased enforcement against these other hate groups.

Roger Cooper>> How big is the PENI gang? There's no definite number, but the Anti-Defamation League report has an estimate.

Melissa Carr>> They have evolved into a group of at least five hundred. We suspect the numbers are greater.

Lieutenant Clay Epperson>> For a while, it was the fastest growing gang inside the California Department of Corrections, so they've grown exponentially.

Roger Cooper>> So how dangerous are they? Should the average person be concerned?

Melissa Carr>> It's not that they're a danger to the common person on the street. I don't think that they are a typical threatening force on the street. Where they become dangerous to members of our community is that they are out there running a drug business by capturing taxpayers' information so that they can turn identities and raise money.

Roger Cooper>> Another cause for concern is that the PENI gang has migrated beyond Orange County.

Lieutenant Clay Epperson>> It's a regional gang. It's all over the entire southern California region.

Melissa Carr>> We see them starting to infiltrate the Pacific Northwest and the Arizona area.

Roger Cooper>> With that in mind, Lieutenant Epperson says that law enforcement is using a coordinated cross-jurisdiction effort that's working against Public Enemy Number One.

Lieutenant Clay Epperson>> This is one gang problem that I feel like we have a comparatively, relatively good handle on. We're able to suppress their activities and the fact that they're drug addicted, the fact that they're not very sophisticated in the way they do organized crime allows us to be fairly effective against them.

Roger Cooper>> Professor Levin says, while the gang's Supremacist aspects concern him, he's more worried about hate groups that try to pass as mainstream.

Brian Levin>> So I'm more worried about groups that are trying to have one foot in the mainstream and one foot in the extreme and getting more membership today. Hate groups are as concerned about getting their message out through the internet and by exploiting mainstream issues, so they don't need actual members. What they need are fellow travelers and some of these fellow travelers will go out and take these bigoted messages and commit acts of violence without necessarily tying themselves to these organized hate groups.

Roger Cooper>> The Anti-Defamation League has posted its report on Public Enemy Number One on its website. They feel exposing hate is the best way to attack it.

Melissa Carr>> We have a brochure called "101 Ways of Fighting Hate in Your Community". I think, if you are a parent and you have children, it's important to instill respect for all people.

Brian Levin>> And what that means is, we have to fight these stereotypes in our schools and not just in the back of patrol cars.

Roger Cooper>> After discovery of the hit list late last year, a massive sweep by three hundred officers resulted in the arrest of sixty-seven alleged gang members. But many more are still out there and police and the ADL are trying to see that they don't live up to their name of Public Enemy Number One. In Orange County, I'm Roger Cooper for Life and Times.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> Last fall, we brought you the story of a resilient newspaper reporter. His name is Leo Greene and he was diagnosed with a fatal disease, ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. That's when your body just shuts down and stops working. Well, Leo decided to use his remaining time to tell his story in the newspaper and on the paper's website. You're about to meet him as he was five months ago and as he is today.

We first filmed Leo Greene in October of 2006 at the Dailey Bulletin in Ontario where he's a reporter. Leo was able to walk, type and talk, albeit slowly.

Leo Greene>> The first symptom I noticed was actually my voice. At certain times of the day, I'd begin to slur my words. About the same time, I was getting muscle twitches in my hand and, shortly thereafter or about the same time, I started developing a limp.

Val Zavala>> ALS kills off nerve cells, then muscles stop working and, within two to five years, the whole body is paralyzed. There is no cure.

Leo Greene>> "That was taken in 1947."

Val Zavala>> Last fall, Leo was living with his fianc�, Judy.

Leo Greene>> We were sweethearts in eighth grade. In fact, when we got together, Judy found a snapshot of the two of us from eighth grade taken at the Los Angeles County Fair.

Val Zavala>> Since then, they've broken off their engagement, but Leo is still producing video stories for the Daily Bulletin. This is his most recent one. He's titled it "Hope".

