U.S. gangs

[Jalapeno Enema]

For a long, long time now there have been struggles to combat inequality, and revolutions are integral to history.

Depending on who wins, one side becomes the "oppressors" or "radicals" and the other becomes the "patriots" or "revolutionaries". It, of course, is rarely a clear cut as this. The revolutionaries are typically only legitimate (in the history books) if they come through to the end. Otherwise they're labeled insurgents, terrorist cells, gangs, conspiracy groups, etc.

However, there're numerous examples of where "a just cause" devolves into an approximation of what came before (a coup that establishes another dictator), or where the decadence of the organization eventually leads it to action without ideology.

Many modern gangs, for instance, did not begin as mindless crime machines.

Locally I'm familiar with the Latin Kings, who began as a neighborhood defense against anti-latin hate crimes. Today, however, they are completely ineffectual (at least around here, Idk about Chicago and elsewhere) as anything other then petty vandals. Okay, that's pretty, but what did you accomplish by spray-painting inside an abandoned fast food joint?

Another local gang, the Disciples, originated to protect neighborhoods with a completely ineffectual police force in East St. Louis from Bloods aggression. Now they engage in exactly the same activities that they originally attempted to keep at bay. Every month there's a female corpse found at the old drive-in theater; another dead prostitute? Of course.

I'm sure just about anybody reading this can think of their own local gangs, and while I'm sure some are and always have been simply masses of thugs, others have a history of purpose and ideologies.

My question is how do these groups get to this point? Defending your neighborhoods when the police won't/are the aggressors or fighting for a cause is one thing; when they prey off the poor and weak or don't do anything of consequence it's a different matter. Apathy? Greed?

Secondly, how would you go about preventing groups from devolving such?

It really frustrates me to see this waste of human energy; a few people get rich at the expense of others, they terrorize innocent people, and nothing gets better. It's capitalism on a smaller/illegal scale.

[scourge007]

It's very true that many street gangs started with noble intentions. The Crips were inspired by the Black Panther Party and wanted to protect Black neighborhoods and the Latin Kings actually formed to protect Puerto Ricans and give them a voice. I think what went wrong with these groups is they eventually became corrupted by the power they found themselves wielding. At first it was about their community and people , then soon it turned into drugs , arms dealing , etc. The only way to change it is to educate the youth in the ghettos. People I knew in school were into the whole Hip Hop culture , but knew of Communism and seemed to like it.

[YouSSR]

These are our failures as leftists. We allowed the black panthers to be destroyed. We abandoned blacks and Hispanics in the inner cities to rot and in our prisons, where self-defense gangs became warped by capital and drugs. We allowed right wing rhetoric to grow against Mexicans until the only movement outside the system is a neo-fascist tea party.

Why this happened? Well I personally think racism is so integral to the united states even most leftists are racist and abandoned the civil rights movement. Capitalism and racism are intertwined in the U.S. probably more than anywhere else, and destroying this racism is probably going to take some Mao level cultural revolution.

Just look at this forum. At least half the posts in the last racism thread are overwhelmingly racist, and I've seen maybe 3 people post with an understanding of racism with relation to power relations and economics (which is a Marxist analysis). this is the "left", and until we're willing to go out into the hood and show the poor Marxism, above all, is about freeing people from the shackles of poverty we'll remain irrelevant and blacks and hispanics will be left to rot in a pool of drugs, violence, and death.

[Homage To Catalonia]

Actually the crips were not political and never were.

In tookie williams book, the founder, he said the whole CommunityRestorationInProgress thing was not true, and he was never political when he formed it with raymond washington.

he said he wanted to form a gang, to wipe out the hoovergroovers and other groups who ran the neighborhoods.

And in his book, when he is reformed, he said that he wishes huey newton or malcom x would have seen the gang and recruited them into the black power movement.

Gangs are just societies reaction to economic and racial conditions, and will never be eradicated as long as the system continues.

even with discontented white european countries, gangs are around, mostly from the fact the youth are so dissafected, even though they do not suffer the racial oppression or economic hardships compared to inner city minorities who join gangs are.

[The Idler]

Gangs are proto-capitalist organizations. They're not democratic and instead of distributing power, they concentrate power in a leader or leaders whilst exploiting and oppressing members.

[ed miliband]

I saw this documentary about smack dealers in 70s New York who were apparently influenced by the BPP and wished to get rid of white drug dealers from black areas, the logic being that it's better for black drug dealers to get black people hooked on smack and white dealers to get white people hooked on smack. Of course, if these black people they are apparently liberating from the clutches of white drug dealers wish to defend themselves against the tyranny of violent gangs then they deserve to be killed.

[socialistsalami]

I agree with you completely, gangs are just flat out stupid :thumbup1:

[psgchisolm]

Gang's initially started out as a sort of "militia" for their neighborhood. The prison version changed this and divided it into a racial thing, where they would band together based on color. Gangs that developed in prison did so to protect theirselves from the larger groups that would abuse them. After they got out of prison they took this to wherever they lived and built it from there. Around the time of the major drug scene going on gangs decided they wanted a piece of that pie. So they started selling on their "turf". Someone then had the idea the more "turf" they had the more money they could make. Eventually they ran out of space and started attacking other gangs for their turf. Which led to "gang wars" Skip to now, modern gangs are primarily dedicated to making money by Prostitution, Robberies, Theft, and primarily Drugs. This has in essence blured the origins of why gangs were created. Most gangs worry more on how much money they can make rather than Who is "repping" who.... Well as long as their of the same race. Gangs have become more of a drug thing with racial backgrounds. Up into the last decade there have been alot more reports of intergang violence. Money is now more important than the gang itself in the minds of some gang members. Bloods and crips selling drugs for money, people who a couple of decades ago would have destroyed half the world to see each other dead. It's now devolved into races against each other in the persuit of making more money than someone who looks different from them. We as a PEOPLE because this is more than a political thing must find a way to stop this. The problem is how? Modern time has led to alot of recent protests from the communities in which the gangs reside to stop the violence. In the Late 90s,early 2000s there were federal crackdowns. They work to some extent. For some gang members it takes seeing that their friends die in front of them, or their baby being born of them to realize they mean nothing, and they spent a majority of their life doing something pointless.

[Squat For Shelter]

gangs are a symptom, capitalism is the disease.

[Casbah]

I used to see a documentary on TV called The Fire This Time.. In it they talk about the FBI infiltrating and co-opting the Panthers and other self-styled neighborhood defense groups in the early 1970's with disinformation so they'd start fighting each other.. The film was made in the early 1990's IIRC, it argued that this was the root of a lot of gang violence particularly in southern California.

This is a great thread, I think organized crime is a huge road block.. As far as social transformation goes.. Often missing from many discussions.

[BIG BROTHER]

I think most gangs are reactionary groups of resistance against capitalism. If you think about it a gang fights against the state, but are reactionary because they hurt workers too.

I think the ones that had radical roots degenerated mainly due to a lack of Revolutionary leadership with a proper program in order to develop more cadre, win over the communities, etc.

And on top of that heavy state repression too, I mean in spite all the problems that the Black Panthers had I doubt that they would have fallen if it wasn't due to countelpro.