Different Views On Gangs [img=/assets/blog/200711/gangs_in_schools.jpg F:R]My friend Dan Weissmann did a segment yesterday morning on Vocalo.org about [url=http://www.vocalo.org/on-air/playlist/9607]gang violence[/url] in the Back Of The Yards that included asking local residents what the problem was and what should be done. My favorites are the 10 or so interview snippets you can check out -- not everyone thinks that the gangs are necessarily the biggest problem in the area.
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Wed Nov 28, 2007 at 12:00 PM
Different Views On Gangs
Start with the City removing all these gang bangers and families living in illegal conversions which they overcrowd our schools, more garbage in the alleys, more rats, more crime. When is the city going to enforce the building code on these attic and basement, garage apartments in the 3rd, 12th, 16th Wards that surround the Back of the Yards Community.
Wed Nov 28, 2007 at 5:12 PM
Different Views On Gangs
Where are these Alderman mentioned here? They need to send building inspectors to all these houses, block by block, garage, by garage and if they are people living in these attic and basement apartments, evict them, ticket the owners for safety violations. What the heck is taking so long?
Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 2:50 AM
Different Views On Gangs
I listened to the whole thread, including all of the narratives from the blog on Marshfield. A small question: How does this relate to a blog about the schools?
Indirectly, to be sure. How about the next time someone talks about one of those schools "failing" under NCLB someone tracks down all the young people interviewed of discussed in these narratives? Now that Arne Duncan and Rufus Williams have taken the advice some of us gave for years and began going to funerals, will they take this to "the next level" (as they love to say) and demand that the schools be given some slack for "low" test scores when the kids are living in war zones? Ask the teachers from the old Williams (first "Renaissance" closing, despite the fact that the drop in scores was caused by the war between the MCs and the GDs in Dearborn Homes in April, May and June 2001...).
These same stories could have come from Logan Square 34 years ago, when we moved into 2418 N. Central Park. The Gaylords still had "White Power, Gaylords" painted on the wall at Fullerton and Hamlin (that was before they learned -- the hard way -- that they needed to respect diversity given that they would be spending many many nights in Joliet or Stateville with people who disagreed with the "White Power" point of view). On the wall at the intersection of the alleys behind the old Symons YMCA (NW corner, Fullerton, Central Park) was painted "RIP Lawson. Insane Popes."
That intersection was where a Chicago police officer was gunned down by gang bangers centuries and millennia ago. A few blocks in any direction were little "RIP" memorials. Still are, the most recent major one at Funston (Armitage and Central Park).
These stories could have been compiled at Amundsen High School 20 years ago, when the Gaylords, Latin Kings, and Black P. Stones were (still then; still now?) hegemonic there (alone among far north side high schools).
In 1987, the "RIPs" would have been "Negro" (Edwin Castaneda, a Latin King), or "Flaco" (Alex Rosalio, an Insane Unknown) and of course many others. But how is it that "LKN" and "ALKN" can be popular at Amundsen 20 year ago; and ten years ago... And now? But it seems important that those of us who taught Flaco and Negro and the others (that list is very very long) tried to tell them about the three boxes straddling their futures.
Had we been voyeuristic, I guess those of us living on the 2300 block of Sawyer (just west of Fullerton and Kedzie) 15 years ago could have blogged every shooting, but that would have become repetitious, and, as I said, voyeuristic.
Or we could have collected the shell casings and saved them at Belden and Sawyer Sunday mornings, because for a long time that intersection seemed to be the spot of choice for shootings. One December when my Dad was visiting me at 2326 Sawyer, the gunfire was so bad over the weekend he noted that it reminded him of the time he had spent on what was called the "Southern Shoulder" of the "Bulge" in December 1944 and early 1945. "Why isn't the government stopping this?" was his question. Having seen what could be done as part of the 44th Infantry Division during World War II, he knew that a lot of neglect had to go into the creation of something that big on a small side street in Chicago. And my answer? OIC.