Leo Greene>> "Another day. Often the days feel numbered. Morning rituals, oatmeal and berries, help me living a little on the belated side. The daily routine has grown into both a struggle and a barometer. On this particular morning, my right arm fails me. I switch to my left.

Undressing, showering, pulling on trousers. It's all getting tougher. Stitches over my right eye, evidence of a fall last week. The internal battle scars are harder to see. I need to rest. I need to keep focused. There are things to do.

Doing what matters. I find hope in that notion. I also found hope in the work on the new filmmaker. Ben Byer's first-person documentary, "Indestructible", debuted in early March at San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival. Ben was diagnosed with ALS in 2002. He was only thirty-one."

Ben Byer>> "I have Lou Gehrig's Disease. G-E-H-R-I-G'-S."

Leo Greene>> "The film tracks Ben's quest for a cure. He travels to China where he explores ancient herbal remedies, practices Tai Chi and consults with Tibetan Monks. Ben finally meets a Chinese physician offering an experimental and expensive surgery. After much consideration, Ben undergoes the questionable procedure. Fetal cells are implanted in his brain and spinal cord. Afterwards, Ben healed, but the ALS progresses.

His journey then turns from the physical to the spiritual. He travels to his religious homeland, Israel. Ben hears from a Rabbi scholar. He prays at Jerusalem's Western Wall. Finally, Ben and his older brother make the three-hour climb to the Masada at the edge of the Judean desert where, in 72 A.D., Jewish rebels defending the mountain citadel chose death over slavery."

[Film Clip]

Leo Greene>> "I related to Ben on so many levels. His disease progression seems similar to mine. We have the same problem with pullover shirts. And Ben's message hit home. There is hope. It's not in the healthy foods I now eat or in the experimental medicines I swallow or inject. True hope. It's an inside job. It's an orientation of the spirit. Another day. The days feel numbered. There are things to do."

Val Zavala>> If you'd like to watch Leo's previous stories, you can go to the newspaper's website at dailybulletin.com/leostory. For information on ALS, you can go to the association's website at alsa.org.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val Zavala>> The Bowers Museum in Santa Ana is twice as large as it used to be and, to help kick off its new wing, it has brought priceless artifacts from China dating back five thousand years. Vicki Curry takes a look at "Treasures from Shanghai".

[Film Clip]

Peter Keller>> What we do in this exhibition is take you through five thousand years of Chinese art and culture, Chinese history, with the very finest pieces available from the Shanghai Museum, pieces that reflect the various dynasties.

Vicki Curry>> It's a treasure vault of ancient objects showing the best of Chinese art going back five millennia. There's pottery, porcelain, jade, painting, lacquer ware, bamboo and bronze.

Peter Keller>> When you talk about the Bronze Age, the Bronze Age in China was just spectacular. You talk about porcelains, the porcelains that were made in the early Ming Dynasty and before are almost the best in the world.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> The oldest items in the exhibit come from the Neolithic period about five thousand years ago, like these pieces of painted pottery and these jade ornaments and jewelry.

Peter Keller>> But the fun thing to do is to think back what was going on elsewhere in the world at any one of those points in time. You know, three thousand years ago, there wasn't a lot going on in Europe or in the United States for the Americans. So China was definitely the center of the civilization at the time.

Vicki Curry>> A good example of that is this piece called an Oracle Bone from around the twelfth century B.C.

Peter Keller>> One of the earliest forms of writing that we know of anywhere in the world was done in China during the Neolithic period. Actually engraved characters on the scapula of a cow or a bull.

Vicki Curry>> Many of the objects were unearthed from tombs where they were preserved for dozens of centuries. The ancient Chinese believed in a rich afterlife, so the items they took to the grave carried a special significance. This dog made of pottery represented someone's pet. And this creature, made sometime between 206 B.C. and 220 A.D., was meant to guard a tomb against evil.

