You have the treachery of the FBI that you guys got into in the book in a really insightful way. MS: The feds did set a terrible example by creating the discord they were ostensibly trying to erase. They’re probably suffering from the same apathy that’s going on in the black community in general. And so they have this kind of antiactivist mentality. When you talk to the youth who are involved in even the shells of these street gangs, they say that it was their predecessors’ involvement in politics and policies that really got them jammed. LW: I think that’s true to a large degree. It’s really one world now, because of the hold the drug trade has. MS: But it seems like today those two worlds don’t coexist like they coexisted in the earlier days of the Stones. But at the same time, they still had one foot in the underworld, the crime. Lance Williams: If you look at the history of at least the three major black so-called street gangs-beginning with the Vice Lords, then the Stones, and then later, in the 90s, the Gangster Disciples-you see them get swept up in movements, from civil rights to black power. MS: But hasn’t there been something of a degradation over time with members of gangs like the Stones-whereas at first there was this willingness or desire to do good? If that happened today, I can’t even imagine what the uproar would be. We found cases of folks going into CPS schools and shooting. I hear people in my own age group say that, and we’re the ones who were going to high school at the peak of the murder rate. Natalie Moore: I think that every generation thinks the one behind theirs is worse. In your introduction, you mention that you couldn’t help but think about the modern-day hand-wringing regarding youth violence in Chicago-that this isn’t a new problem. Mara Shalhoup: There are so many similarities between what you guys unearthed about street gangs in the 60s and what’s happening now. Credit: Joe Davis (Williams) David Pierini (Moore) Moore delved deep into the Almighty Black P Stone Nation, the street gang that once claimed tens of thousands of members. In doing so, they show that, though Chicago has made little headway in curbing gang violence, there are still plenty of relevant lessons to be found in the past. Williams and Moore drill down to the block level of gang activity while simultaneously exploring the methods and motivations of the Stones’ upper echelon. They explore how Stones leaders Eugene “Bull” Hairston and Jeff Fort united 21 smaller gangs into a “virtual nation” of tens of thousands of members how the Stones navigated (with varying levels of success) partnerships with civil rights and black power leaders, as well as rivalries with the Vice Lords and, later, the Gangster Disciples and how the Stones were manipulated by the feds in the war on poverty, the war on drugs, and, in a bizarre turn of events, the war on terror. Moore, a reporter for WBEZ’s south-side bureau, and Lance Williams, the son of a former Vice Lord and an associate professor at Northeastern Illinois University, use the notorious Chicago street gang as a jumping-off point for examining the genesis of the city’s enduring gang violence. In their book The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall, and Resurgence of an American Gang (Lawrence Hill Books), Natalie Y. The harder task is to fathom the complexities of Chicago’s decades of gang violence, and to come to terms with how little has changed. It’s easy to blame gangs for what’s happening on Chicago’s streets these days, and it was just as easy to blame them in 1968. In one month, close to four dozen Chicagoans would die in acts of gang violence. Shots rang out not just on street corners but in school hallways. It was only the third week of school, and already 12 boys had been killed in gang-related shootings on the south side. Best of Chicago 2022: Sports & Recreation.Best of Chicago 2022: Music & Nightlife.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |