The linking of former Maniac Latin Disciple gang member, Jose Padilla, to Al Queda had all the markings of the perfect stereotype. After all, haven't gangs been labeled "terrorists"by many in law enforcement, and aren't many laws against gangs called "Anti-terrorism" acts? Attorney General Ashcroft's simplistic pronouncements can be realistically seen as one more sign of repression. Gangs aren't terrorists. But this doesn't end the story.
What is a gang? I define them this way:
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Gangs are organizations of the socially excluded. While most "street organizations" are unsupervised adolescent peer groups, many others have institutionalized in neighborhoods, ghettoes, barrios, favelas, and prisons. Often these persisting gangs become business enterprises within the informal economy. Many share a media-diffused culture and a few are linked to international criminal cartels. Gangs have variable ties to conventional institutions and, in given conditions, assume social, economic, political, religious, or military roles. |
As can be seen by the definition above, institutionalized gangs do share some important characteristics with other organizations of the socially excluded. First, gangs are organizations of armed young men, like other criminal, militant fundamentalist, nationalist, and even terrorist groups.
| Second, gangs share with other groups a racialized identity - most gangs form in socially excluded ghettoes, barrios, or prison, and strongly identify with their racial group. Gangs also have embraced Islamic principles, notably the Conservative Vice Lord Nation, but also other gangs. Minister Farrakhan has been working with Bloods in LA and Vice Lords in Chicago and many gang members, like Sanyika Shakur (aka "Monster" Kody Scott) have converted to a militant brand of Islam. |  |
Finally, gangs, like other organizations of the socially excluded, are supported by the underground economy, particularly the sale of drugs.
Gangs are not religions, nor are they revolutionary organizations, but, in given conditions, they can be both. In the global era, gangs, like other organizations of armed young men, are seeking an identity to protect them from a world they cannot control and where everything that is solid turns to air. Gangs, like some Islamic militants, try to shrink the world by adopting essentializing identities in spaces which have often been excluded from the global economy. [next column]
Other Important Sites
[continued]Gangs, like other organizations of the socially excluded, are waging war against globalization. Often they do it destructively and follow the god of money more than trying to do good for their people. However, gangs are social actors and should be included in a broader stuggle for democracy and held to non-violent democratic norms. , A policy of repression and indiscriminate incarceration will only make matters worse.
TERRORISM SITES
Edward Said on the role of intellectuals
Matthew Lippman's Terrorism Syllabus
Child
Soldiers
(Amnesty International)
Human Rights Organizations
Physicians Com for Human Rights