What can be done about inner city gangs?

[Crusade]

Easily 90% of the time I read a discussion about "gangs" I walk away infuriated. For the most part, people who bring it up are typically conservative and the discussion carries a clearly racist undertone. I strongly believe, however, that the topic itself shouldn't be ignored all together because it might fan the flames of hatred for people who would have the hatred either way. Chicago has a major problem with gangs. I've lived here my entire life, in many different parts of it, and I think I have a good enough understanding of it at this point. I'm not in a gang myself, but most of the friends, a few of my cousins, and about 20% of everyone I know personally is in a gang. The very nature of them is beyond negotiation or debate. The way they operate in some of the cases I've seen is so absurdly random and irrational that, other than evading them all together, I don't see how you could avoid confrontation.

Really, a lot of people are like this. It's not only gangs and there's really no way to prevent groups of assholes from joining up and harassing people. My main concern really is HOW people have chosen to deal with it. For people in the community, many either join opposing gangs or join the SAME GANG that they're afraid of to be spared. It reminds me of the whole gun control debate(other people have guns so I need them too). While the primary base of most gangs is in the inner city, there are even branches in most south suburban Chicago neighborhoods. I don't believe gangs are as easily explained by poverty as drug dealing and prostitution. Depending on who you're talking about, the ORIGIN of most gangs had something to do with defending themselves from something. The Black P-Stones in Chicago originally started as a defense group against white supremacists. The Latin Kings started as self defense against anti-Hispanic hatred at the time. But clearly today, their intentions are anything but defensive. Some serve as organizations to sell drugs, while others, honest to God, seem to serve no purpose but to cause harm and assert power for absolutely no reason.

I can complain about this all day, but the discussion comes to a halt when we start talking about solutions. If you talk to people who don't live in the inner city, the solution is very likely to have something to do with police. Yes, tougher, less "lenient"(:rolleyes:), more intrusive police work. The thing about that is, to police, everyone in my neighborhood under the age of 30 is in a gang. They've made it very clear they're not protecting ME or anyone I know, they're protecting OTHER people from US. As far as I know the police are a gang amongst themselves, a gang obviously not intended to serve and protect me or anyone else here. I know a lot of good people who join gangs out of fear and I know a lot of assholes who join them because they're assholes. I've known people who were killed for trying to leave. Prison has made the gang problem even worse by sustaining an environment where joining a gang is a necessity for survival, even more so than the outside.

What can be done about it really? :( Easier access to social workers? Community organizing? Self defense classes? CNN articles starring black people blaming it on Hip Hop culture and fitted caps?

[Stand Your Ground]

I once had a discussion about stopping gangs with some gang members. They said gangs started as a reponse to racism and poverty. Selling drugs and robbing was a way of making a living for them. They said it was their way of 'fighting the system'. I don't think gangs will end until all prejudices are gone and everyone has equal opportunities for work.

Fighting, killing and robbing each other isn't going to help. It just gives racists an excuse to retain their prejudices. They need to keep the peace and stand together and try to get some change acomplished instead of tearing themselves down. How I wish we could have them see the error. :(

[Chambered Word]

Dismantling the capitalist system would be a good start.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I like how you framed the question - violence is a real concern for working class people but the way the media and politicians present the problem is inherently racist and anti-working class.

In Oakland, whenever the media reports an overly sensationalized account of some violence, idiots on the radio and online blame "Oakland's hip hop 'thug' culture" which is just a white-bigot's euphemism for "blacks and latinos have inferior culture".

The way the media and establishment present the gang "problem" is by blaming it on underlying cultural problems and poor personal choices. Progressives and working people in "gang areas" respond by saying: you don't understand it's hard to avoid getting caught up in this. Which is true to some extent, but it puts the ball in the conservative court on ruling class terms because then it is still a problem of bad personal choices - just hard to avoid bad choices.

I think we need to look at this problem in a more structural and systemic way... gangs have always existed in working class areas (particularly among oppressed and defenseless groups - for self-protection, insurance rackets, a kind of corrupt community self-policing). It can't possibly be a problem due to 19th century Irish/Italian/Korean/Chinese/Eastern European immigrant culture as well as working class Anglo culture, 20th century immigrant culture, 20th century Jazz culture, 20th century hip hop culture. What cultures are left after that? Upper class culture - well they have the biggest gangs of all - and have made them legal!

