Blood In Blood Out: The Realities of Legal and Illegal Gangs
2 pages
English

Blood In Blood Out: The Realities of Legal and Illegal Gangs

-

Le téléchargement nécessite un accès à la bibliothèque YouScribe
Tout savoir sur nos offres
2 pages
English
Le téléchargement nécessite un accès à la bibliothèque YouScribe
Tout savoir sur nos offres

Description

Published on Peacework Magazine (http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org)
Blood In Blood Out: The Realities of Legal and Illegal Gangs

Informations

Publié par
Publié le 10 mai 2012
Nombre de lectures 11
Langue English

Extrait

Published on Peacework Magazine (
http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org
)
Blood In Blood Out: The Realities of Legal and Illegal Gangs
l
Email this Article
[1]
l
Printer friendly version
[2]
Authors:
Adelard Simwerrayi
[3]
Adelard Simwerayi is a Patricia Watson intern at
Peacework
Magazine.
Full Article:
"
Come and join our gang, it is the biggest and our color is green."
A high school military academy (JROTC) instructor in Chicago in 2007.
We define a gang as
a group of people with compatible tastes or mutual interests who gather together for social reasons
. Gangs often have initiation rituals,
identifiable colors, gang signs and colors, group bonding routines, and a powerful in-group identification. Under this definition, as Harvard Professor Ulrich Johnson of
Teens Against Gang Violence says, "Harvard is a gang, as much as a street gang is a gang. The problem isn't gangs, it's gang violence."
The War Resisters League published a sticker in the 1980s, saying:
"Beware of weird cult which:
l
Uses promises of money, a job, and other favors to recruit people;
l
Indoctrinates beginners in an armed camp until they're thoroughly brainwashed;
l
Employs terror, assassination, murder, and threats thereof;
l
Is particularly interested in the young, and those who follow orders without question;
l
Holds against their will members who wish to leave;
l
Goes by many names, e.g., The Service, military, Armed Forces, ROTC, JROTC, recruiters, Defense, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, National Guard, Green
Berets."
Lethality of Large-Scale Gangs
As this sticker and the definition above implies, the military is in fact, a gang. The United States is comprised of many gangs, some more violent than others. The military is
perhaps the most financially stable and violent gang in the United States, with a license to kill and a mandate to enter school systems to recruit children..
According to the FBI, for the five year period from 2003-2007, there were 73,558 murders committed in the United States. Of these, 4423 were classified as gang
related (about 6% of all US murders). In contrast, the US military and allied forces directly killed approximately 45,000 civilian Iraqis* between 2003-2006, and
approximately 5,000 Afghan civilians in Afghanistan since 2003.
I am in no way glorifying street gangs for I do not support violence of any kind. But there is a huge difference between the scope and lethality of these two gangs.
The Attraction of Gangs
Both street gangs and the military work to attract teenagers in numerous ways. Both street gangs and the military try to promise vulnerable teens that they will be respected
in the 'hood if they sign up. Sam Diener, co-editor of Peacework, told me a story about a former child soldier in Sri Lanka, recruited by a rebel army who had escaped
and become a peace advocate with War Resisters International. When he first carried a submachine gun through town, everyone scattered. He said that he had felt a great
degree of power at that moment, but "I had mistaken fear for respect."
Youth are attracted to both street gangs and the military partially because both are glorified, along with male violence in general, in popular culture, including motion
pictures such as
Transformers 2
, video games such as
Call of Duty
and
War
, and music videos such as
Warrior
by Kid Rock. The Army's online video games, the
traveling Army Virtual Experience, and the experimental Army Experience Center in the Franklin Mills Mall outside of Philadelphia, all present a sanitized version of war
while desensitizing youth to the agony of combat. Both institutions promise monetary rewards. The difference is that he military is allowed to legally have staff in schools
and on public properties, and they are funded by the government. Street gangs are funded by drug peddling, robbery, and other dirty money.
Yusef Shakur, a former gang-banger, co-founder of the Zone 8 street gang of Detroit, Michigan, and author of
The Window 2 My Soul
told
Peacework
that many youth
join gangs in order to receive essential aspects of life that they lack from their homes, schools, and communities: love, inspiration, motivation, respect, support,
