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Jumped In: What Gangs Taught Me about Violence, Drugs, Love, and Redemption - Softcover

Leap, Jorja

 
9780807044810: Jumped In: What Gangs Taught Me about Violence, Drugs, Love, and Redemption
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0807044814 ISBN 13: 9780807044810
Verlag: Beacon Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

When Jorja Leap began studying Los Angeles gang violence in 2002, she encountered a myriad of proposed solutions to the seemingly intractable “gang problem” and set out to discover what was really going on. The stakes—then and now—could not be higher: a child or teenager is killed by gunfire every three hours—and homicide is the leading cause of death for African American males between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four.
 
In Jumped In, Leap brings us stories that reach behind the statistics and sensational media images to the real lives of those stuck in—and trying to escape— "la vida loca.” With the eye of an anthropologist and a heart full of compassion, this small, tough woman from UCLA travels some of the most violent and poverty-stricken neighborhoods, riding along in police cruisers and helicopters, and talking with murderers and drug dealers, victims and grieving mothers.
 
Through oral histories, personal interviews, and eyewitness accounts of current and former gang members, as well as the people who love and work alongside them, readers come to understand both the people pulled into gangs and those trying mightily to forge alternatives and help their community. In delving into the personal lives of current and former gang members, Leap aims not only to find out what leads them to crime and how to deal most effectively with gang activity, but also to hear the voices of those most often left out of the political conversation and to learn from leaders who offer a different kind of hope, through community outreach and jobs programs.
 
As she forges lasting friendships in this community and becomes immersed in others’ triumphs and tragedies, Leap’s personal and professional lives intersect in sometimes incendiary ways. With a husband in the Los Angeles Police Department and a daughter in adolescence, she faces plenty of family dilemmas herself. Ultimately, Jumped In is a chronicle of the unexpected lessons gang members taught her while she was busily studying them, and how they changed her forever.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jorja Leap, MSW, PhD, is the Director of the Social Justice Research Partnership at UCLA, and a nationally recognized expert in gangs, crisis intervention and trauma response. She is the author of highly acclaimed books, including Jumped In and Project Fatherhood.

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From Chapter 5

Big Mike
 
I love these children. Every last one of them. The badder they are, the more I love them. I was one of them.
—Reverend Mike Cummings

Mike Cummings is about six feet tall and, I am sure, easily tips the scales at three hundred pounds. His skin is so black it shimmers violet, and his neck is huge, muscular. I keep glancing over at his neck and arms while I ride shotgun, holding on for dear life in a white Chevy Suburban with We Care Outreach Ministry stenciled in gold calligraphy on either  side. Big Mike is at the wheel, and it is safe to say he completely lives up to his gang moniker. Grinning, with a mega-watt smile to match his girth, he pilots this enormous SUV through the streets of South LA while talking, occasionally taking his hands off the wheel to emphasize a point. It’s been two weeks since Khalid took me to meet him, and I’m spending the day in the hood with Big Mike.

“I’m just here tryin’ to save the children, trying to keep them out of the life I lived. We’re using our love and Scripture to do the job.” He resembles an NFL blocker—huge, strong, and running for daylight. “I am at it 24/7, workin’ with these children.  Praise the Lord.”  Big Mike is part preacher without portfolio, part tow truck driver, and part savvy businessman. “I don’t need much,” he tells me, “just enough to buy gas, and every once in a while I gotta go buy my wife some Louis [Vuitton] or Gucci.” We both laugh—he’s a reformed gangbanger on a first-name basis with several European designers. But even with his grin and bonhomie, I still wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley. I feel both thrilled and reassured to be under his protection.

Back in the day—the late 1980s and early ’90s—Mike Cummings
was notorious in Watts. Before both the Lord and three years in county jail saved him, Big Mike was one of the scariest, baddest gangsters in South Los Angeles. On the street he is recognized as the real deal— an OG—Original Gangster.  “I’m gonna school you in the neighborhoods,” he tells me. “It’s time for you to understand what’s goin’ on here. Because y’know, things are bad, really, really bad.  We got innocent youngsters dyin’ every day.”

I ask him how things have gotten this bad. He doesn’t hesitate before answering, and he is very clear.