So then when you begin to look at organized gangs as symptoms of other root problems, then it takes the debate away from the racist bullshit you always hear about this issue*. When you talk about the statistics that show that young black males followed by young black women and latino men are the first to loose their jobs during economic recessions and never fully recover during the boom periods then it becomes clearer where the root of the problem is. Once you put the issue onto social terms then it becomes about how do you make reforms so that people can have some stability in their lives, decent place to live, jobs to look forward too and so on. The book "Cant's Stop, Won't Stop: describes that in the early 80s, some reformers and the catholic church in LA held a press conference with the leaders of the crips about stopping gang violence and their solutions were: housing reform and jobs that would help people feel like they could have a decent job in the future and support themselves.

That was their answer, but the ruling class's answer was to demonize minorities, racially profile, bring more misery and violence to inner-city communities, dump public money into the prison system, give cops a freer hand to brutalize people and more weapons and cars and helicopters. Did it work - no. What did work in the late 80s and early 90s in California was a truce made from the bottom up by working class kids and the gang members themselves... the peace that followed was celebrated and reflected by the emergence of g-funk west coast gangster rap which went from the early gangster stories about aggressive hostility to stories mostly about cursing around and going to parties.

So while to get of most of the crimes we seen in capitalist societies, we have to create a different kind of society, but in the near-term there are many reforms that can be fought for an won that will make life better for the working poor and unemployed poor. We need to fight for equal rights for all people so that immigrants don't join gangs out of the need for protection and to stop the control over immigrants that gangs have by charging undocumented worker for transport into the country; we need to make sure that school are funded and not just a purgatory for working class youth who realize there are no jobs that can give them a decent life and so no point to the humiliations of going to an underfunded school where the cops come and search you. People need to have decent homes and jobs and freedom and then gangs will loose their purpose.




*This is not some accident of newspapers simply trying to sell more papers. The neoliberal project of gutting social spending while bolstering the repressive organs of the government have used the idea of inner-city "super-criminal" juvenile sociopaths. Also, racist stereotypes have been sold to people to create divisions between black and brown and white and asian people. Ironically, in California, the prisons system built on gang fear-mongering is probably the main institution for creating gangs - groups like the Aryan Brotherhood and the Nortenos and Surenos all got big inside prisons.

[Dr Mindbender]

Of course gangs are a class caused phenomenon. You never see 'petty bourgeoisie' gangs racing around well-to-do areas doing drive bys and slinging crack on the streets.

In the british isles i'm not sure the issue is so much to do with race. Here there are probably as many, if not more white gangs than there are of other ethnicities. Where i am we have the paramilitaries but thats a wholly different political kettlefish even if their social effect is the same.

[Jacobinist]

I say revolutionize them. The bourgeouis government currently allows them to exist, because they are vultures that attack the working class. But, if these well armed gangs were to be revolutionized, or made political, and the borgeois found themselves at the end of 'gang crime' then the National Guard would be sent to every inner city, block, project complex, and gang members would be rounded up and shot.

But because they are relatively stupid, and pose no threat to the government, they are allowed to exist.

Personally, gangs here dont scare me. But the gangs in Guatemala/El Salvador, whoa, thats a gang problem.


"You never see 'petty bourgeoisie' gangs racing around well-to-do areas doing drive bys and slinging crack on the streets" - Dr.

Not because they dont exist, they're simply off the radar. The drug was is only used to covertly expand Imperialism, while at home, suppressing minorities and the poor into second class citizenship status.

[sponsoredwalk]

My understanding of the inner city gangs in California and around that part of America comes from Michael Parenti.

He has said in many lectures that there have been moments when rival gangs were on the verge of settling their differences & the police force made it their duty to re-kindle the flames of hatred.

If you're interested find some of his lectures on the net, they are fascinating.

Anyway, you can see that this kind of phenomenon serves a purpose, it keeps people scared, keeps people spending money on building up those fortresses formerly known as gate communities, fractures & distances people from their fellow human beings out of fear,
fosters a healthy undercurrent of repressed racism.

