Teen-Agers Get a Vision of Hope : Leadership: Teachers, police, social workers and activists give students at conference a dose of adult responsibility and a grip on their futures.

It started in anger, as Ventura County teen-agers at a leadership conference Saturday accused gang detectives of harassing them.

But it ended in raucous cheers before the youths left the daylong conference with fresh resolve and advice for choosing a path in life.

A volunteer corps of teachers, police officers, social workers and activists sought to give the students a dose of adult responsibility and a grip on their futures.

The trick, said conference coordinators from El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, was in filtering through the edgy defensiveness that the crowd of nearly 100 mostly Latino youths brought from the streets--and making them see clearly.

“This youth leadership day has the potential to give them a way up, to give them a vision,” said El Concilio’s Kathy Marrujo-Thurman, who coordinated the event.

The attendees were high school students chosen because they might benefit from extra guidance, she said.

“This is all about vision,” she said. “If they can see themselves there, they can be there.”

The youths rotated in groups through classrooms on the University of California, Santa Barbara campus, hearing seminars on political empowerment, sexuality and on relating to police.

Discussions on this last topic often grew hot, as teen-agers faced down officers who the youths said had been hassling them on the street for suspected gang activity.

Ricardo Melendez, a counselor and Chicano studies teacher, said confrontation could be fruitful because “it’s more unofficial and there’s no uniforms or attitudes in the way.”

Port Hueneme Police Sgt. Fernie Estrella addressed a classroom full of often pugnacious teen-agers, explaining how gang members are labeled.

“Are you guys all aware of what a criteria is for gangs?” he asked.

“Yeah!” a boy shouted, “It’s being Mexican.”

Others noisily agreed.

“No, it’s not just Chicanos,” Estrella said.

“It is, it is!” the group shouted.

“Hey, it’s all ‘Chicanos this, Chicanos that,’ ” Estrella replied. “But what’s the majority of all the people in Oxnard? That’s right, 72% are Chicano. So who do you think they are going to stop?”

One Oxnard boy complained that heavy-handed Oxnard gang detectives pulled him over for no reason. They grilled him about gang membership, but he had no affiliation, he said.

Then they tried to photograph him against his will, he said.

“Two officers came and got me by the neck and picked me up--my feet were off the ground--and they pulled my head up, and they go ‘Smile,’ ” the boy said. “What is up with that?”

Marrujo-Thurman urged the boy to come to El Concilio to fill out a complaint against police, but the boy brushed off the offer, saying, “Nothing’s going to happen.”

A young Moorpark woman said she and some friends were pulled over by sheriff’s deputies, who ordered them out of the car and searched the vehicle for no apparent reason.

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Estrella and other gang officers explained that police have to check out vehicles that look suspicious, adding that they never know what they are going to face.

Estrella then told them, “I used to be where you are.”

As a teen-ager, he said, he was once rousted by police and thrown against a cruiser. At that moment, Estrella said, he vowed to become a police officer because he could do a better job than the officer who had pulled him over. He followed up by going to school and getting a bachelor’s degree, then a master’s degree and then a badge.

Other teen-agers learned about their political rights from instructors such as Mario Brito, a representative of the county branch of the United Farm Workers.

In rapt silence, they watched a videotape of the massive funeral procession that followed the plain wood coffin of UFW leader Cesar Chavez.

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After detailing Chavez’s lifelong fight for the rights of fieldworkers, Brito told them that the power to affect the world and run their own lives is in their hands.

“You have power,” Brito told them. “You vote every day. If you decide to go see a movie that’s bad about Mexicanos, you are giving your money to someone who says bad things about Mexicanos. “

In another classroom, teacher Armando Gonzalez compared political persuasion to family dynamics--trying to talk your parents into letting you go to a dance, for instance.

Moorpark High School student B. J. Dominguez, 15, said of the conference, “I think it’s good. I’m learning not to be ashamed of what color my skin is or what kind of person I am.”

In another seminar, counselor Melendez described an economic cycle that keeps Latinos working hard in low-paying jobs so they cannot find the time or money to find better jobs. He urged them to stay in school.

“If you want to be part of the cycle, that’s up to you,” Melendez said. “But if you want to be part of another cycle that is going to lift your familia , lift your raza to another place, that’s up to you too.” In other classrooms, counselors quizzed students on their knowledge of AIDS and warned them not to shortchange themselves for a few moments of unprotected sex.

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During the dinner break, the youths munched on chicken and tortillas, reflecting on the lessons taught.

“I learned a lot from this,” said Hueneme High student Esmerelda Arroyo, 17. “The most important thing I learned is that we should, in the community--the Chicanos--join together so that we can benefit ourselves more. . . . We should socialize more and participate more in things and just be open-minded.”

At least one student said he found the whole thing “boring.”

Why did he come?

“My mom forced me,” said Robert Rodriguez, 15, of Oxnard High.

But classmate Robert Torres, 16, said he liked the seminars.

It got him thinking, he said. “How come it’s only us Mexicans instead of other races that have more trouble than other people. It’s because we all hurt each other and we don’t know what we’re doing. We’ve got to understand each other.”

Moorpark High School student Claudia Mendoza, 17, said the seminar taught her she could get along with her peers and that “I have to control my temper.”

As the day ended, the teen-agers reconvened at a campus lecture hall.

There, Hueneme teacher Bill Terrazas exhorted the receptive ones to make their own futures. And he berated the resistant ones for putting their heads down on their desks, laughing off the lessons and spitting out attitude during the seminars.

Then counselors began posting some of the students’ feedback, filling blank posters with sharp messages in bright, felt-tip pen.

“Get a voice,” they wrote. “Take a risk. Love each other. Have more raza conferences like this one. Educate yourselves. You can make history. Create our own knowledge.

“Don’t give up on ourselves. Be a leader and not a follower. Do your part.”

As the lists took shape, El Concilio counselor Alberto Rios spoke of the conference’s main goal:

“It’s about bringing them out from an abyss of ignorance,” he said. “And students like Claudia can learn what she can do and take (the lesson) to her friends back home and say, ‘I struggled but I made it.’

“And maybe the story will get passed on and other people will struggle and make it.”