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The Plague SpreadsAwake!—1998 | April 22
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The Plague Spreads
Little Robert was only 11 years old, yet he was found facedown under a desolate bridge. There were two bullet holes in the back of his head. He had been killed, it was believed, by members of his own youth gang.
Fifteen-year-old Alex was headed toward gang membership and perhaps toward an early grave. But he saw a friend die, and he thought to himself: ‘I don’t want to end up like that.’
VIOLENT street gangs, once associated with the widely known Los Angeles gangs called the Bloods and the Crips, have spread worldwide. But wherever they are, gangs are amazingly alike.
England’s “Teddy Boys” shocked the world in the 1950’s. The Times of London said that they used axes, knives, bicycle chains, and other weapons to “inflict terrible injuries” on innocent people. ‘Knife fights broke out, cafés were ripped apart, and coffee bars were wrecked.’ People were molested, robbed, beaten up, and sometimes killed.
Die Welt of Hamburg, Germany, reported that more recently young people “on their way to the disco or on their way home” have been set upon by gangs wielding “baseball bats, knives, and guns.” Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung said that skinheads in Berlin attack anyone “who is noticeably weaker—the homeless, the handicapped, retired women.”
An Awake! correspondent in Spain reported that the problem of teenage gangs is a recent one there but is growing. ABC, a newspaper in Madrid, carried the headline “Skinheads—The New Nightmare of the Streets.” A former skinhead from Spain said that they would sniff out “foreign pigs, prostitutes, and homosexuals.” He added: “A night without violence [was] worthless.”
In South Africa the Cape Times said that much of the violent crime there is “the by-product of a vicious gang culture.” A book published in Cape Town says that South African gangs became “parasites” in the poorer townships and that they “robbed and raped members of their own communities and indulged in gang fights over territory, markets, and women.”
O Estado de S. Paulo, a Brazilian newspaper, said that gangs there were “multiplying at a frightening rate.” It stated that they would attack rival gangs, better-off youths, people of another race, and poor migrant workers. It also said that one day several gangs formed a dragnet, “robbed people on the beach . . . , fought among themselves,” and turned a major avenue in Rio de Janeiro into “a war zone.” Another report from Brazil said that the number of gangs is increasing both in large cities such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and in smaller towns.
The Canadian magazine Maclean’s noted in 1995 that according to police estimates, there were at least eight active street gangs in Winnipeg, Canada. And newspapers in the United States have published pictures of gang members who have taken gang clothes and graffiti to isolated Indian reservations of the American Southwest.
In New York City, a rash of gang-related violence erupted last year. Members of the Bloods and the Crips, gangs originally prominent in Los Angeles, were said to have been involved. According to the mayor of New York, between July and September, the police made 702 arrests in incidents directly related to street gangs.
The problem is no longer confined to major cities. The Quad-City Times, published in the central part of the United States, told of “increased violence among teen-agers, rampant drug use and a growing sense of hopelessness.”
A Heartrending Plague
One gang is said to have started as a group of friends. But as its leader’s reputation grew, so did the violence. The gang leader lived at his grandmother’s house, which was shot at repeatedly, even when she was inside. A newspaper reported that there were more than 50 bullet holes in the house. The shots had apparently been fired in retaliation for acts that were blamed on the grandson’s gang. In addition, the gang leader’s brother was in jail as a result of gang-related activity, and his cousin, who had moved away to avoid the violence and had returned home for a visit, had been shot by someone in a passing van.
In Los Angeles, gang members shot at a car and killed an innocent three-year-old whose mother and boyfriend had mistakenly turned down the wrong street. A bullet smashed into a school and hit a teacher who was trying to help students learn to improve their lives. Many others have also been killed who had nothing to do with gangs but who became their victims. A Brooklyn, New York, mother became known in her neighborhood for the saddest of distinctions—losing all three of her young sons to gang violence.
What has caused this worldwide plague of youth violence, and how can we protect our dear children from it? How do gangs get started in the first place, and why are so many youths joining them? These questions are discussed in the following articles.
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What We Should Know About GangsAwake!—1998 | April 22
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What We Should Know About Gangs
Wade, a former member of a California gang, said: “We were simply guys who lived in the same neighborhood. We started in elementary school together. We just didn’t make the right decisions.”
