Youth Gangs

Do you want to be respected?  The most likely answer is "yes".  Are you respected?
The answer is "no".  You are feared and reviled.  Yet you are in almost every city
of any appreciable size.  The Crips and the Bloods and those like them are no better,
and probably much worse than the Jets and the Sharks portrayed in West Side Story.
The public image of such gangs is of drug dealing, child killing, building defacing,
gun toting, drugged out of their mind, murdering hoodlums.  Now I ask you if this is
a positive image.  Hardly.  Can youth gangs be held in a positive light?  I think so.

First, what do they have going for them?  Organization.  They are generally well
organized and able to carry out any task they set out for themselves, whether it be a
recruiting spree or drug running.  Next comes flexibility.  They are not permanently
rooted in one track because they force themselves to adapt to either new competition,
or supply challenges.  Also in their favor is their diversity.  Rarely is a gang only
doing one thing all the time.  I couldn't see the feasibility in having your members
only tag buildings, only do drive-by shootings, or only deal drugs.

I, too, belonged to a youth gang and then when I went to college I joined yet another.
However, the gangs to which I belonged were held in a positive light.  I belonged to the
Cub Scouts of America and later to the service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega.  Granted that
the fraternity wasn't as well organized as it should or could have been, but we still
managed to do good for the community working with the Goodwill Industries among others.
I was even on the community service committee of the Student Engineering Council at the
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, through which we helped the Ronald McDonald House
during my tenure.

You may now be asking yourself the point of all this.  My point is that these existing
youth gangs which are considered an evil of our society can become organizations which
actually gain the respect they so crave but do not get.  I propose that these gangs turn
away from their current enterprises and turn their eyes and minds instead toward enriching
the community.

How many more parents would be proud to have their child part of the Crips if the part of
the city patrolled by the Crips was the cleanest, safest, most drug-free part of the city?
What I propose would turn your membership in a youth gang into a credit instead of a
liability and something you would never list on your resume, if you live long enough to
make one.  Those three positives I spoke of before, organization, flexibility, and
diversity, are the hallmarks of a successful business.  Would it not therefore be more
sensible to be part of a business that was held up as something to be admired and emulated
by the whole of society than something that is reviled and hated by that same society?

One way to do this would be to paint over or otherwise clean up those "tags" which mar the
facia of buildings and, regretfully, national and historical landmarks.  For example, the
business owner could provide the paint and brushes and the gang would provide the man-power.
It would be finished much quicker and would be less of a strain on the business owner, who
in gratitude, could put up a small acknowledgement proclaiming the good done by the gang and
naming the gang upon the same acknowledgement so that it will receive the respect it deserves.

Another way would be to assist the city sanitation crews in patrolling "your" territory for
litter and other larger junk.  The litter could be collected and placed for the waste
collectors at specified locations.  The junk, if it was within the gang's means to do so,
could be taken to collectors or recyclers and sold.  The monies collected could then be used
to purchase items needed by the gang such as work gloves or to repay those who purchased them
before hand.

Yet another place a gang could aide the city in cleaning up its section would be to run out
the drug dealers and suppliers.  This could be done by simply making it unprofitable for them
to work in the area and at the same time curtailing any activity on the part of gang members
in the supply and distribution of illegal drugs.  It could be as simple as reporting the names,
types of illegal substances, and bases of operations of these people to the police so that
they could be dealt with by the proper authorities.

There could even be friendly competition between gangs for who could make the largest
improvement in their neighborhoods.  I am sure these improvements would be recognized by the
city and appreciated be its residents.  Now, wouldn't that be a much better thing to put on
your resume?

Michael Melosh
August 2, 1997.