One can look at the fate of the Black Panthers, how their original quest to rebel against an oppressive society ended in the police ravaging them, causing them to go militia like & ultimately fall apart.


You never see 'petty bourgeoisie' gangs racing around well-to-do areas doing drive bys and slinging crack on the streets.

Mindbender, "I disagree" with your analysis, as the scientific proof in my linked source below clearly indicates!

youtube.com/watch?v=pzOBlPKZjxE

[Scary Monster]

I thought the answer would be obvious to a communist :p - do away with the conditions that cause gangs to exist. Get rid of poverty, make minorities see they are in the same boat and are being fucked over by the system- make em see they are part of the same class and have the same interests (class-consciousness). For now, get rid of whatever it is that fuels the fires of division between blacks and hispanics (in the US). I can't understand what it is, many Mexicans over here really hate blacks. I never really get a straight answer to this. I guess its just plain ol' prejudice.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I thought the answer would be obvious to a communist :p - do away with the conditions that cause gangs to exist. Get rid of poverty, make minorities see they are in the same boat and are being fucked over by the system- make em see they are part of the same class and have the same interests (class-consciousness). For now, get rid of whatever it is that fuels the fires of division between blacks and hispanics (in the US). I can't understand what it is, many Mexicans over here really hate blacks. I never really get a straight answer to this. I guess its just plain ol' prejudice.Racial divisions in the US aren't just black and white (oooh, double entendre!) even native born Mexican American communities display bigotry to immigrants in the Southwest and urban Mexican immigrants sometimes have elitist views of central Americans and Mexican immigrants from rural areas with more indigenous culture and features.

But in general I think this bigotry is exaggerated. In my neighborhood I have seen cross-racial class solidarity much more frequently than bigotry. Additionally, most of the crime is within one ethinc group, so the 2 competing gangs where I live are both mostly latino.

But the black vs. latino bigotry that does exist seems to be more connected to gang rivalries. One thing to know about the Prison system in California (the 2nd largest in the world after the US's system) is that it is legally segregated. A few years ago a court actually determined that that was unconstitutional. But when there were gang riots in one of the prisons, the corrections system argued that it was a result of integration.

Now the standard in prisons is that they racially segregate you for 6 months and then after that point you can request to be desegregated:rolleyes:. Of course this does nothing to stop the state-supported creation of race-based prison gangs and by the time you've been in for 6 months, you have your boundaries already set for you.

I have a friend who's been in prison through all of this and as he says, it's hard to remember sometimes that it's 2010 in California but 1960 in the CA prisons. He's black and says that the so-called race-riots began because of anger over a shortage of something or some other fairly regular problem and that the only racial element was gangs using the riot to settle scores... and since the gangs are race-based, this meant black vs. brown violence.

[AntifaAustralia]

Crips were the Black panther youths, how they became pimps and dealers i dont know.

Gangsterism is anarcho-capitalism. They hate cops, so they can have revolutionary potential! also these gangsters have become perfect tools of the captialsit media, we must tread with caution.

One of the biggest problems is smashing the unawareness of the gangsters and the malinformed gangsters. They really are a hard bunch to sway their money filled mind, But when they are ethnic minorities, watch out! they have mega potential!

I'm concerned about the racist white southern gangs, you reckon poor whites and poor blacks get along because they are equally poor? like pirates?

I australia poor white morons usually get along with the ethnic poor asians and islanders. But in melbourne people get stabbed and robbed most noticeably indians.

[comrade_cyanide444]

Not all gangs are black. There are white and latino one, asian and native American ones. Many of you are going to yell at me for saying this, possibly flame me for being a hippie.... But I think legalization of cannabis is necessary. Now don't get me wrong here.... Where I'm from, I'm around a lot of potheads. However first of all, cannabis has been shown in very few studies to have harmful effects

Iverson, Leslie. “Long-term effects of exposure to cannabis.” Seems to demonstrate that psychosis is not mediated by cannabinoid exposure.

There are numerous studies on therapeutic potential of cannabinoids.

Cannabinoids seem to prevent cancer versus cause it.

Hallucinogens like psilocybin (converts to psilocin inside the body) seem to activate serotonin receptors only for the period of use.

