OUR GANGS
By Victor Marrero
Ever heard of sympathetic magic? That's making an image of
someone, and doing things to it like sticking needles to make the real
person feel needles. Part of racism is like sympathetic magic. Racists
have tried to mold people who they say are inferior races to justify their
racism.
A manifestion of sympathetic magic was the minstrel shows after
the Civil War. They were advertised with posters that created an image of
the Black man as a beast with exaggerated lips, noses, foreheads ect.. The
minstrel shows themselves portrayed Black men as either childlike,
treacherous, or villains with a razor hiding somewhere.
In 1921 came Birth of a Nation, the first film about the Civil War.
It had Black men as fiends conspiring for power and the virginity of White
Women. Mexicans were subjected to similar propaganda by spreading the word
through newspapers that they were a stupid, lazy, and treacherous race of
half-breeds who'll pull out a razor instead of fighting fair.
Could the pychology of Black and Mexican youth to this day be
affected by the sympathetic magic of the political system? Could White
youth also fall into the same web by seeing the images that the system
created and treating people as images instead of as people?
Sympathetic magic continued in the forties by institutions such
as the police, whose role was and is to be the watchdog of the rich against
the poor. The police practiced sympathetic magic by crimminalizing Black
and Mexican youth with the label of "gangs" because they formed their own
fraternities. These Black and Mexican fraternities were out of anybody's
paternalism especially the White man's and his establishment. In the
nineteen fifties Black "gangs" were actually car clubs like the Lowriders,
Coasters, Highwaymen, and the Road Devils.
One of the oldest, and most established Chicago based gang, the
Latin Kings started in the 40s as a group of Latino youth who wanted to
help and protect their people. How was it that they became characterized
as criminals? Was it just their own corruption, their circumstances, or
could there have been other things involved?
In 1969 Raymond Washington, Stanley Tookie Williams, and Jamiel
Barnes were 15 and too young to join the Black Panthers or the cultural
nationalist organization known as United Slaves. So instead they started
the Baby Avenue Cribs. Somehow this later turned into the Crips. They
kicked it with(hung out) the Piru Street Boys until 1972 when they had a
disagreement.
The web site that I got this information from doesn't state
exactly what the disagreement was (http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~aalonso/Gangs/hist.html).
So I can't pass it on here. It still was the best source I found because it
was done by someone who was involved with the Black P. Stones, one of the
Blood gangs. It wasn't a police source, but incidentally a member of
the L.A Sheriff's Dept named Mark has plagiarized pieces of the site for
his own web page(http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~aalonso/Gangs/use.html).
The Pirus looked for allies in the L.A Brims because they were
outnumbered. They also met with the "Lueders Park Hustlers, Denver Lanes,
and the Bishops"(Web Site). Before the disagreement everybody wore blue
bandanas. Now they looked for a different color, Red and that later got
turned into Bloods.
This was just after the peak of Black militancy with the Panthers.
Two groups that before were friends are now enemies. Who fears Black
militancy? The same party that set COINTELPRO into place. Does unity among
young Africans in the ghetto threaten the establishment? Does that unity
lead to Black militancy? Is Black Militancy a threat to White control of
wealth? The FBI and the United States government thought so in the 1960s
and 70s. Otherwise they would have never bugged and spyed on Martin
Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, or used COINTELPRO against the Panthers.
The FBI and police departments in cities where the Panthers had
chapters instigated distrust and division within the Panthers and their
alliances. Does that give a precedence signaling a motive to do it with
the Pirus, and the Crips?
Doesn't that fit the old adage "Divide and Conquer"? Didn't
Cortez do same thing in Mexico? Didn't the United States do the same with
the Apaches, Crow, and the Sioux? If they weren't already enemies would
they have to have been made enemies? Wouldn't it make sense to do the
same with Crips and Bloods, or with one Mexican barrio against another?
Why not? The motive is there, and if you've got any kind of a political
mind then you'll think about it, and not just dismiss it as conspiracy
theory.
Power doesn't come by accident. Don't beleive the images created
by the system that makes the Panthers some kind of crazy Black Hate group,
or the so called gang situation something that's just there without
instigation from those who did the instigating before. Don't let that
same system manifested as the media blind your vision and our logic from
seeing gangs as something with a natural cause. The cause is poverty, and
rejection from the society at large. Gangs or just homies hanging out
together are a response to that poverty and rejection. Just imagine if
they did more than hang out and bang on each other. Imagine if they
united with a political direction. The FBI would have to step in and
stick its needles again. Ask them when they come on campus September 17.
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