Gangland and Texas gang identification

[Tamie]

Anyone have another perspective for where these gangbangers fit into life?

20 to Life

I'm talking about the real gangbangers, not the day trippers.

[Art S]

...there are "good" bad guys and "bad" good guys...I've developed a fierce support for bikers after living a long life hearing "folks" bad-mouth and look down on them...they don't get a pass but they do get equal+ in my book...

Later,
Art S.

[anygunanywhere]

Thanks for the thread Hoi.

I have been told by those in the know that you can cross these types just by looking at them. To do so is to "dis" them (disrespect). Seems to me that that most if not all of them are extremely lacking in respect for others period.

I do not irrationally fear these types. When I see a person in the gang type clothing or all tatooed I just ignore them. If that is their chosen lifestyle then so be it. As long as they stay out of my space and leave me alone there will be peace.

Anyone who knows about this lifestyle and wonders why we carry is clueless and will always be so.

Anygunanywhere

[Hoi Polloi]

Anyone who knows about this lifestyle and wonders why we carry is clueless and will always be so.

Anygunanywhere

You know, watching these videos gave me a lot more sympathy (not agreement, just sympathy) to the anti-gun legislators. They're full of gang bangers talking about how large magazines, illegal conversions to make their weapons fully automatic, and assault rifles have changed the landscape of gangs and made them more brutal and deadly. If a legislator is bombarded with information like this and the gang stats (which are atrocious) are presented by police, FBI, gang experts, doctors, etc and then they have a small group of older white guys which includes a white supremacist and an anarchist among them talking about trampling their rights, who do you think they go with when passing gun restriction laws?

I think it really brought home to me how important it is to first change the focus. Most of us are not encountering the gang problem directly because they're primarily in known inner-city pockets. Trying to control their end-product obviously isn't working. They need to re-focus to discuss how to prevent and dissolve their gang involvement. Again, I have sympathy. The episode on the Gotti Boyz from New Orleans was interesting. They said that one of their primary motivators was how hard their mothers had to work. The boys didn't want to see their mothers suffer, so they went out on the street and worked to provide. I can see how the legislators would say to themselves, "Let's make sure these mothers have the ability to provide the bare minimum so food will always be on the table. Then she doesn't have to turn to illegal activities and can be with her children." But it isn't enough. The kids are still at school with their gang all day and off in the park or the hang-outs with them at night. I thought it really interesting that I once heard Texas Atty Gen. Greg Abbott talk about the limits of the government and where his legitimate authority lies and what he can do to help. He said he is pushing child support enforcement as a way to keep fathers involved that is within the scope of his job. I haven't seen that connection stated elsewhere. He re-focused the discussion.

But then where are these men when their girlfriends are mothers? Where's their protection of their own children? They're already too embroiled in the gang and identify as belonging to them, not to their new responsibility. Blood in, blood out: they aren't getting out of the gang. But it was interesting that a woman in a gang has one way out: if she becomes a mother. It's acceptable, and even expected, that a woman will leave the gang when she has a child. So now she's out and on her own while he's in and loyal to their criminal organization. So people argue women would be free of this inequality if they can have abortions. A black child is more likely to die from abortion than gangs, AIDS, heart disease and several other things combined. The poorest and most gang-ridden areas have the highest abortion rates, and yet the problem increases and is worse than ever. Now women can be used with no ongoing responsibility. They and the babies can be thrown away. It's worsened these women's lives and it isn't addressing the problem. The Atty Gen's response of forcing them to have an ongoing responsibility to their actual families re-frames it.