My point is that making psychoactive substances completely illegal increases organized crime. Take the Prohibition. When alcohol was banned, the organized crime shot up. Groups of people who had no regard for morals or the law killed each other for buyers who would buy their alcohol. The same happens here. The great majority of gang related violence comes from control over buyers' territory. Cannabis is easily grown, and only a guy who is willing to do dirty work is necessary to dissipate it. I could go on and on about studies pertaining to cannabis but, the reason most people who are users appear to be failures is because they started at an age that they were to immature to start at. They came from low-income environments which created great stress for them.....

[aziraphale]

I think that to a large extent this problem is caused by capitalism causing minorities and the poor to feel that they must have economic power to be worthwhile humans while simultaneously depriving them of the means to get that economic power. In order to feel better, some inner city youth will join gangs in order to have power at least over their neighbors. The bourgoise response? Cracking down by making drug offenses tougher, adding even power to the police and racial profiling. I think the solution would probably be to, in the long term, get rid of the class system and in the short term reduce the stigma of poverty.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Not all gangs are black. There are white and latino one, asian and native American ones. Many of you are going to yell at me for saying this, possibly flame me for being a hippie.... But I think legalization of cannabis is necessary. Now don't get me wrong here.... Where I'm from, I'm around a lot of potheads. However first of all, cannabis has been shown in very few studies to have harmful effects

Iverson, Leslie. “Long-term effects of exposure to cannabis.” Seems to demonstrate that psychosis is not mediated by cannabinoid exposure.

There are numerous studies on therapeutic potential of cannabinoids.

Cannabinoids seem to prevent cancer versus cause it.

Hallucinogens like psilocybin (converts to psilocin inside the body) seem to activate serotonin receptors only for the period of use.

My point is that making psychoactive substances completely illegal increases organized crime. Take the Prohibition. When alcohol was banned, the organized crime shot up. Groups of people who had no regard for morals or the law killed each other for buyers who would buy their alcohol. The same happens here. The great majority of gang related violence comes from control over buyers' territory. Cannabis is easily grown, and only a guy who is willing to do dirty work is necessary to dissipate it. I could go on and on about studies pertaining to cannabis but, the reason most people who are users appear to be failures is because they started at an age that they were to immature to start at. They came from low-income environments which created great stress for them.....

While decriminalization of drugs (free and de-stigmatized services for substance abuse) or simply ending the "war on drugs" and "war on crime" would be great steps in the right direction, gangs and gang-violence pre-date the widespread use of pot or other substances.

In essence, gangs are organizations from the fringes of the working class communities that illegally take on some of the problems in these communities. From "protection rackets" to drug dealing, gangs try and create a monopoly on crime and the black market in their various communities.

The Black Panthers are a good example of how radical organizing in communities can actually eliminate some of the usefulness of gangs. The BBP had programs for poor kids, organized the lumpen "brother on the block", drug treatment programs, and so on. Not only were they showing up the government by doing programs like this when the governmnet didn't, but they also took some of the space away from street-gangs.

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

The media likes to focus on black and hispanic gangs a lot. Do they ever really talk about the shit that the Insane Popes have done? No. Because the media doesn't want to show white anglos being violent in their gangs. Bonehead gangs have already completed serving their purpose to the media of discrediting working class skinhead culture, which started out with influence from black Jamaican ska music as part of their counter-culture in britain.

No, now the media is using black and hispanic gangs as an excuse to have more law enforcement in our cities to do what they do best; enforcing the system.

[Timebomb]

I've seen young British lads 14-18 years old forming gangs they all could have places in education or jobs if they wanted them but they choose crime not really for the cash becuase they earn the same as me, it's so they can call them selfs gangsters.At the minute they aren't that dangerous but most murders don't get reported by the press.

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

The Black Panthers are a good example of how radical organizing in communities can actually eliminate some of the usefulness of gangs. The BBP had programs for poor kids, organized the lumpen "brother on the block", drug treatment programs, and so on. Not only were they showing up the government by doing programs like this when the governmnet didn't, but they also took some of the space away from street-gangs.

And the Young Lords (Puerto Rican equivelent group).
And the Brown Berets (Chicano group, also similar in concept)