Peter Keller>> You look at the dates on these pieces and they can be three thousand years old and, first of all, they look like they were made yesterday. They're so technologically superb. You would never dream that an ancient culture could make such a thing.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Decorations and materials changed across the dynasties depending on the fashions, economics or beliefs of the time. Designs ranged from elaborate to realistic to simple. Some objects were part of everyday life while others were used in ceremonial rites. Taken as a group, they paint a vivid portrait of Chinese culture and lifestyle.

Peter Keller>> One of my favorite pieces is a Ming Dynasty painting, a scroll, that -- you're not going to believe this -- but it shows a group of women playing golf or it appears to be golf. They're holding golf clubs and they're putting a round ball into a hole. That's about three hundred years before golf was invented in Scotland. That's just, I think, a fun part of this exhibition.

Vicki Curry>> The Bowers and Shanghai Museums hope items like that inspire visitors to learn more about Chinese history.

Chen Kelun>> I very hope the visitor will like our exhibition and very hope they get the interest to know the ancient China as well as they can find something about present China.

Peter Keller>> Just walking around with you, I got excited about almost every piece. So there are lots to come and see. I think it's well worth the trip down to Santa Ana to see "Treasures from Shanghai".

Val Zavala>> If you were growing up in East Los Angeles in the forties and fifties, there was only one place to be on a sunny weekend and that's at places like this where the priorities were clear: church, family and baseball. It was a golden era when homegrown heroes stayed in the neighborhood.

Saul Toledo>> The Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation had what they called a municipal day, meaning muni for municipal.

Val Zavala>> Local teams on playgrounds who played some very serious ball.

Saul Toledo>> You know, I never had a baseball bat in my hands until they started this program.

Val Zavala>> Saul Toledo was twenty-six when he stepped onto Evergreen Field in East Los Angeles. Most of the time, he played second base for the Carmelitas, a team that came to be known as the Yankees of the muni leagues.

Saul Toledo>> That's my picture. I'm in that picture of that team up there that won the championship. I played pretty good ball until I was in my early thirties, you know.

Val Zavala>> Saul's memories and those of hundreds of others were brought together at Cal State Los Angeles' library.

Dr. Francisco Balderrama>> This is the only exhibit ever done focusing on Mexican-American baseball, let alone here in southern California.

Val Zavala>> Students of Professor Francisco Balderrama did the detective work in collecting memorabilia: photos, oral histories and artifacts, documenting amateur baseball from the thirties through the sixties. The teams reflected the neighborhoods they were in.

Dr. Francisco Balderrama>> So that you have Mexican teams playing Black teams, Mexican teams playing Japanese-American teams.

Saul Toledo>> But the majority of them by this time were mostly Mexican, you know.

Val Zavala>> The teams were often sponsored by businesses or growers who figured, if their employees played together, they would also work well together and stay loyal to the company. But that didn't always happen when Mexican-Americans started leagues of their own.

Dr. Francisco Balderrama>> And they used those leagues, they used that baseball time, very, very often to meet and discuss issues of the workplace, to organize strikes against those companies. So instead of really being company teams, they ended up being union teams.

Val Zavala>> Few owners were as passionate or as beloved as Mario Lopez. He was a successful businessman who owned a Chorizo factory.

Saul Toledo>> You know what a Chorizo is? It's a very famous Mexican delicacy, you know, to make with egg omelets or you can make it with beans. Anything you mixed in there, the Chorizo was going to make it delicious, you know.

Val Zavala>> And that gave Saul Toledo an idea.

Saul Toledo>> And it clicked. What a natural thing to call them: the Chorizeros, sausage makers. The Carmelita sausage makers, you know. And it took off like mad and then they started making the uniforms, instead of Carmelita Provisions, Chorizeros.

Val Zavala>> The Carmelita Chorizeros became a powerhouse on the field.

Saul Toledo>> They had winning streaks of twenty or twenty-two games at a time. They were playing one game a week, so that's twenty weeks that they went without losing a game.