Parenting is important. Even working parents can make the time and set the rules and enforce them. Many of our children from the area around Fullerton and Kedzie grew up on those same streets and are now finishing college. I think it was better that the parents sat on the stoops, enforced the rule about not using the "F" word on the block, and kept a very very watchful eye on everything that was happening while the children played. Yes, you can enforce the rule that nobody says the "F" word on the block -- and in the school. It takes a lot of work, persistence and fairness, but, as my Dad pointed out, there have been harder times (the Depression) and bigger challenges (Nazis from the English Channel to the Ural Mountains) that have been met.
Of course, back then no child would proudly proclaim that Mom was a "Lady Saint" or "Latin Queen" or "Gangster Lady" -- at least not to a radio interview. And if you are into "market" economics, the market that drives each corner has something to tell you. And the microeconomics of the drug trade is certainly an example of "data driven" management, Chicago style.
Flash forward: Ten years ago, those same stories could have been recorded and repeated in South Chicago, out of Bowen and the blocks around it. There shootings were commonplace (but not inside the school itself; that's where the children ran for safety when there was a shooting). Again, the RIPs. Steve Wilbourn. Antwan Jordan. Did I mention that conversation about the three boxes?
During most of those years, Richard M. Daley was either chief law enforcement person (Cook County State's Attorney) or Chief Executive Officer of Chicago. To pretend that the gangs have been able to go into their fourth generation rooted in many Chicago communities during those years requires a suspension of disbelief -- actually, a profession of faith -- the can only happen in a town that believes in so many other "miracles" (need I add corporate "school reform"?).
The crimes in the streets wouldn't be so widespread if it were not for the supporting from the crimes in the suites.
The cops I used to work with while I was "security coordinator" at Bowen (South Chicago, decent men and women) would talk about how amazing it was that all the corrupt governors and mayors and political and corporate leaders were south of the Rio Grande River. All those Spanish speaking crooks, like out of the old movies, only not wearing sombreros anymore.
None in Chicago. Sure.
Bring on the Olympics.
By 2016, the surviving Lady Saints quoted in these snippets will be grandmothers, the bangers will be in their fifth generation. A new generation of bloggers and non gentrifying gentrifiers will be asking how some Chicago streets became so dangerous. (Until, like Armitage and Sheffield -- once part of a "hood" -- the poor are just shoveled out by the gentrifiers, and move elsewhere...)
Conclusions anyone? I've only been watching and documenting these things in a Wall Within since Lyndon Johnson was President of the United States and my high school friends had to go into the Marines in order to (hopefully) pay for college if they made it back from places like Danang and Quang Tri or the Hanoi Hilton. Which some did and some didn't.
Indirectly, to be sure. How about the next time someone talks about one of those schools "failing" under NCLB someone tracks down all the young people interviewed of discussed in these narratives? Now that Arne Duncan and Rufus Williams have taken the advice some of us gave for years and began going to funerals, will they take this to "the next level" (as they love to say) and demand that the schools be given some slack for "low" test scores when the kids are living in war zones? Ask the teachers from the old Williams (first "Renaissance" closing, despite the fact that the drop in scores was caused by the war between the MCs and the GDs in Dearborn Homes in April, May and June 2001...).
These same stories could have come from Logan Square 34 years ago, when we moved into 2418 N. Central Park. The Gaylords still had "White Power, Gaylords" painted on the wall at Fullerton and Hamlin (that was before they learned -- the hard way -- that they needed to respect diversity given that they would be spending many many nights in Joliet or Stateville with people who disagreed with the "White Power" point of view). On the wall at the intersection of the alleys behind the old Symons YMCA (NW corner, Fullerton, Central Park) was painted "RIP Lawson. Insane Popes."
That intersection was where a Chicago police officer was gunned down by gang bangers centuries and millennia ago. A few blocks in any direction were little "RIP" memorials. Still are, the most recent major one at Funston (Armitage and Central Park).
These stories could have been compiled at Amundsen High School 20 years ago, when the Gaylords, Latin Kings, and Black P. Stones were (still then; still now?) hegemonic there (alone among far north side high schools).