“The biggest problem is guns, guns, guns.”

National statistics back him up. A child or teenager is killed by gun- fire almost every three hours—nearly eight times a day. Homicide is the prime cause of death among African American males between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four. On top of this, black males between the ages of fifteen and nineteen are almost four times as likely as their white counterparts to die from a gun-inflicted injury; they are six times as likely to be homicide victims. While I am contemplating the problem of guns and gangs, Big Mike has stopped at a gas station.

“You gotta understand that it’s like the Pentagon out there,” he tells me while he fills the tank. “Only they got more guns than the Pentagon. They got more guns than the military. They kill more people than the military. This is where the war is, in our streets. You got kids, they got guns, pistols, automatic weapons, Uzis—you name it, they got it.” Big Mike doesn’t know how right he is. At the end of this year—2004—
2,825 children and teenagers will die as a result of being shot by fire- arms, more than the number of American combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan that will eventually be recorded through the end of 2006.

There are three men sitting on plastic chairs outside the gas station mini-mart. The smell of marijuana, or bud, is in the air. One of them calls me over and tells me I am standing on hallowed ground.

“You know where you standing—they filmed a scene for that movie starrin’ the brother—whazzit called, whaz dat movie?”

“Yo, Training Day.”

“Training Day, starring my man Denzel.”

“They wanted it to be, what that word, realism . . . is” “No foo’, authentic—”

“Yo muthafucka, aks me, they wanted real, you feel me—”

While the young men with pants slipping down their hips and black do-rags crowning their heads are playing the hood version of 365 Days to a Stronger Vocabulary, a small homie who couldn’t be more than ten years old quietly walks up, a purple bandana covering his face from the eyes down. The color of his makeshift mask indicates that this little boy, who should be at school studying fractions, is associated with the Grape Street Crips.  He is carrying an AK-47. The gun looks like it weighs more than he does. Big Mike is immediately on alert.  “You gotta put that away, my little homie,” he intones.  “We have a lady here.” What my sex or gentility has to do with this automatic weapon escapes me, but I am intrigued.  Mike senses my curiosity. He puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Come on, these foo’s playin’ around a little too much for me. You there—take care of this little man,” Mike commands, and the three stoned homies snap to order and take the weapon from the youngster. “Come on, Jorja Leap, you can talk with the homies another day. Let’s go.” Where? I wonder.

As if he can hear my question, he explains, “I need to drive you around so you can see what’s goin’ on in the neighborhoods. You been here at night. Now you gotta see what goes on in the daylight.”

I agree with his plan wholeheartedly.  One thing that has eluded me so far is the whole geography of black and brown gangs in Los Angeles. Aquil Basheer, the LA City firefighter, community activist, and leader who is a constant in my life, tells me, “Black gangs are based on territory and economics.” This is all too accurate an assessment. Black gangs are rooted in a street-by-street mentality.  Along with this, their gang activity occurs where they live, where they deal drugs, where they shoot one another, where they bring up their children. I knew that to truly understand black gangs in LA, it is essential to possess a street-level view. Latino gangs are different.

“The Latino gangs have changed.  They used to operate out of the projects. But now they are commuter gangs,” Father Greg Boyle, the beloved Jesuit priest who runs Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention and reentry program, has explained. “They live out in Bell or Montebello or Hawaiian Gardens and drive in to commit their crimes.” Not so the black gangs.

We climb back into the We Care Outreach Ministry mobile, with the air-conditioning blasting. It is 1:00 in the afternoon, with a blazing sun and temperatures in Watts approaching 90 degrees. Homies are hanging out on the street, just kicking it. Mike is in his element. He wags his left index finger at every mad-dogging gangster we pass.

“I am gonna take you where you can see just how many guns there are out there. Just how many of our young men are gettin’ ready to die.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re goin’ to the projects,” Big Mike tells me. “Nickerson Gardens. Imperial Courts.  Jordan Downs. You know what they say in City Hall. They call them the housing developments.  This ain’t no developments, these here are the projects.”

Despite...

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Verlag
Beacon Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2013
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0807044814
ISBN 13 
9780807044810
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
232
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Beacon Press
https://www.beacon.org/Assets/ClientPages/History.aspx

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