Not all the news out of East L.A. is bad. Forty children at the Humphreys School banded together not as a gang but as Earth Nios, urban environmental activists. Their leaders, Angie Camacho, Horacio Romero, Fernando Becerra, Alejandro and Raul Velasquez, Martin Rodriguez, Sarah Cardona, Paloma Camacho, Dana Page, Rosalinda Ugalde and Annette Martinez planted more than 100 trees at their school and at Occidental College, beautified their neighborhood by planting flowers, led Los Angeles' Unified School District in starting their own aluminum recycling project, and picked up tons of litter on their school grounds and around the neighborhood. And in a time when hope and self-determination were in short supply, Earth Nios provided their community with a good measure of both.