In 1987, the "RIPs" would have been "Negro" (Edwin Castaneda, a Latin King), or "Flaco" (Alex Rosalio, an Insane Unknown) and of course many others. But how is it that "LKN" and "ALKN" can be popular at Amundsen 20 year ago; and ten years ago... And now? But it seems important that those of us who taught Flaco and Negro and the others (that list is very very long) tried to tell them about the three boxes straddling their futures.
Had we been voyeuristic, I guess those of us living on the 2300 block of Sawyer (just west of Fullerton and Kedzie) 15 years ago could have blogged every shooting, but that would have become repetitious, and, as I said, voyeuristic.
Or we could have collected the shell casings and saved them at Belden and Sawyer Sunday mornings, because for a long time that intersection seemed to be the spot of choice for shootings. One December when my Dad was visiting me at 2326 Sawyer, the gunfire was so bad over the weekend he noted that it reminded him of the time he had spent on what was called the "Southern Shoulder" of the "Bulge" in December 1944 and early 1945. "Why isn't the government stopping this?" was his question. Having seen what could be done as part of the 44th Infantry Division during World War II, he knew that a lot of neglect had to go into the creation of something that big on a small side street in Chicago. And my answer? OIC.
Parenting is important. Even working parents can make the time and set the rules and enforce them. Many of our children from the area around Fullerton and Kedzie grew up on those same streets and are now finishing college. I think it was better that the parents sat on the stoops, enforced the rule about not using the "F" word on the block, and kept a very very watchful eye on everything that was happening while the children played. Yes, you can enforce the rule that nobody says the "F" word on the block -- and in the school. It takes a lot of work, persistence and fairness, but, as my Dad pointed out, there have been harder times (the Depression) and bigger challenges (Nazis from the English Channel to the Ural Mountains) that have been met.
Of course, back then no child would proudly proclaim that Mom was a "Lady Saint" or "Latin Queen" or "Gangster Lady" -- at least not to a radio interview. And if you are into "market" economics, the market that drives each corner has something to tell you. And the microeconomics of the drug trade is certainly an example of "data driven" management, Chicago style.
Flash forward: Ten years ago, those same stories could have been recorded and repeated in South Chicago, out of Bowen and the blocks around it. There shootings were commonplace (but not inside the school itself; that's where the children ran for safety when there was a shooting). Again, the RIPs. Steve Wilbourn. Antwan Jordan. Did I mention that conversation about the three boxes?
During most of those years, Richard M. Daley was either chief law enforcement person (Cook County State's Attorney) or Chief Executive Officer of Chicago. To pretend that the gangs have been able to go into their fourth generation rooted in many Chicago communities during those years requires a suspension of disbelief -- actually, a profession of faith -- the can only happen in a town that believes in so many other "miracles" (need I add corporate "school reform"?).
The crimes in the streets wouldn't be so widespread if it were not for the supporting from the crimes in the suites.
The cops I used to work with while I was "security coordinator" at Bowen (South Chicago, decent men and women) would talk about how amazing it was that all the corrupt governors and mayors and political and corporate leaders were south of the Rio Grande River. All those Spanish speaking crooks, like out of the old movies, only not wearing sombreros anymore.
None in Chicago. Sure.
Bring on the Olympics.
By 2016, the surviving Lady Saints quoted in these snippets will be grandmothers, the bangers will be in their fifth generation. A new generation of bloggers and non gentrifying gentrifiers will be asking how some Chicago streets became so dangerous. (Until, like Armitage and Sheffield -- once part of a "hood" -- the poor are just shoveled out by the gentrifiers, and move elsewhere...)
Conclusions anyone? I've only been watching and documenting these things in a Wall Within since Lyndon Johnson was President of the United States and my high school friends had to go into the Marines in order to (hopefully) pay for college if they made it back from places like Danang and Quang Tri or the Hanoi Hilton. Which some did and some didn't.
Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 5:23 PM
Different Views On Gangs
I was once asked in an interview with a NBC 5 reporter how we keep youth out of gangs. I gave a response as long as the message I just read. Obviously it never went on air. However, driving home that night it hit me that I should have said, "We just compete more effectively for youth participation with better and more interesting non-school programs that relate to the things that are important to teens."