GANGS often began more or less as neighborhood groups. People in their early teens or younger gathered on a street corner. They did things together and then united to protect themselves from a more established group nearby. But soon their group began to sink to the level of its most violent members, and it became involved in dangerous criminal activities.
A rival gang from another street may have viewed the new group as its enemy. Anger then led to violence. Drug traffickers used the gang to sell illegal drugs. Other criminal activities followed.
Luis was 11 years old when friends formed a gang. At age 12 he began using drugs. At 13 he was arrested for the first time. He took part in auto thefts, burglaries, and armed robberies. And he was in and out of jails for gang fighting and rioting.
We may be surprised at times by those who belong to gangs. Martha, a clean-cut, overachieving high school student, got good grades and was well behaved in school. However, she was the leader of a gang that dealt marijuana, heroin, and cocaine. It was not until one of her friends was shot several times and killed that she was frightened into changing her life.
Why They Join Gangs
Surprisingly, some gang members say they joined for love. They were looking for camaraderie, for a closeness they did not find at home. The newspaper Die Zeit of Hamburg, Germany, said that in street gangs young people try to find the security that they cannot find elsewhere. Eric, a former gang member, said that if you don’t find love at home, “you go outside looking for something better.”
One father, a former gang member, wrote about his early life experiences: “I was in and out of jails for disorderly conduct, gang fighting, rioting and eventually for attempted murder in a drive-by shooting.” Later, when he had his son Ramiro, he had little time for the boy. When Ramiro grew older, he also joined a gang, and he was arrested by the police after a gang fight. When his father insisted that he get out of the gang, he shouted: “They are my family now.”
A nurse in a Texas hospital, who had spoken with 114 young gunshot victims in slightly more than a year, said: “It’s strange. I don’t think I’ve ever heard one of them ask for their mother or any family member.”
Significantly, it is not only children from poorer parts of town who join gangs. Several years ago the Canadian magazine Maclean’s quoted police as saying that they had found youngsters from both the city’s most affluent and its most impoverished neighborhoods in the same gang. These young ones from diverse backgrounds band together for a similar reason—they seek a sense of family togetherness that they do not find at home.
In some areas young people grow up viewing gang membership as a normal way of life. Sixteen-year-old Fernando explained: “They think joining the gang will help them solve their problems. They think: ‘I’ll get me some friends. They are big and carry guns. They will protect me, and nobody will do nothing.’” But new gang members soon find that being in a gang makes them the target of the gang’s enemies.
Often gangs are found in neighborhoods where there is little money and too many guns. News reports tell of big-city schoolrooms in which 2 out of 3 students live in single-parent homes. Sometimes, a student’s parent is a drug addict who may not come home at night, and the student must take her own fatherless child to day care before she goes to school in the mornings.
California’s governor, Pete Wilson, said: “We have a terrible problem because a lot of kids are growing up without a father, without a male role model to give them love, direction, discipline and values—without a sense of why they should respect themselves or respect others.” He said that this inability of some young people to sympathize with others is the reason they “can seemingly blow somebody away [shoot them dead] with not a flicker of remorse.”
Although lack of family togetherness, personal training, and solid moral example are major factors in the growth of gangs, other factors are also involved. These include TV programs and movies that present violence as an easy solution to problems, a society that often labels the poor as failures and continually reminds them that they can’t afford to do the things others do, and the growing number of single-parent families in which an overworked young mother must struggle to support one or more unsupervised children. A combination of most or all of these factors, and perhaps of still others, has led to the growing worldwide plague of street gangs.
It’s Hard to Get Out
True, after a time some gang members drift away from their gang, occupying themselves with other activities. Others may go to live with relatives in another area and thereby escape life in a gang. But often, getting out of a gang is not that easy.
Commonly, gang members have to undergo a violent beating by several members before they are permitted to leave a gang alive. In fact, people who have wanted to get out of certain gangs have actually had to suffer being shot. If they survived, they were permitted to leave! Is it worth such severe abuse to get out of a gang?
One former gang member explained why he wanted to get out: “Five of my friends are already dead.” Indeed, life as a gang member can be almost unbelievably dangerous. Time magazine reported regarding one former member of a Chicago gang: “In his seven-year career, he’s been shot in the stomach, hit in the head with a railroad tie, had his arm broken in a fight and been jailed twice for auto theft . . . But now that he’s finally gone straight, even his former friends are out to get him.”
