Original Homies
Download Gang Articles |
|
Watts: Under the Gun Revolutionary Worker #1217, October 26,
2003, posted at rwor.org Robocops patrol deserted, quiet streets. Young people
walking to school are tense--they never know if they might be
arrested for whistling, shouting, or talking to each other.
Houses and apartments may be raided at any time, and
unauthorized people arrested for being there. No one is hanging
out. This is not U.S.-occupied Iraq. This is LAPD-occupied
Watts. This is the reality Chief Bratton, Mayor Hahn, and the
city authorities are bringing down on Nickerson
Gardens. Nickerson Gardens is the largest public housing project in
Los Angeles, and the poorest. It is home to thousands of Black
and Latino proletarians, one of those areas described in the
RCP's Draft Programme where people are: "...locked down together, living in a `community within a
community.' Many are forced to move between dead-end jobs,
hustles, and semi-legal activities, often ending up in
prison. Many are youth, filled with daring and defiance and a
nothing-to-lose spirit. The bourgeoisie fears these
proletarians as a powderkeg of social dynamite, and it does
everything to keep this section living under the gun and
suppressed." Out of the unbroken spirit of Watts there is growing a
movement of people from the bottom who resist "the way things
are" and the way their oppressors say things will always be.
Who lift their sights to the goal of revolution, and fight to
bring into being a different future and a better world. People
have come together in many ways--to stand against police
brutality, to fight one-strike evictions, to uphold and
celebrate the '92 L.A. Rebellion, to fight for new standards
based on the principle of "Serve the People." In the pattern of gang territories that covers Los Angeles,
Nickerson Gardens is claimed by the Bounty Hunter Bloods. On
October 1 Judge Dzintra Janavs of the Los Angeles Superior
Court granted a preliminary injunction against the Bounty
Hunters in Watts. This kind of injunction, called a civil gang
injunction, is a court order that targets certain people and
strips them of their constitutional right to freedom of
association and bans other specified activities within a
certain area. The preliminary injunction covers the
half-mile-square area of Nickerson Gardens and its surrounding
streets. This is a very serious attack on the people. The injunction
gives the police a free hand to arrest any two people for
just being together . It outlaws normal daily activities
like kicking it on the porch, hanging out in the parking lot,
or playing cards with friends. It gives the police a green
light to search people's homes and apartments and arrest anyone
not on the home's lease who doesn't have written permission to
be there. It is an attempt to turn the community into a virtual
prison, with the police enforcing a legal isolation of the
people. A civil gang injunction makes it much easier for the police
to imprison people. A person arrested for violating an
injunction may be charged with either civil or criminal
contempt of court, at the discretion of the authorities. Civil
contempt is punishable by up to five days in jail or other
penalties--like stricter terms of the injunction. Criminal
contempt is a misdemeanor that carries up to six months in
jail. Gang injunctions bar people from associating with each other
and also list specific banned activities, like having a pager
or a cell phone. If the cops find someone who is named in an
injunction with another banned person, or carrying a pager,
that's all they need to take them in. Such an arrest can send
someone on parole or probation back to prison for years. And as
long as an injunction is in force, people can be picked up
again and again for violating it. Injunctions were widely used against gangs in L.A. in the
'90s. One of the most notorious was brought against 60 alleged
members of 18th Street in Pico Union, the area policed by
Rampart and the Rampart CRASH anti-gang unit. At the hearing
where this injunction was granted, the star witness was Rafael
Perez. Perez told the story of how Javier Ovando had tried to
kill him and his partner, as an example of how gang members are
supposedly inhuman monsters who should not be entitled to
constitutional rights. Later, a whole Rampart scandal broke
out, and it came to light that Perez and his partner had shot
and nearly killed a handcuffed, unarmed Ovando in cold blood
and then planted a gun on him! After the crimes, cover-ups and
frame-ups of the Rampart CRASH unit and other Rampart officers
were exposed, the police were put on the defensive. The
authorities couldn't justify giving cops even more arbitrary
power to send youth to jail on their word alone, and
injunctions went out of style as a police tactic. But since William Bratton became chief of the LAPD in 2002,
the "war on gangs" has been back with a vengeance. From the
time he took office Bratton has linked the "war on gangs" to
the "war on terrorism," describing gang members as "homeland
terrorists" who are "a threat to national security." In relation to the "war on terrorism" and the accompanying
agenda of domestic repression, the Chairman of the RCP, Bob
Avakian, has pointed out how since 9/11, the imperialists have
seized on September 11 to push this full throttle, to clamp
down on any forces or sections of society they think might
already be in opposition and to prepare the basis to clamp down
much more forcefully and broadly on society as a whole and to
create a whole repressive and intimidating atmosphere where
even to raise questions or dissent has been called traitorous
or "giving aid and comfort" to the terrorists. Looking ahead, the imperialists see the potential for unrest
and resistance from the people on the bottom of society. L.A.