I lead the Tutor/Mentor Connection and wish Mr. Williams, Mr. Duncan and many other community, business and faith leaders would spend some time reading the information and looking at the strategies posted on the http://www.tutormentorconnection.org web site.
We've built a database showing more than 200 non-school tutor/mentor programs, with contact information that not only enables youth and parents to find them, but also enables business leaders, philanthropists and media to find them. The first part of the T/MC strategy is we help the programs that already exist get the consistent resources they need to constantly improve what they do to engage kids in mentoring and positive learning during non-school hours.
We use maps to show where poverty is most concentrated, and where poorly performing schools are located. We also map locations of youth on youth violence. These are areas where tutor/mentor programs are needed for little kids, middle kids, and high school and older youth. If you search the program locator on the T/MC site you can determine if there are any tutoring and/or mentoring programs in these areas. If we can get business, church, college and hospital leaders to do this search, and overlay where they do business, or have facilities, maybe we can motivate them to develop leadership, investment and volunteer outreach into these areas so more and better tutor/mentor programs are started, and stay connected, to these youth as they grow up and move through school.
The role of leaders is to keep daily attention on this problem, and to connect resources to places where resources are needed. If I were the head of the public school system in any big city I'd be the number one champion of the Tutor/Mentor Connection because it has the potential to help kids come to school better prepared to learn and connects them to a network of adults who can also help them prepare for jobs and careers.
I lead the Tutor/Mentor Connection and wish Mr. Williams, Mr. Duncan and many other community, business and faith leaders would spend some time reading the information and looking at the strategies posted on the http://www.tutormentorconnection.org web site.
We've built a database showing more than 200 non-school tutor/mentor programs, with contact information that not only enables youth and parents to find them, but also enables business leaders, philanthropists and media to find them. The first part of the T/MC strategy is we help the programs that already exist get the consistent resources they need to constantly improve what they do to engage kids in mentoring and positive learning during non-school hours.
We use maps to show where poverty is most concentrated, and where poorly performing schools are located. We also map locations of youth on youth violence. These are areas where tutor/mentor programs are needed for little kids, middle kids, and high school and older youth. If you search the program locator on the T/MC site you can determine if there are any tutoring and/or mentoring programs in these areas. If we can get business, church, college and hospital leaders to do this search, and overlay where they do business, or have facilities, maybe we can motivate them to develop leadership, investment and volunteer outreach into these areas so more and better tutor/mentor programs are started, and stay connected, to these youth as they grow up and move through school.
The role of leaders is to keep daily attention on this problem, and to connect resources to places where resources are needed. If I were the head of the public school system in any big city I'd be the number one champion of the Tutor/Mentor Connection because it has the potential to help kids come to school better prepared to learn and connects them to a network of adults who can also help them prepare for jobs and careers.
Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 9:11 PM
Different Views On Gangs
Gangs
When I die bury me deep....Those are the first lines to what was called the D’s
Prayer. Years ago one of my collateral duties was security during the free breakfast
At a ghetto high school on the South Side. A personal young man named Byron got
A ride from his mother and arrived before the newspapers were delivered.
We talked every day for about 20 minutes. He was a stone with two bullet holes in his
fifteen-year-old body to prove it. This went on for about a semester, then he dropped out of school and I lost track of him until he blew away a kid in the parking lot of a different
high school two years later.
I have thought about him ever since trying to figure out why? In my humble opinion
The almost total lack of strong male direction is the primary reason gangs have such a
Strong hold on so many young men. Just not having a father is no excuse, I know because my mother was a widow and I never even saw my dad. But I was blessed by my six uncles who after kicking the shit out of half the world during the war were not about to
Let there own neighborhoods go to hell. These were men we all loved and feared a little bit.Men must stand up or else more kids like Byron will fulfill the rest of the verse....
With two Disciples between my feet. Lay my rifle on my chest and tell the Rangers I done my best.
When I die bury me deep....Those are the first lines to what was called the D’s
Prayer. Years ago one of my collateral duties was security during the free breakfast
At a ghetto high school on the South Side. A personal young man named Byron got
A ride from his mother and arrived before the newspapers were delivered.