A Better Life Possible
Eleno, a Brazilian, was once a member of the Headbangers, a gang that fought with knives and sometimes guns. Feeling underprivileged, he found satisfaction in breaking things and attacking people. A workmate talked with him about the Bible. Later Eleno attended an assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses, where he met former associates who had left his gang as well as a former member of a rival gang. They greeted each other as brothers—so different from what would have occurred at an earlier time.
Does this really happen? Indeed it does! Recently a representative of Awake! sat down with former members of major gangs in Los Angeles who now serve with congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses. After several hours of talking, one of them paused, leaned back, and said: “Look at this! Former Bloods and Crips sitting here loving each other as brothers!” They agreed that their change from ruthless gang members to men of kindness and love had resulted from the fact that they had learned godly principles through careful Bible study.
Could this really happen in the 1990’s? Can gang members actually make such changes now? They can if they are willing to look into the powerful encouragement provided in God’s Word and then bring their lives into harmony with Bible principles. If you should happen to be a gang member, why not consider making such a change?
The Bible urges us to “put away the old personality which conforms to your former course of conduct” and to “put on the new personality which was created according to God’s will in true righteousness and loyalty.” (Ephesians 4:22-24) How is that new personality developed? “Through accurate knowledge,” the Bible says, one’s personality can be “made new according to the image of [God] who created it.”—Colossians 3:9-11.
Is it worth trying to make a change? Yes, it is! If you are a gang member, you will probably need help to make such a change. There are people in your own neighborhood who will be glad to assist you. Yet, parents are often in the position to exercise the greatest positive influence on their children. So we will now consider what parents can do to protect their children from gangs.
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Protecting Our Children From GangsAwake!—1998 | April 22
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Protecting Our Children From Gangs
“Kids need people who care about them.” —Not My Kid—Gang Prevention for Parents.
NEXT to our relationship with God, our children are among our most precious possessions. We should talk with them, listen to them, hug them, and be sure they know that they are very important to us. We must teach them good things—to be honest and helpful, how to have a good life, and how to be kind to others.
The superintendent of a juvenile detention home put his finger on a big problem today, saying: “Values are not being taught within the family.” Surely we need to give attention to doing this. We must live the way we want our children to live and let them see the joy that this adds to our lives. If we do not teach them proper values, how can we expect them to follow such values?
Today, a magazine published for American schoolteachers, said that gangs often attract youths who “view themselves as failures” and who are “looking for security, a sense of belonging, and social acceptance.” If we really give our children those things at home—security and a solid feeling of success both in the family and in their own lives—they will be far less likely to be attracted by false promises made by a gang.
The leader of a California police antigang unit tells of the shocked expressions he sees on parents’ faces when the police knock at their door to say their child is in trouble. They can’t believe that the one they thought they knew so well could have done something wrong. But their child had found new friends and had changed. The parents just hadn’t noticed.
Taking Precautions Vital
People who live in areas where gangs are active say that both young people and older ones should use good judgment and not offer a challenge or a threat to a gang. Avoid large groups of gang members, and do not copy the way they look or act, including the style and color of clothing they wear. Imitating them could make you the target of a rival gang.
Also, if a person dresses or acts as if he wants to be part of a gang, its members may pressure him into becoming one of them. The importance of knowing the attitudes of local gang members was illustrated by a father of three children in Chicago. He observed: ‘If I wear my hat turned over to the right, they think I’m disrespecting them.’ And that could lead to violence!
Be Involved With Your Children
One mother said: “We must be aware of our children—what they feel and what they do. We don’t have a chance if we don’t take a personal interest in their lives.” Another said that the gang problem won’t stop until parents stop it. She added: “Let’s give them love. If they’re lost, we’re lost.”
Do we know our children’s friends, where our children go after school, and where they are in the evening after dark? Of course, not every mother can be home when her children get home from school. But single mothers who struggle valiantly to pay the rent and feed their children may be able to make arrangements with other mothers or with someone they trust to provide afternoon supervision for their children.
A man who lives in a major gang area was asked how he would protect his own children from gangs. He said that he would take his son around the neighborhood to show him the outcome of gang activity. He would point to the graffiti and the run-down buildings and show him “that the area doesn’t look safe and that gang members are just hanging around, hardly doing anything with their lives.” He added: “Then I’d explain that living by Bible principles would prevent him from having an outcome like that.”