is not only a key financial, political, and cultural
cornerstone of the U.S. empire but it's also home to millions
of proletarians who have no interest in that empire. The rulers
of the U.S. remember the fires of their second-largest city
burning and the inspiration and hope that the L.A. Rebellion
brought to people all over this country and all over the world.
They don't want anything like this to happen again. Bratton was chosen and brought to L.A. to develop and
implement methods of repression that the people in power hope
will be more effective than the methods the LAPD is famous for.
In the 1980s, the LAPD brutalized and antagonized the entire
population of South Central. Bratton has vowed to "take back
the streets," but he says he doesn't want to go into South L.A.
like an "occupying army." Instead, Bratton wants to carry out
"surgical strikes" against gangs and "win over the community"
to support this in the name of stopping crime and stopping the
killing. Bratton is targeting with the "war on gangs" the kind of
youth who were the driving force in the L.A. Rebellion. His
campaign to "take back the streets" is a pre-emptive strike to
gain control of L.A.'s poverty-stricken proletarian communities
before the "powderkeg of social dynamite" can explode again.
This is like waging counter-insurgency without the insurgency,
bringing the clampdown before the rebellion. The injunction against the Bounty Hunters in Nickerson
Gardens is part of this overall plan. It's a leap in bringing
down the hammer of repression. It's much more severe than
previous injunctions, because it's aimed at the whole
community. As D.A. Steve Cooley explains, "In prior lawsuits,
the court has been asked to enjoin named members of a gang from
various activities. In this lawsuit, although 16 gang members
are named as targets, the gang itself was sued..." The 1997
injunction against 18th Street in Pico Union named 60 alleged
gang members as defendants. This injunction is brought against
"Bounty Hunters.... Does 1 through 200, inclusive." It's up to
the cops to identify people as members of the Bounty
Hunters--they have a free hand to name anyone as one of the
"200 John Does." There's more. In addition to the "200 John Does" the
injunction also targets " all persons acting under,
in concert with, for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in
association with them or any of them." This potentially
includes mothers, friends, family members...even anyone who
comes to someone's door, or hands them a leaflet, could be
acting "in association with" an alleged gang member. Clearly
the "200 John Does," plus anyone acting "in concert with or for
the benefit of any of them," can grow to thousands, potentially
including anyone and everyone in the area. Under the heading of "Do Not Associate" the injunction bans
any of the 200 John Does and anyone acting "in concert
with...them" from " standing, sitting, walking, driving,
gathering or appearing anywhere in public view, in a public
place or in any place accessible to the public, with any other
known BH gang member. " Again, this allows the cops to
arrest anyone they say is a gang member or "acting in concert
with" a gang member, for being with anyone else who they say is
a gang member or "acting in concert with" a gang member. In
other words, any two people can be arrested. The only places
people are allowed to be publicly together are in school and
church. Besides "associating," the proposed injunction also bars
possessing or being around guns or drugs, intimidating or
threatening people, acting as a lookout, obstructing traffic,
blocking parking, drinking in public, having a magic marker or
a paint can, loitering, gambling, and trespassing. In reality, many people have extended family members who are
not on the lease living with them. That's what the injunction
calls "trespassing." Many people in the projects are unemployed
and "loiter" in their own neighborhood because they have
nothing else to do. Playing cards or dominoes with friends is
"gambling." The proposed injunction criminalizes normal things
that people do every day. Everything could be illegal: youth
kicking it on the front porch, mothers talking to their sons,
childhood friends barbecuing or drinking a beer together, just
walking to the store. Just living in the projects violates the
injunction! Under the one-strike law, families can be evicted if a
family member or a visitor is arrested or accused of a crime.