understanding, and protection. Many join the military for similar reasons. Joining street and military gangs appear to be an easy way to attain these goals. The realities of
life in both of these violent gangs, though, is much different.
Escaping Gangs Leaving Violence
It is a common belief that gangbanging (of the street variety) is a one-way street which leads inevitably to death or a jail cell. This is a myth that has been perpetuated by
both the media and gang members who wish to exaggerate the stakes involved, and the drama surrounding, gang membership. Some gang members tell reporters and
researchers that it's impossible to leave a gang, and that the only way to leave is to die.
Such beliefs have their foundation in the threats that some gangs make against people who wish to quit. Data from national and local youth surveys, however, indicates that
the typical gang member is active for a year or less. The Rochester Youth Survey research team, for example, which followed 1,000 high-risk youth into adulthood, found
that "a large majority of members quit after a brief stay in the gang:" (Decker and Van Winkle 1996) Our streets are actually filled with conscientious objectors to gang
membership who've left various gangs.
Many gang-involved young people face difficulties upon trying to leave a gang because most of the friends they have are in the gang, and because they have made enemies
who might continue to target them. In addition, gangs foster a gang-like mentality, so many find it very hard to cope with the rest of society. But many find a way out.
Yusef Shakur, for example, gangbanged for more than eight years, but later decided to drop it all after encountering his father in prison. Shakur explains, "While
incarcerated, I met my father. He was convicted for armed robbery and attempted murder. My encounter with him was the turning point in my life. He nurtured and re-
educated me
." In a similar way, getting out of the military is hard but not impossible. Many enlistees don't realize that if they don't like the military, once they've left for
basic training, there is no legally recognized "right to quit." Pablo Paredes, for example, was in the Navy for five years but came to realize he couldn't in good conscience
deploy. His conscientious objector claim was not recognized. After many court dates, and a court martial, he was sentenced to three months of hard labor. "It was hard, it
took so long, but I did not give up and in the end, they gave me my discharge," Pablo told me.
The Realities of Violence
Though it might seem fun in video games, on pages of magazines, even in films; violence is the biggest destructive factor next to ignorance, so please do not ignore the
millions of lives being taken by the violence in the battlefields overseas, the violence that is still killing millions in Democratic Republic of the Congo, the violence that is
being nurtured in the streets of our beloved country , The United States of America.
War seems so sweet for the people who have never been in one. As a person who grew up watching the civil war devour millions of lives in the Democratic Republic of
Congo, I spent my whole childhood escaping its bloody teeth from piercing through my soul and taking my life away on a daily basis. It is only right that I fight for the
world that I dream of, a world full of peace and harmony.
* The Iraq civilian death-toll statistic was calculated using the casualty figures from the Iraq Family Health Survey Study Group, combined with the estimate that about
30% of Iraqi civilian casualties were caused by US military action in the Burnham et al study published in the
Lancet
in 2006 (though the credibility of the Burnham et al
study overall is dubious because of the researchers' failure to disclose methodologies). The Afghan figure is the minimum estimate compiled by a number of human rights
groups, including Human Rights Watch and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
From
Issue 397 - September 2009
[4]
Regions:
Categories:
Subscribe to
get Peacework Magazine delivered to your home or to give a gift subscription
[5].
Source URL:
http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/blood-blood-out-realities-legal-and-illegal-gangs
Links:
[1] http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/forward/1409
[2] http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/print/1409
[3] http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/authors/adelard-simwerrayi
[4] http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/issue-397-september-2009
[5] http://www.afsc.org/store
  • Univers Univers
  • Ebooks Ebooks
  • Livres audio Livres audio
  • Presse Presse
  • Podcasts Podcasts
  • BD BD
  • Documents Documents