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Good Gangs
Over the past few years, the phenomenon of youth gangs has spawned its own field of criminology-part social science, part political spectacle. Police have been declaring war on gangs for decades, officials have deployed social workers, teachers and "gang specialists" in the fight; think tanks have churned out reams of research on the sociology of gang violence... and yet gangs continue to proliferate and thrive.
Sarah Garland, in an article in the American Prospect (an excerpt of her book Gangs in Garden City), parses the roots of the gang boom, focusing on the burgeoning Latino community in Hempstead, Long Island. The story of Jessica begins with a stereotypical pathology:
Until middle school, Jessica had lived in a house that neighbors dubbed the "crack house" for its often drug-addled residents and visitors. Her uncles were members of Mara Salvatrucha, a gang originally formed in Los Angeles by refugees of Central America's civil wars, and Jessica's living room was one of their main hangouts.
But Garland reveals deeper layers in Jessica's story. She started school in a class for English language learners, since her teachers overlooked the fact that she spoke fluent English. She continued to struggle in school and earned a reputation as a troublemaker. She joined Salvadorans with Pride in seventh grade "as a gesture of defiance" against the man who sexually abused her-an uncle who belonged to a rival gang.
The lure of gang life, according to Garland, isn't just economic hardship, a desire for excitement, or social frustration, though all of those may play a role. In many cases, gangs are a pathway to self-determination when every other road is a dead end.
the truth was that the gangs' rise to power revealed not what they offered to a new generation of immigrants and their children but what America did not: safety, dignity, and a future.
Garland notes that Salvadorans with Pride is an offshoot of an earlier group that had sought to protect the community. In response to threats from local American gangs, as well as fears of police, Latino immigrants formed a collective as an ad-hoc self-defense force. But their hopes of becoming a grassroots security and self-help organization were eventually eclipsed by violent rivalries and other street crime.
Nobody likes to see their neighborhoods overrun with violence. The dissonance emerges when officials decry gangs as a criminal scourge, yet many youth seem to think they're the most worthwhile recreational activity in the neighborhood.
The reported surge in gang activity on Navajo territory exemplifies the role of segregation and social alienation in the spread of gangs. In an interview on National Public Radio, Natay Carroll, a former gang member, suggested that a sense of being under siege actually pushes gangs toward violent escalation:
we've always heard [in anti-gang messages] the term, 'let's fight back. Let's take back.' And these are real combative words when you put it out there into a community, you know, let's fight for this. Let's fight back. Let's take back. You know, it's almost in a sense you're egging on the gang to resist you....That was one of the main things that I saw that I always resisted against when I heard, oh, we're going take back the streets or whatever, you know, and we're like yeah, come and try it. I dare you.
Under more enlightened policies, gangs and their surrounding communities might present each other with a different sort of challenge. Currently, dueling bills in Congress propose contrasting approaches: the Gang Abatement and Prevention Act would ramp up criminal penalties for gang-related offenses. The Youth PROMISE Act, meanwhile, focuses instead on prevention initiatives and community-based intervention programs.
Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles has helped pioneer the movement from anti-gang to pro-youth strategies for community safety. The organization steers youth away from gangs by offering them something more rewarding: a chance to finish high school, publish their writing, or run their own business.
As the public dialogue on gangs grows increasingly professionalized and clinical, lawmakers might be quick to dismiss such interventions as "soft on crime," syrupy do-gooderism. But Homeboy Industries doesn't have to worry about proving the program's effectiveness to skeptics: the kids who run the place every day already know it works.
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7 Comments so far
Show AllYo Homes!! Gangs is EMPOWERMENT, stupid, greedy, brutalized community? Stupid brutal gangs.
We NEED to build MORE and BETTER gangs. Gangs of vegetarian octegenarian euthenasia bombers. Gangs of green guatamalan/samoan tatooed freaks stomping the crap out of litterbugs and rude busdrivers.
BUILD GANGS, ORGANIZE, RESIST.
Police have been declaring war on gangs for decades . . .
