The Gangs of Los Angeles

The Gangs of Los Angeles
Author: William Carl Dunn
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007
Genre: Crime
ISBN: 9780595443574

"The Gangs of Los Angeles is a classic, real life account of American crime. From the early Tomato Gangs of 1890's Boyle Heights to the modern Crips and Mara Salvatrucha, with side trips through an Irish Dogtown, the gang wars of "Happy Valley," Sleepy Lagoon and the yellow journalism of the Hearst Press, and a tragic murder at Sunset and Vine, Dunn recounts the events and notorious denizens that spawned LA's gang subculture"--P. [4] of cover.

Do or Die

Do or Die
Author: Leon Bing
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1992-05-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0060922915

Do or Die is the first insider account of teenage gangs--the lives, loves, and battles of children who kill--from the only journalist ever allowed inside this closed and dangerous world. This is no West Side Story. Welcome to a world where teenagers wear colostomy bags and have scrapbooks filled with funeral invitations; where a young man, after being shot in the chest, drives himself to the hospital; where another youngster, caught in crossfire, uses his girlfriend as a human shield; where teenage gangsters are kidnapped, tortured, and held for six-figure ransoms; where kids hum the latest movie's theme music while killing people. It's a world of clickheads, sherms, bangers, ballers, and mummyheads; a world where the strongest feelings of family come from other gang members; a world where the most potent feelings of self-worth come from murder.

Space of Detention

Space of Detention
Author: Elana Zilberg
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2011-11-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 082234730X

An ethnographic analysis of the purported transnational gang crisis between the United States and El Salvador, based on extensive research in Los Angeles and San Salvador.

A Rainbow of Gangs

A Rainbow of Gangs
Author: James Diego Vigil
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2010-07-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0292788517

Winner, Best Book on Ethnic and Racial Politics in a Local or Urban Setting , Organized Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics of the American Political Science Association, 2002 This cross-cultural study of Los Angeles gangs identifies the social and economic factors that lead to gang membership and underscores their commonality across four ethnic groups--Chicano, African American, Vietnamese, and Salvadorian. With nearly 1,000 gangs and 200,000 gang members, Los Angeles holds the dubious distinction of being the youth gang capital of the United States. The process of street socialization that leads to gang membership now cuts across all ethnic groups, as evidenced by the growing numbers of gangs among recent immigrants from Asia and Latin America. This cross-cultural study of Los Angeles gangs identifies the social and economic factors that lead to gang membership and underscores their commonality across four ethnic groups—Chicano, African American, Vietnamese, and Salvadorian. James Diego Vigil begins at the community level, examining how destabilizing forces and marginalizing changes have disrupted the normal structures of parenting, schooling, and policing, thereby compelling many youths to grow up on the streets. He then turns to gang members' life stories to show how societal forces play out in individual lives. His findings provide a wealth of comparative data for scholars, policymakers, and law enforcement personnel seeking to respond to the complex problems associated with gangs.

Disco's Out...Murder's In!

Disco's Out...Murder's In!
Author: Heath Mattioli
Publisher: Feral House
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2015-10-19
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1627310231

Famous for its revolutionary aspects in musical, political, sexual identity and consumerist ideas, punk rock also has its lesser-known gangster ethos as well, explained here by players in the various punk gangs. The Los Angeles, Orange County, and South Bay punk scenes, populated by blue collar kids who responded to the violence and aggression of punk songs and shows. A number of them formed punk gangs that got into beatings, drug dealing and murder. Among them, no gang was more notorious than La Mirada Punks, or LMP. Says LMP chieftain Frank the Shank after getting arrested by police for murder: "After having my hands in so much bloodshed over the years, I most certainly had it coming. I deserved whatever I got." Unexpectedly Frank was bailed out from prison by his father's friend, a mob gangster. "Too many people died at the hands of punk rock violence," said Frank. "I got lucky, some didn't. As an ultra-violent punk rock gangster, I admit my part in ruining the scene. L.A. punk was a magical moment of youth expression like no other. And the gangs ruined punk rock. I still have people telling me today that they quit punk because of LMP. I dig graves at a small cemetery just outside Los Angeles. What else would you expect for Frank the Shank?" Cover illustration by the renowned Raymond Pettibon.

