The fact is that in too many communities in cities in Britain gangs now have become completely rooted into these communities and they destroy them around them.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I believe that I understand gangs better than others. Because they're formed out of necessity. They're formed by people to keep from being suppressed.
Gang members have invariably grown up in broken, chaotic homes, often experiencing domestic violence; they have truanted from school and many have been formally excluded; and they live in neighbourhoods where worklessness, addiction and crime are rife.
Gang violence in America is not a sudden problem. It has been a part of urban life for years, offering an aggressive definition and identity to those seeking a place to belong in the chaos of large metropolitan areas.
In Birmingham, Manchester or Liverpool there are white gangs that share the same backgrounds - they come from broken homes, completely dysfunctional, mums for the most part unable to cope, the fathers of these kids completely not in the scene.
Gangs are bastions of conditional love, and one of the ways to counteract it is to offer community, which will always trump gang, and that's what happens at Homeboy Industries.
What a lot of people don't realize about gangs, in my opinion, is that a gang is not there to attack you. Eighty percent of the people in a gang are there to stop anyone from attacking them. You join a gang for protection, not to go out and hit someone.
In fashion, there are so many gangs, if you identify too much with one, you get caught - I would lose my freedom.
As I got older, I got into all kinds of things in the streets - but for some reason, I never got caught up with the gangs growing up. Everybody dug me, man. I never had problems.
Terrorism, ladies and gentlemen, in my eyes I have a very, very, very simple explanation. Gangs of criminals, killers, used unfortunately by certain governments in the past for political purposes, who are on their own now as gangs.
People have to see that there is a high degree of complexity about belonging to a gang. It's a symptom, not a problem.
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