Such a simple thing as our sincere interest in our children’s schoolwork can be a protection for them. If their school has a parents’ night or some other time when parents are invited to visit classrooms and talk with the teachers, make it a point to go. Know your children’s teachers, and let them know of your concern for your child and of your interest in his or her schooling. If the school does not have a school visitation program, try to find occasions to talk with the teachers about your child’s progress in school and about how you might be able to help.
A survey in one large American city found that among students whose family helped or encouraged them with homework, 9 percent had joined a gang. But in families where such attention was not given, twice as many students—18 percent—had joined a gang. If our family is loving and close-knit and if we do wholesome things together, it will reduce the likelihood that our children will be attracted by the false promises of gangs.
What Our Children Really Need
Our children need the same things we do—love, kindness, and affection. Many children have never been touched in an affectionate, loving manner or told that they really matter. May that never be the case with our children! May we hug them, tell them that we love them, and try to see that they live the moral way that we have taught them to live. They are too precious for us to treat them in any other way.
Gerald, a former gang member, explained: “I didn’t have a father to look up to, so I went to the gangs to fill that void in my life.” He began using drugs at the age of 12. But when he was 17, his mother began a regular home Bible study with Jehovah’s Witnesses. She applied the Bible’s fine principles in her life. He says: “I saw the change in her, and I thought, ‘There’s got to be something to this.’” Her fine example prompted him to turn his life around.
Our children should see a good example in us—that we live the way we tell them to live. They should be able to have a good feeling about their family, not for what it possesses, but for what it does. And the children should have been helped in such a way that they feel good about their own moral behavior. Former Los Angeles County district attorney Ira Reiner put it this way: “We must get to kids before they get into gangs.”
Providing What They Need
It is not the material things we provide for our children that are of primary importance. What really counts is that we help them develop into loving and caring adults who have fine moral standards. The Bible says that righteous Jacob called his young ones “the children with whom God has favored [me].” (Genesis 33:5) If we look at our children that way—as gifts that God has given us—we will be more apt to treat them with love and to teach them to live honest, upright, and moral lives.
We will thus do all we can to live our own lives in such a way as to set the right example for our children. We will give them a proper and wholesome pride in their family, not in the family’s material possessions, but in the kind of people we are. Thus, they will be less likely to look for support from those on the streets.
Looking back on his youth, a grandfather says: “I would never have done anything to bring shame on my family.” He acknowledged that he felt this way because he was aware of the love that his parents had for him. True, demonstrating love for their children may not be easy for some mothers and fathers who never received love from their own parents. Nevertheless, parents need to work at showing love to their children.
Why is this so important? Because as “What’s Up,” a magazine published by the Utah Gang Investigators Association, said, “when youths feel loved and secure—not financially secure, but emotionally secure—the needs that drive them into gangs often vanish.”
Some readers may think that loving families like that hardly exist anymore. But they do. You can find many of them among the congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses around the world. True, these families are not perfect, but they have a big advantage: They study what the Bible says about child rearing and strive to apply the Bible’s godly principles in their own lives. Moreover, they teach these principles to their children.
Jehovah’s Witnesses agree with the statement made in The Journal of the American Medical Association: “One cannot hope to have . . . teenagers ‘Just say no’ without giving them something to ‘Say yes’ to.” In other words, if we want our children to say yes to good and wholesome things, we must guide them in that direction.
None of us would ever want to have to say, as did one father: ‘In his gang my son found fellowship and respect that he had never felt before.’ Nor would we ever want to hear our children say, as one young person did: “I joined the gang because I needed a family.”
We, the parents, must be that family. And we must do everything we can to see that our precious young ones remain a warm and loving part of it.
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Protecting Our Children From GangsAwake!—1998 | April 22
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A Checklist for Concerned Parents
✔ Spend time at home with your children, and do things together as a family
✔ Know your children’s friends and their families, and monitor where your children go and with whom
✔ Let your children know that they can come to you at any time with any problem
✔ Teach children to respect other people, their rights, and their ideas
✔ Support your children by getting acquainted with their teachers, and let the teachers know that you appreciate them and support their efforts
✔ Do not resolve problems by yelling or using violence
Your children need your warm affection
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