At least one family has already been evicted because their son
was arrested and ac- cused of being a gang member. Many more
families could face one-strike evictions under the
injunction. Stripping a whole community of the legal right to associate,
giving the police arbitrary power to decide who may and may not
talk together, is unprecedented. It takes you back to slave
quarters in the South...or into a future of Watts Supermax. Everybody's Talking About Crime,
Crime, Crime....Tell me, who are the criminals??? --Peter Tosh In papers filed with the court, the City Attorney's office
says that the injunction will create a "Safety Zone." They
argue that Nickerson Gardens is an "economically depressed
area," where people "suffer fear, futility and despair because
they can't break the Bounty Hunters stranglehold on their
neighborhood." The authorities say they are coming in to free
people from this stranglehold. And they offer a
deal--cooperation for safety. The commander of South Bureau
described Bratton's overall approach a little more honestly:
"The same old stuff with a different twist," he said. Let's look at how they're turning reality upside-down. Where does crime come from? Why does California build more
prisons than schools? A recent report by the U.S. Justice Department says that one
third of Black men born after 2001 will end up in prison. These
are people who haven't committed any crimes, but the system is
already saying they will end up in prison. Why? According to
this report Black men had 32.2 percent chance of going to
prison in 2001 compared to 5.9 percent of whites. Why? For 30 years jobs have been taken out of communities like
Watts. The jobs that were available years ago for unskilled
youth in the inner cities have been moved or eliminated. When
the class of people who run things look at their economy and
see where they have to go with it, they make the cold-blooded
calculation that they have no real employable use for
inner-city youth. One economist put it this way: "crime is a
rational choice" for many of the youth. In other words, he
says it makes "common sense" for this section of people to
"choose" crime to support themselves and try to get ahead
because the system has no other use for them. The capitalist system brings people together--and pits them
against each other. It pits Black against Black, and Black
people against Latinos. Nickerson Gardens, like other
communities, brings together immigrants from Mexico, forced to
leave their homes to survive, and Black proletarians. The
immigrants work in the garment sweatshops and small factories
of L.A. The Black proletarians have a higher unemployment rate.
Many of them work as teacher's aides, security guards, or other
jobs right at the poverty line--if they can find work at all.