You can now include the Republicans and the Democrats as gangs to declare war on. Beware: they are heavily armed. Their favorite weapon is a $20 bill.
Gangs are fraternal societies, just like the Elks and the Rotary. They provide protection in a harsh world where the PD are not there to protect you.
"That was one of the main things that I saw that I always resisted against when I heard, oh, we're going take back the streets or whatever, you know, and we're like yeah, come and try it. I dare you."
This is exactly right. It's coupled with a sense that "This neighborhood is ours and we keep it safe."
As far as the escalation over the past several decades, that can be traced directly to the "War on Drugs". With the immense demand for drugs in this country, it stands to reason that there would be organizations that develop to fill that demand. Since these drugs are illegal, the organizations are, by definition, criminal. Local gangs are the model franchise holders.
When the WoD started heating up, the SWAT teams proliferated into Police Departments across the country. And as the cops got heavier weapons, so did the gangsters.
(incidentally, the guy who built the first SWAT team was also the guy that started the DARE program, and was the Chief of Police in LA during the Rodney King Riots. Daryll Gates is probably more responsible for the militarization of our streets and our schools than any other individual).
This article doesn't mention the role of the drug trade in gangs but it's the easiest (and safest) way the gang can make money.
Legalizing and taxing all drugs, controlling them the way that alcohol and cigarettes are done, would scale back the ability of the gangs to build membership and firepower and it would de-escalate the animosity between the Police and the minority communities (and solve the budget crisis and reduce the costs to states for enforcement and incarceration.............).
Gangs aren't merely drug distribution systems. The way to get rid of gangs is to build a society everyone can participate in and no one feels alienated from. The benefits of gangs need to be explored and provided by other systems - family, school, community, worthwhile employment.
"Police have been declaring war on gangs for decades . . ."
And some would say the police are a gang too.
If we legalized drugs we'd probably put the gangs out of business. If we created jobs via a Green New Deal, we'd give young people direction when their gangs dissolve. All gangs really do is encourage young, poor people to commit violence against each other and provide fodder for the private prison industry. They also help spread fear (which further fractures solidarity between working people) and stereotypes which help get regressives elected and regressive policies pushed through.
So, I'm not going to glorify street gangs. It's easy to hate them because they do hurt and scare innocent citizens. I doubt a Hell's Angel or a Latin King would want to do anything but shoot me in the chest. But waging bloody war on them doesn't really stop gangs any more than it does terrorism because it doesn't kill the root of the problem.
On the other hand, there are healthy subcultures that young people can get involved in, and when you have a social conscience within those subcultures, you have real potential for social change.
Objectively, most large gangs are criminal enterprises, focused on maximizing profits at the expense of local communities and small distributors. So too are most large corporations. The only difference is that the government treats one as criminal and the other as master.
Gangs provide camaraderie and a way out only because society denies everything else to the poorest people in our society. But that camaraderie is just like in a business, except much more lethal; disagreements with management are not allowed and fellow "brothers" are known to betray/kill each other for drug profits or on suspicions of defection.
We need more communal organizations to empower everyone. We need the spirit to break laws and snub authorities that are enforcing corruption. But no one needs the selfish and violent attempts to increase power.
To cut the power of gangs, we destroy the value of their commodity (drugs via legalization) and their appeal (reduce public desperation/poverty, increase education/youth activism). To cut the arbitrary power of the cops, we destroy their necessity (by reducing gangs and desperation) and their authority (too many ways...abolish the MIC, remove the "good faith" exceptions, challenge systemic discrimination, citizen and neighborhood self-defense, etc.)
"Objectively, most large gangs are criminal enterprises, focused on maximizing profits at the expense of local communities and small distributors. So too are most large corporations. The only difference is that the government treats one as criminal and the other as master."
Very true. They're just engaging in a rawer capitalism, and we can't lose sight of that. What would Tim Geithner and Larry Summers be doing had they been born into poverty and despair?
Btw, a relevant local article...
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09187/982040-53.stm