We talked every day for about 20 minutes. He was a stone with two bullet holes in his
fifteen-year-old body to prove it. This went on for about a semester, then he dropped out of school and I lost track of him until he blew away a kid in the parking lot of a different
high school two years later.
I have thought about him ever since trying to figure out why? In my humble opinion
The almost total lack of strong male direction is the primary reason gangs have such a
Strong hold on so many young men. Just not having a father is no excuse, I know because my mother was a widow and I never even saw my dad. But I was blessed by my six uncles who after kicking the shit out of half the world during the war were not about to
Let there own neighborhoods go to hell. These were men we all loved and feared a little bit.Men must stand up or else more kids like Byron will fulfill the rest of the verse....
With two Disciples between my feet. Lay my rifle on my chest and tell the Rangers I done my best.
Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 3:58 AM
Different Views On Gangs
Yes, and "Stone to the Bone." "King Love."
All the rest of that nonsense. For teachers, I'll offer one suggestion. Then for others and teachers, two brief points.
Here's the suggestion. Every teacher who wants to learn quickly why things are a little light on the side of high stakes testings at the school simply needs to learn the dominant narrative of the local thuggery. Hand signs, colors, People/Folks Left/Right stuff. Then really show where you were born by throwing down each one in class ever day. This will remind the kids that good guys wear ties and that the definitions of the world they've been forced to believe (and often recite as catechism, say at sunset, the black of the universe, the gold of the sun, all that mumbo jumbo) is BS.
Over time, it works as wonderfully as a good after school program or two. But anyone who puts down the crown at, say, Amundsen High School (or downs the pitchfork at Roosevelt) has got to journal the experiences. Maybe do a blog and some You Tube stuff. And be sure to note, in some fashion that lasts more than a shocked nanosedond, the first adult (or administrator) who tells you that you shouldn't do that.
Maybe tape that little vignette. It will tell your colleagues in grad school more about how Chicago works at street level than all the professorial meanderings you've been getting, replete with all those quotes from William Bennett, A Nation at Risk, and the Ayers brothers.
Why do this little experiment, with downed crowns and broken pitchforks?
Simple: If the adults are really in charge and your school is really neutral government property -- rather than someone's territory or turf -- you should be easily able to do that simple series of gestures as part of the adult role modeling persons, of color or not, every day forever. Otherwise, whazzup widat?
Point number one was that with these things, for many of us, tracing back generations, it's time we asked the big questions about how Chicago can be (Mafia style) mobbed up in so many places, yet nobody thinks the huge post-1960s drug gangs are not as wired to the top. The crews that run Grand Ave. or Chinatown (and points south of there) all the way out to River Forest and beyond are not the only ones with clout in CPD and higher, starting with the alderperson or ward committeepeople or both.
Second. Agreed with both of you. When men came back from Korea, Vietnam, or anything since and walked down the street and reminded every A___ H__ to do business on another corner, with the proper persuasions in hand, the block actually got cleaned up instead of mobbed up. That is why it's so bizarre to see all those wealthy media celebrities standing next to the mayor calling for the men of the Black Community to unilaterally disarm in order to "Stop the Violence".
As the NRA would say: "Guns don't kill public school students in Chicago. Drug guns with guns killed them." By proclaiming a false issue and packaging it to most of the media, Mayor Daley lets editors think they are doing their job. The real story trails all the way back to City Hall and LaSalle St., but requires some digging. Just how mobbed up (in the sense of the post modern Chicago drug gangs) is Chicago -- in most communities where the main color of the kids is not white? And who in the suites is profiting from the crimes in the streets?
Oh. Right.
We're that world class city, financial guys and gals and all that. River North. East Streeterville. Next thing you know they'll call that toxic sludge out beyond Southworks "East South Chicago" and someone will rush to condo it without the environmentals. After all, deregulation are privatization and markets are all we need to live free in Chicago.
Or maybe they'll build the Olympic Stadia in East South Chicago while complaining about the bad air in Bejing.