Val Zavala>> And in the bleachers, crowds of fans along with Mariachis, tacos and beer. The players didn't get paid, did you?

Saul Toledo>> No, no. I've been asked that question before. Let me tell you what used to happen. He was smart enough to do it this way. When a player first got a homerun to win a ballgame, you know, or was the player of the game or whatever reason, he'd pass him a five dollar bill. Nobody would see it, you know. He did that a lot. He did that a lot. We had several guys that were given, you know, five dollars like a tip for winning a ballgame or whatever you call it. But pay? No.

Val Zavala>> The umpires got paid with help from a raffle. The prize? A couple of pounds of Mario's Chorizo.

Saul Toledo>> My impression of Mr. Lopez was that his first interest in life was his family, okay? Second, it was his business, and third, baseball, and fourth, the Santa Anita Racetrack (laughter). He loved to go to Santa Anita every Saturday. We'd get together at the shop there and he'd cook Carnitas for us and nice tacos and tamales, you name it, and he'd pay for all this. Off we'd go to Santa Anita. He'd load us up in his car, take us to Santa Anita and he would pay admission for all of us and give us a few bucks to bet. You talk about generous. Yes, he was very generous.

Val Zavala>> The Mexican-American teams produced some professional and semi-pro players.

Saul Toledo>> Some of them even played in Mexico. They started their career right there. I got an article there on Ernie Sierra who started playing ball at Evergreen and then he went off to play professional ball.

Val Zavala>> There were also the famous Pena Brothers, nine baseball-loving brothers brought together on one team for an exhibition game. That attracted the attention of an editor at the Los Angeles Times.

Saul Toledo>> And then he entered it into Ripley's Believe It Or Not. I wish I had a copy of that, but I didn't have it. Ripley had it in his Believe It Or Not, a nine-brother baseball team.

Val Zavala>> It wasn't always fun and games. The Zoot-Suit riots and Mexican-American bashing rocked the community in 1942 during the war, but the local ball teams gave the community something to cheer about. In the early fifties, the Mexican-American residents of Chavez Ravine were uprooted and evicted to make way for Walter O'Malley's Dodgers. But when a tortilla surfaced bearing a suspiciously familiar face, some of the sting softened. The tortilla source is still a mystery. And through it all, the Chorizeros, managed for twenty years by Shorty Perez, were winning championships, nineteen in all.

Saul Toledo>> The fondest memories would be winning the championship for Mario, you know.

Val Zavala>> Mario Lopez died in 1966. The Carmelita Chorizeros lost their heart and soul and were never the same. Local ball was eroded further by soccer, NFL on television and the Dodgers and Angels. Do you still go to baseball games?

Saul Toledo>> Oh, yes, yes. I haven't stopped. Baseball is still my love. I'm crazy about the Angels, always have been.

Val Zavala>> Angels?

Saul Toledo>> Oh, yeah. You know what year I saw my first Angel game? Ready? 1936. I saw my very first Los Angeles Angels game over at Wrigley Field on 43rd and Avila.

Val Zavala>> Saul went on to sports writing and announcing and barrio baseball moved on as well to the big leagues. What do you think these days of so many Mexican-Americans and Latinos and Hispanics in baseball?

Saul Toledo>> Yes, what a great question. You have a great question. The reason for that is, to me, it became a national pastime in all these countries, especially South America. As you know, to this day, I forget what it is, but something like twenty-five, thirty, maybe forty percent of the professional baseball players are Latino. Something fantastic, especially now Arte Moreno, a Chicano, a first Mexican owner of a major league sports team, Arte Moreno. Isn't that something?

Val Zavala>> As for Mario's factory, it moved to Monterey Park just a mile or so from Evergreen Field. It's still owned by the Lopez family and, in the world of Chorizo makers, it's still batting five hundred.

And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Sponsored in part by:


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