16th Ward rivals embrace the help

Then a hooded figure sprinted across the street about a block away.

Hal Baskin, standing outside his community center in Englewood, shrugged his shoulders. He's seen this kind of thing many times before.

"Doesn't look like anyone got shot," he said. "I'll let you know in an hour."

It did turn out to be a gang shooting, but sure enough, no one was hit. Later in the day on the same block, though, a bullet fired in retaliation would go through a window and hit a man in the arm.

Gangs are a fact of life in this rundown pocket of Chicago's South Side. They're on the street corners. In the classrooms. And they campaign for Baskin and 16th Ward Ald. Shirley Coleman.

Baskin and Coleman have battled in three elections in 12 years. She has won each time.

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A political committee tied to the Gangster Disciples, one of Chicago's largest gangs, supported Baskin in his first race against Coleman. The group, 21st Century V.O.T.E., also briefly worked out of Coleman's office.

Five years ago, Coleman said, she could call a gang leader "and the whole tribe was there" to campaign for her. Now she must deal with gang members much lower in the pecking order, depending on whose turf it is.

"For example, 55th to 51st, Ashland to Loomis--we call on that leadership," she said. "Across Garfield, there's another leadership. The young men now are more independent thinkers. There's not a person who can tell them. They are more on their own. It's getting to know who's on the block."

Gangster Disciples, Black Disciples, Latin Kings and Latin Souls all are active in Englewood. Coleman estimates that at least 30 percent of the community's high school students belong to gangs.

Skeptics question how tough Coleman is on gangs.

Colemnowledged she has not been "active so much personally in the anti-gang movements" sponsored by the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy. But only because CAPS is nothing more than "window dressing" and fails to provide young gang members with job training and drug treatment, she said.

Both Coleman and Baskin see politics as a way for gang members to become productive citizens.

"Most of them have not completed school," said Coleman. "I am happy that working with the mayor we are now going to get our own mobile job training unit. This is how we can get them off the street. Training. Nobody's going to give them a job just because they worked for a day on my campaign."

On Nov. 5, Coleman said, about 40 of her 200 or more volunteers were gang members, working for $25 each. She claimed gang members worked for Baskin because they feared being "violated"--beaten--if they refused.

Baskin called the allegation ridiculous. He paid his workers $40 and threatened nobody, he said. He's lost elections to Coleman, he said, only because she actually pays her workers $75 and "outguns" him financially.

Baskin was a leader of the Hustlers street gang from 1963 to 1970. In the '80s, he opened the Center for the Reduction of Gang Violence. Now he runs Peace Community Center at 63rd and Peoria, where he says kids get hot meals and play without worrying about gunfire.

Baskin, 50, said campaign work shows gang members "how you look at a poll sheet and identify things; read a ward map; have a shirt and tie on and meet Ms. Jones and talk about your candidate; be a judge of election and see how the process works; knock on doors and be a runner on Election Day."