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Last year there were 269 gang-related killings in LA. Gang-related crime
leaped 15.7 per cent last year, as most other types of crime fell. Hate crimes
against black people have gone up.
Green’s death made the public aware of the gang war between ‘brown and
black’. Next week a summit will be held called the Black and Brown Strategy
Meeting which aims to head off a race war. “All of the signs are there that a racial
war is going to explode in this city,” says Khalid Shah, director of Stop the
Violence, one of the groups organizing the meeting. “You are looking at an event
which could not only paralyze an entire city but an entire state,” he warns.
Green’s death sparked Villaraigosa’s crackdown. The police took the
unprecedented step of publishing a list of the 11 worst gangs, including 204th
Street. They promised to go after them with police, FBI agents and injunctions to
prevent members meeting. But Angelenos have seen it all before. The city’s
history is full of anti-gang initiatives.
Publishing the ‘hit list’ could backfire. “Putting out a list was a bad idea.
Groups that don’t make the list will want to be on it. They don’t exactly think
rationally,” said Alex Alonso, a gang historian.
Yet there is hope. Alfonso ‘Chino’ Visuet, 23, was sucked into the gang life
as a teenager. There was the lure of excitement and riches, the push of a difficult
home life. “People who join a gang are always running away from something.
They flee to the gang,” Visuet says.
Visuet now works for Father Boyle’s Homeboy Industries, a project that helps
people leave gang life. It provides jobs, an education, pays to have gang tattoos
removed and gives counselling. It aims to remove the circumstances that lead to
crime: poverty, abuse and unemployment. It is staffed almost entirely by former
gang members and has created a bakery, a silk-screen printers and a restaurant.
It worked for Visuet. He starts college this autumn and wants to be a
probation officer. “I was on the edge of doing something that would ruin my life,
either by doing violence or having it done to me. That’s over now,” he says.
Visuet despairs at the conflict. “A brown gang member now just sees a black
gang member. What they don’t see is how that person comes from the same
place they do. They might have a mother who is an alcoholic as well or a father
who beats on them. They have the same story,” he says.
LA is a city of two worlds – Hollywood and gangs. On a two-lane highway
that goes through the middle of Harbor Gateway, a few hundred yards from where
Cheryl Green was shot, there is a billboard for a new TV show called Sons of
Hollywood. It shows three rich young men against a backdrop of palm trees. It
claims to be a ‘reality’ show, but for most of the impoverished, racially torn citizens
it is nothing more than a fantasy.
Observer, 18/03/07
2 Answer the questions to the text.
· How many gang members are there in LA?
· What does the expression ‘a gang war between brown and black’ mean?
· What two things did Cheryl Green’s death provoke?
· What is the ‘hit list’?
· What does Father Boyle do to help people leave gangs?
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