All the rest of that nonsense. For teachers, I'll offer one suggestion. Then for others and teachers, two brief points.
Here's the suggestion. Every teacher who wants to learn quickly why things are a little light on the side of high stakes testings at the school simply needs to learn the dominant narrative of the local thuggery. Hand signs, colors, People/Folks Left/Right stuff. Then really show where you were born by throwing down each one in class ever day. This will remind the kids that good guys wear ties and that the definitions of the world they've been forced to believe (and often recite as catechism, say at sunset, the black of the universe, the gold of the sun, all that mumbo jumbo) is BS.
Over time, it works as wonderfully as a good after school program or two. But anyone who puts down the crown at, say, Amundsen High School (or downs the pitchfork at Roosevelt) has got to journal the experiences. Maybe do a blog and some You Tube stuff. And be sure to note, in some fashion that lasts more than a shocked nanosedond, the first adult (or administrator) who tells you that you shouldn't do that.
Maybe tape that little vignette. It will tell your colleagues in grad school more about how Chicago works at street level than all the professorial meanderings you've been getting, replete with all those quotes from William Bennett, A Nation at Risk, and the Ayers brothers.
Why do this little experiment, with downed crowns and broken pitchforks?
Simple: If the adults are really in charge and your school is really neutral government property -- rather than someone's territory or turf -- you should be easily able to do that simple series of gestures as part of the adult role modeling persons, of color or not, every day forever. Otherwise, whazzup widat?
Point number one was that with these things, for many of us, tracing back generations, it's time we asked the big questions about how Chicago can be (Mafia style) mobbed up in so many places, yet nobody thinks the huge post-1960s drug gangs are not as wired to the top. The crews that run Grand Ave. or Chinatown (and points south of there) all the way out to River Forest and beyond are not the only ones with clout in CPD and higher, starting with the alderperson or ward committeepeople or both.
Second. Agreed with both of you. When men came back from Korea, Vietnam, or anything since and walked down the street and reminded every A___ H__ to do business on another corner, with the proper persuasions in hand, the block actually got cleaned up instead of mobbed up. That is why it's so bizarre to see all those wealthy media celebrities standing next to the mayor calling for the men of the Black Community to unilaterally disarm in order to "Stop the Violence".
As the NRA would say: "Guns don't kill public school students in Chicago. Drug guns with guns killed them." By proclaiming a false issue and packaging it to most of the media, Mayor Daley lets editors think they are doing their job. The real story trails all the way back to City Hall and LaSalle St., but requires some digging. Just how mobbed up (in the sense of the post modern Chicago drug gangs) is Chicago -- in most communities where the main color of the kids is not white? And who in the suites is profiting from the crimes in the streets?
Oh. Right.
We're that world class city, financial guys and gals and all that. River North. East Streeterville. Next thing you know they'll call that toxic sludge out beyond Southworks "East South Chicago" and someone will rush to condo it without the environmentals. After all, deregulation are privatization and markets are all we need to live free in Chicago.
Or maybe they'll build the Olympic Stadia in East South Chicago while complaining about the bad air in Bejing.
Mon Dec 3, 2007 at 11:16 AM
Illegal conversions
Readers get it straight. Today on the SW side, 66th and Kedzie (Marquette community) children are killed in a FIRE. It was a illegal conversion that started in the basement apartment and spread to the first floor, then to the attic apartment. ABC 7 says 10 people were living there and the City's Building Dept is investigating on a illegal conversion made here.
When will everyone wake up and see the light that illegal conversions are out of control on the southwest side and that's why we have overcrowded schools, like Ebehart, Sandoval, Peck, Edwards, Columbia Explorers, Nathan Davis, Kelly, Curie, and so on and so on.
Read it, live with it, learn it and do something about it Mr. Mayor
When will everyone wake up and see the light that illegal conversions are out of control on the southwest side and that's why we have overcrowded schools, like Ebehart, Sandoval, Peck, Edwards, Columbia Explorers, Nathan Davis, Kelly, Curie, and so on and so on.
Read it, live with it, learn it and do something about it Mr. Mayor
