Preface from Monster
Helicopters hover heavily above, often no higher than the treetops that dot the battlefield. Staccato vibrations of automatic gunfire crack throughout the night, drowned out only by explosions and sirens. People hustle quickly past, in a dangerous attempt to get anywhere the fighting happens to be heaviest. There is troop movement throughout the city, and in some areas the fighting is intense. The soldiers are engaged in a "civil war." A war without terms. A war fought by any means necessary, with anything at their disposal. This conflict has lasted nine years longer than Vietnam. Though the setting is not jungle per se, its atmosphere is as dangerous and mysterious as any jungle in the world.
Neither side receives funding from any government, nor does either side claim any allegiance to any particular religion or socioeconomic system of government. There are no representatives from either faction in the United Nations, nor does either side recognize the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Recruitment, or conscription, begins at eleven years of age.
Squads of five usually make raids into neighboring territories for preemptive strikes or retaliatory hits on enemies and targets useful to the opposition. Although both armies are predominantly made up of males, there are many females involved in the fighting. These infrastructures were built initially on robberies and extortions. Today, however, they are maintained by proceeds from major narcotics deals and distribution throughout America. Each army has a distinct territory--the boundaries of some very large areas are broken by enemy cluster camps. Each army has a flag, to which total allegiance is pledged. Each army has its own language, customs, and philosophy, and each has its own GNP.
The war has been raging on for twenty-two years. The death toll is in the thousands--wounded, uncountable. Missing-in-action unthinkable. No one is keeping a tally. No one has noticed, except for those recently involved in the fighting and those indirectly drawn in by geographical location, economic status, or family association.
Other than this, the war has been kept from the world, hidden like an ugly scar across the belly of an otherwise beautiful woman. Under the guise of being a showpiece for the world where prosperity is as easily found as water in a stream, America, for all her ostensible beauty, has an ugly scar across her belly that she has tried repeatedly to supress and keep hidden from curious onlookers. More than a few times she has almost been exposed, and this ugliness brought to light, but always another garment would quickly be thrown over the rough spot and all the turmoil and ugliness again blanketed. But not this time.
On April 29, 1992, the world witnessed the eruption of South Central Los Angeles, the concrete jungle-battlefield of the Crips and the Bloods. The scar of over twenty years that had been tucked out of sight and passed off as "just another ghetto problem" burst its suture and spewed blood all across the stomach of America. People watched in amazement as "gang members," soldiers of the Crip army, pelted cars with rocks, sticks, and bottles, eventually pulling civilians from their vehicles and beating them. This was hours after they had routed a contingent of LAPD officers. Troop movement escalated, and Los Angeles was set ablaze. All this began on Florence and Normandie in South Central, the latest Third World battlefield.
I have lived in South Central Los Angeles all my life. I grew up on Florence and Normandie. That is part of my territory. I was recruited into the Crips at the ripe old age of eleven. Today I am twenty-nine years old. I am a gang expert--period. There are no other gang experts except participants. Our lives, mores, customs, and philosophies remain as mysterious and untouched as those of any "uncivilized" tribe in Afrika. I have come full circle in my twenty-nine years on this planet, sixteen of those with the Crips. I have pushed people violently out of existence and have fathered three children. I have felt completely free and have sat in solitary confinement in San Quentin state prison. I have shot numerous people and have been shot seven times myself. I have been in gunfights in South Central and knife fights in Folsom state prison. Today, I languish at the bottom of one of the strictest maximum-security state prisons in this country.
I propose to take my reader through the life and times of my own chilling involvement as a gang member with the Crips. I propose to open my mind as wide as possible to allow my readers the first ever glimpse at South Central from my side of the gun, street, fence, and wall. From my initial attraction and recruitment to my first shooting and my rise to Ghetto Star (ghetto celebrity) status, right up to the South Central rebellion and the truce between the warring factions--the Crips and the bloods. Although no longer aligned with gang or criminal activity, I still draw a great deal of support from this quarter.
Come with me then, if you will, down a side street lined with stolen cars and youngsters armed with shotguns and .38 revolvers, lying in wait for the enemy, all members of a small gang. Then return with me five years later as the street is lined with luxury cars, dope dealers, and troops with AK-47 assault weapons, the gang now an army.
Let me tell you of funerals that have been overrun by enemy forces and the body stolen and "killed again" for reasons of psychological warfare. Think not that this war is some passing phase to be ironed out with a truce in five days--impossible! Sophistication has not, by any means, passed the gangs of Los Angeles. Surveillance, communication, and technology have now found their way into the military buildup of these two army factions.
It is not for glory that I write this. It is out of desperation for the survival of the youths and civilians who are directly and indirectly involved in the fighting. I will attempt to draw serious analytical conclusions designed to bring about a better, more in-depth understanding of this malady, so as to help reach workable solutions for all concerned. As with my life, I propose to bring the reader full circle to show the reality of a city gone mad in an attempt to rank as the nation's murder capital longer than the District of Columbia and more consistently than Detroit.
Look then if you dare, at South Central through the eyes of one of its more notorious Ghetto Stars and the architect of its most ghastly gang army--the Crips.
Sanyika Shakur, aka Monster Kody Scott Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member (1993)
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