The girls in gangs episode was interesting. Mom started running drugs to make ends meet and the kids got involved in the gang once mom went to jail for it and they wanted a "family." It said girls belong to gangs primarily for love and acceptance. They talked about the same dynamic of how much sleeping around is just right and how much is too much that I read about in the book "Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities." The exact same thing is going on in the white upper class. We have a crisis of how women are treated in our society which is permeating all layers and classes. The poor, however, have less opportunities available to them to overcome this crisis because they're simultaneously facing other crises that the rest of society are not. Still, the current discussion of abortion or no abortion isn't working. We need to re-frame it. What is it that is really driving our society's double standard of women and how much responsibility do we women have in creating or perpetuating that problem? It was Chinese women who perpetuated foot binding (the practice of breaking their young girls' feet and wrapping them tightly to be disfigured and folded over on themselves permanently.) The dads were usually lenient, but the moms were ruthless. They had the attitude that they survived it and she would, too, and that she couldn't get a spouse otherwise. It took only 1 high-profile woman to stop the entire torture process.

I think the same re-focusing needs to happen with the public education. DARE and similar "don't do it" programs aren't working. Really dedicated teachers, especially those in music and arts, but also those in science and engineering and anything else, are effective. They bring the brotherhood in to the classroom and the community forms over violin or ballroom dancing or solar car competitions instead of drug corners. We need to create a new paradigm where good teachers are kept and are rewarded while poor teachers are not only able to be dismissed, but are. The TAKS and similar standards of learning need to accommodate non-standard teaching methodology, innovation, and need to emphasize that music and art are just as important to a well-rounded person as math and writing. They need to include more varied experiences on how these skills can translate into productive employment. There are vocational programs which allow them to train for a specific job, and there are classes which tell them about different jobs from books, but there aren't many programs which get them a wide range of connections and experiences. Again, dynamic teachers are more important than well-intended plans. If we get good teachers and then give them the freedom to respond to their students' needs, they will. And likewise, recognizing parents' rights and responsibility to make informed educational decisions for their children makes a significant difference. For example, Texas' Mesquite ISD allows parents to place their children in any school in the ISD; they aren't stuck in a school based on neighborhood. Most still go to the neighborhood school, but Mesquite has found that with the parents choosing their children's schools, they have comparable ratios of races and socioeconomic classes across all the schools instead of having pockets of poverty. It changes the paradigm.

How social welfare is administered is always up for debate. We shouldn't provide it or we should provide it. Big clash. But what about re-focusing the conversation? How can we provide it for those who need it while encouraging them to get off it? Texas requires anyone on welfare to go to employment classes, tutoring sessions, to show proof of interviewing, and to get and keep a job. Even then, there's a firm deadline on how long benefits are available. What most people don't consider is the other benefits. Section 8 housing makes homes affordable for many, but it also perpetuated the Gotti Boyz gang. They said in the show many times over how living there was beneath the minimum quality of living any person should have. They shot 900 shots into a barrel in the neighborhood and had only 1 call to the police over it. And the police there were known to be corrupt. I've since read an unverified rumor that the police force included a gang of hit men. These people's poverty allowed them to be put in inhumane circumstances and the dependence on the low income housing kept them there. After Katrina, they tore most of that housing down. I'm sure there was an outrage over what would happen to the poor old grandmas who lived there and had no other housing or employment options (and I do think that's an important discussion to have), but at what point does that excuse putting them in inhumane situations? To me, no one can stay in a place like that, especially a poor old grandma who is being forced to by our policies. The Gotti Boyz said it didn't change anything, but they all also said they're spread out over town now, that they all have legal employment, that they're all trying to keep their heads down and noses clean. Their experience with firm, consistent, and just laws and law enforcement in combination with removing their inhumane housing condition has greatly reduced their criminal activities. It's a re-focusing of the conversation.

On the gun side, it strikes me that there need to be a lot more youth, women, everyday people, all the socioeconomic classes, etc who give voice to their diverse and legal circumstances. It re-focuses the conversation from rampant gangs vs a few old white guys who've never encountered gangs. It becomes a rampant gang problem which includes the use of assault rifles vs those same assault rifles being in the hands of nearly every other Tom, Dick, Harry, and Jane. Then it becomes an issue of why they're used differently when they're in the hands of the gang and the gang is the focus, not the guns. It's just a huge paradigm shift to re-frame all of these issues and how they intertwine to create the societal problems we face today.