Monster

Monster
Author: Sanyika Shakur
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2007-12-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0802198236

The classic memoir of life as a Crip, written in solitary confinement: “A shockingly raw, frightening portrait of gang life in South Central Los Angeles.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times After pumping eight blasts from a sawed-off shotgun at a group of rival gang members, twelve-year-old Kody Scott was initiated into the L.A. gang the Crips. He quickly matured into one of the most formidable Crip combat soldiers, earning the name “Monster” for committing acts of brutal violence that repulsed even his fellow gang members. When the inevitable jail term confined him to a maximum-security cell, a complete political and personal transformation followed: from Monster to Sanyika Shakur, black nationalist, member of the New Afrikan Independence Movement, and crusader against the causes of gangsterism. In a work that has been compared to The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, Shakur makes palpable the despair and decay of America’s inner cities and gives eloquent voice to one aspect of the black ghetto experience.

Wallbangin'

Wallbangin'
Author: Susan A. Phillips
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 56
Release: 1999-07-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780226667720

"Wallbangin'" offers an unprecedented, in-depth look at the phenomenon of graffiti as it is embodied in the neighborhoods of one of its epicenters, Los Angeles. 13 color plates. 104 halftones.

The Projects

The Projects
Author: James Diego Vigil
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2009-03-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 029277382X

2008 — ALLA Prize for Best Book on Latina/o Anthropology The Pico Gardens housing development in East Los Angeles has a high percentage of resident families with a history of persistent poverty, gang involvement, and crime. In some families, members of three generations have belonged to gangs. Many other Pico Gardens families, however, have managed to avoid the cycle of gang involvement. In this work, Vigil adds to the tradition of poverty research and elaborates on the association of family dynamics and gang membership. The main objective of his research was to discover what factors make some families more vulnerable to gang membership, and why gang resistance was evidenced in similarly situated non-gang-involved families. Providing rich, in-depth interviews and observations, Vigil examines the wide variations in income and social capital that exist among the ostensibly poor, mostly Mexican American residents. Vigil documents how families connect and interact with social agencies in greater East Los Angeles to help chart the routines and rhythms of the lives of public housing residents. He presents family life histories to augment and provide texture to the quantitative information. By studying life in Pico Gardens, Vigil feels we can better understand how human agency interacts with structural factors to produce the reality that families living in all public housing developments must contend with daily.

God's Gangs

God's Gangs
Author: Edward Flores
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2014
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 147987812X

Winner, 2014 Distinguished Contribution to Research Award presented by the Latina/o Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association Los Angeles is the epicenter of the American gang problem. Rituals and customs from Los Angeles’ eastside gangs, including hand signals, graffiti, and clothing styles, have spread to small towns and big cities alike. Many see the problem with gangs as related to urban marginality—for a Latino immigrant population struggling with poverty and social integration, gangs offer a close-knit community. Yet, as Edward Orozco Flores argues in God’s Gangs, gang members can be successfully redirected out of gangs through efforts that change the context in which they find themselves, as well as their notions of what it means to be a man. Flores here illuminates how Latino men recover from gang life through involvement in urban, faith-based organizations. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with Homeboy Industries, a Jesuit-founded non-profit that is one of the largest gang intervention programs in the country, and with Victory Outreach, a Pentecostal ministry with over 600 chapters, Flores demonstrates that organizations such as these facilitate recovery from gang life by enabling gang members to reinvent themselves as family men and as members of their community. The book offers a window into the process of redefining masculinity. As Flores convincingly shows, gang members are not trapped in a cycle of poverty and marginality. With the help of urban ministries, such men construct a reformed barrio masculinity to distance themselves from gang life.

The Mexican Mafia

The Mexican Mafia
Author: Tony Rafael
Publisher: Encounter Books
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2007-07-09
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1594032734

It has been called the most dangerous gang in American history. In Los Angeles alone it is responsible for over 100 homicides per year. Although it has fewer than 300 members, it controls a 40,000-strong street army that is eager to advance its agenda. It waves the flag of the Black Hand and its business is murder. Although known on the streets for over fifty years, the Mexican Mafia has flown under the radar of public awareness and has flourished beneath a deep cover of secrecy. Members are forbidden even to acknowledge its existence. For the first time in its history, the Mexican Mafia is now getting the attention it has been striving to avoid. In this briskly written and thoroughly researched book, Tony Rafael looks at the birth and the blood-soaked growth of this criminal enterprise through the eyes of the victims, the dropouts, the cops and DAs on the front lines of the war against the Mexican Mafia. The first book ever published on the subject, Southern Soldiers is a pioneering work that unveils the operations of this California prison gang and describes how it grew from a small clique of inmates into a transnational criminal organization. As the first prison gang ever to project its power beyond prison walls, the Mexican Mafia controls virtually every Hispanic neighborhood in Southern California and is rapidly expanding its influence into the entire Southwest, across the East Coast, and even into Canada. Riding a wave of unchecked immigration and seemingly beyond the reach of law enforcement, the Mexican Mafia is poised to become the Cosa Nostra of twenty-first-century America.