Employed or unemployed, their household income is about the
same. All of them, Blacks and Latinos, live on the edge. At the
end of the month families have to choose between diapers or
milk, food or rent, light bill or phone bill. How they ended up
side by side in the projects in Watts, Black and Latino, is
hidden from them. What they have in common is kept hidden from
them. The youth growing up in these families are the ones the
system has no use for. They go to schools with no books. They
don't get trained in computers, or the high-tech skills of
today's economy, or even learn to read and write! They learn to
get searched. For many of them there are no jobs even if they
graduate. As a flyer from young revolutionaries in Nickerson Gardens
put it: "In a million ways this system tells people to do whatever
you have to do to get ahead. Hell, everybody around the world
knows the motto of the USA is `look out for number one.' They
just showed their dog-eat-dog nature in Iraq--bombing and
murdering innocent people so the U.S. can try to control the
region through the oil flow. More money, more power, smash
anything in the way. And that's what they have taught the youth
who have no choices and no future: struggle your whole life
just to end up with nothing or try to be a big dog, overpower
the little dogs, take advantage of people who might seem
weaker, get what you can and look out for yourself. So who's
really to blame? And who's really the criminal? The kid who
sees no future and gets caught up in robbing people and selling
drugs? Or the system that gives these kids no other
choice??" When our people rob each other or our young people shoot
each other it hurts us and makes us angry. People say there's
too much jacking and killing going on. There is. The
authorities have one answer and one solution: prison. They
blame the youth. But the capitalist system, not the youth, is
the fundamental cause of the crimes people commit against each
other. The youth didn't take the jobs out of the communities or
cut every social service people need to live. They didn't
create the drug business that the police, international
capitalists, and the CIA have been involved in for years. The
youth were born into this world, they didn't make it. The
capitalist system causes crime. To end crime the proletariat
has to overthrow this system and organize society in a new way
to meet the needs of the people. As part of getting ready for that TIME it's possible
and necessary to bring something much better and higher into
being. New revolutionary relations amongst the people. We can
unite instead of being pitted against each other. Help each
other and share, instead of jacking or being jacked. We can
find collective ways to solve our problems, and built
relationships based on `Serve the People,' instead of the
dog-eat-dog outlook of this system. We can strengthen our
ability to look out for each other at the end of the month when
people run out of diapers, milk and food. We can build our
strength and unity by fighting for our common interests. This
is a dream worth working and fighting for! The pain people feel at seeing the youth kill each other
runs deep. But the cops, the District and City Attorney and the
city council have no right to speak on this. They cannot bring
a solution to it. These are the authorities who refused to prosecute more than
70 cops at Rampart implicated in cold- blooded murders,
assaults, robberies, framing people and lying. Who allowed cops
to call the INS on immigrants who stood up to them. These are
the authorities who decided that the murder of a tiny homeless
woman, Margaret Mitchell, for holding a screwdriver was
justifiable homicide. These are the cops who put guns to kids' heads at Markham
Middle School next to the projects. These are the cops who shot
Chubb Dotson through the head and then left his body in the
street in Nickerson Gardens for hours while they stood around
drinking coffee and laughing. These are the cops who attacked celebrations of the gang
truce in 1992, who routinely drop kids off in rival
neighborhoods, and for years have made use of gangs to control
the youth. If Bratton can lure people into going along with the
injunction and becoming partners with the police, how will the
people stand up for their own interests against the system? The
injunction will be used first to go after some of the alleged
gang members the cops have targeted. Then it will be used
against the revolutionaries. Then they will be free to go after
everyone else. What is the way out of this madness? Flyers and posters have appeared in Watts, calling on people
to fight the injunction. As one activist put it, "We need to
take matters into our own hands to resist this injunction! We
need our youth out there, taking a bold stand for the people,
defying the clampdown. We need to build unity between Blacks
and Latinos, and bring the experience of both into the fight.
We need to take the sleep out of our eyes and not allow
ourselves to be tricked and played by Bratton, the LAPD, and
the politicians talking about a `Safety Zone.' "We need to stop doing the work of the system by jacking and
killing each other. "Everyone who hates the dog-eat-dog trap that the system
puts us in--and wants a different future for the youth and the
people--has to step out to build the resistance and the
revolutionary movement. We have a better world to fight
for."
News Topics |
Home | Research |
History | Blood Gangs | Crip Gangs | People|
Life in a Gang |
Gallery | Iraqi Cards
|
Memorial |
Migration |
Graffiti | Resume| Injunctions
Homicides |
Maps |
California Prisons | Contact
Original Homies
Download Gang Articles
How the so-called war-on-gangs is stripping the rights of a
whole community
Our Oppressors Are Not Our Protectors
Revolution Is the Hope of the Hopeless
Copyright © Streetgangs.com, All RIGHTS RESERVED. Disclaimer
All trademarks mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.
