Gangs are Cults and We are the Solution

GANGS ARE CULTS - WE ARE THE SOLUTION!
BY
ROBERT STANFORD
AIRPORT NEIGHBORHOOD ACTIVIST

Perhaps there are more of us then we realize, that cannot remember times as difficult as times are for us now.

I have always found it ironic that one photo in particular of the aftermath of the Jim Jones People’s Temple tragedy. With bodies strewn across the floor from drinking suicidal Kool-Aid, and prominently displayed on a pillar is a plaque that read, “Those who forget the past will be condemned to repeat it.”

How many of us have forgotten the past? Will anyone reading this remember the Moonies and Hari Krishnas spewing flowers and love in our American airports? Though I am sure everyone reading this remembers Nortenos and Surenos spreading bullets and graffiti throughout our communities, as a society, have we not done a poor job of passing on stories that can be contrasted with current events for understanding and possible solutions?

In the seventies, when a person joined a cult, our society did not consider incarceration with other cult members as a plausible solution. De-programming was an acceptable approach to dealing with cult members. Cult members that would seem to forsake even their parents for the benefit of the cult.

Of course, society’s predominant mental picture, fed to it by the media was a white cult member, a runaway from a broken home perhaps.

Today, it would seem, the public’s mental picture of a gang member is Latino or Black. An image that most white people think represents a weakness inherent within the biological heritage of these racial lines. And then we stop thinking about it all together and this negative stereotyped image (usually male) becomes what we then consider “conventional wisdom” and oh so dangerous when looking toward solutions.

Because, I submit to you, that if the other pieces of the puzzle were included, to fill out this picture beyond the halted comprehension of racial and cultural biasness, the public would see that none of us are immune from these same things our children are falling victim to. None of us are immune to the human natures and natural instincts existing within all of us. The need to belong afflicts all of us as much as the need to be loved.

Unfortunately, we are on our own, when it comes to expanding the story as it is presented by the grand stage of our environments, media, as well as national, state and local governments.
By remembering what we, as a society have been through before and by contrast and comparison, we can find the missing pieces to our problematic puzzles, thereby saving lives and possibly mankind’s very future as well.

Today, in most cities throughout California, there are neighborhoods in which the residents are consistently aware that they are being ruled by two factions: Law enforcement and Street gangs.
Because of the historical evolution of these disparate neighborhoods, law enforcement rule of these neighborhoods are broken into two separate factions of City police and county sheriffs, sometime over-lapping and sometimes not.

For the vast majority of the residents there really is not that much of a significant distinction between the two – a cop is a cop, as it were.

As far as gang rule, however, also being broken into two or sometimes even multiple factions, the distinction can be a deadly mistake if not made correctly, as well as timely.
The gang rule distinction is made by slang, gang signs and colors distributed throughout territories who’s very boundaries constantly change a result of present and ongoing gang warfare and marketing. Warfare that ranges for graffiti to homicide. And these things are only becoming worse.

We feed the gangs with soldiers – our very children. And our solution to solving this problem is to incarcerate our youth, treating them like criminals. They are fully educated and skilled upon their release for only one thing – benefit of the gang. To the death if necessary.

Where do gangs come from? Our prison system which is a viscious conglomerate and the result of our corporate American revolution of greed. But where does the majority of our youth end up? Dead or in and out of the penal system for the rest of their lives, particularly if they are black or latino.

I have seen the heart breaking aftermath of gang violence over and over again in my work as a civil rights activist/advocate.

I have had the ringing in my ears last for hours, after holding a wailing mother, whom I had never met before the funeral of her seventeen year old son, with no one else present but me, the mother, the minister, and the forgotten corpse of her dead son.

I have seen elderly Mexican women feverishly and fearfully practicing new gang signs in preparation to walk to a corner store.

And I have witnessed the fallout of a solution to our gang problems that is as effective as a loose band-aid; children, Latino children, forced to empty their backpacks all over the ground by police officers. These were elementary school children with their only claim to gang involvement being that they were of Latino descent.

Our youth are kidnapped in our very communities and a ransom is set that we have long since forgotten how to pay. We are struck by gangs at our weakest point. The point at which we have forgotten our past. We have forsaken our desire to comfort and support one another for something so much more desirable than our heritage – material wealth and popularity within our limited adult social and political circles. Of all the groups in my area I am involved with - this is all too true.

One day, we as a society will evolve to remember our past and thereby save our future by reaching out – loving and supporting one another equally before any of us or our children will ever have to look to a gang to get what they should be getting at home or from their communities at large.

Copyright 2008 (c) by Robert Stanford/Mundo Hispano - all rights reserved.
Robert Stanford
Airport Neighborhood Activist
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