Re: nbc Why we need the death penalty nbc

"William Innes" <billyinnes@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It seems that damn near every other thing that I find enigmatic these days
seems to have roots in
Chicago, St. Louis or New Orleans (whether it's sublime or profane)...so,
it wouldn't have surprised me either way.

Sublime, profane or delicious. Ya know ice cream was invented in St. Louis
and nobody yet has figured out how something so simple could have such a
"hold" over so many people (especially me!).

That's a pretty interesting overview/history.

I'm not sure I was going for a history, I just start writing and the words
flow. Truth is, I could easily fill a 1,000 page book of what I remember
from growing up, all these details come bouncing back. And the saddest part
is, I've forgotten more than I remember.

Do you think that necessarily changed the core of gangland's
mentality...or do you think it just made its core a bit more transparent?

Definitely the first. A lot of these kids were in the wrong place at the
wrong time. They did what they had taken an oath to do. In other words, if
it's your night to hold the club gun and you end up in a situation where it
needs to be used, well, you started the night as a kid going to a party and
ended it as a murderer. Given a different neighborhood and different set of
circumstances, that same kid would have ended up a productive citizen. It
just wasn't in his cards.

That does not discount the horse sense of those, self included, who knew the
gangs but didn't join them. However, those kids, self included, came from
homes where the parents cared. My parents allowed me to run the streets.
That may be considered bad parenting in and of itself, but in fairness to
them, they were old & tired by the time I hit the floor (a late life
surprise). And they really had no clue what was going on out there. Yet
even while running I was always running with the knowledge of a loving,
caring home to go back to. Many of the kids in gangs felt safer out on the
streets then in their own homes.

The other thing: after I came of age the next generation had it a way worse.
Kids were attacked - and viciously - just for being white. How many times
can a kid take that before he chooses to join the only thing in place that
is there to protect him from such hatred? I sometimes wonder, had I been
running the same streets just a few years later, would I may have needed to
join a club just to have the kind of fun I wanted (and got) in my time?

Anyway... with the drug war and the dumbing down & coarsing up of our
culture, things have now spiraled so out of control that entire families
have lost their basic humanity over multiple generations. And there's
little anyone cares to DO about it. We keep turning our backs on the neon
wilderness, and in many cases tearing it down, but eventually (as Carl
Sandburg said): "the slums take their revenge."

While I can understand the need in some to enter into this life as a way
of survival, along with filling in other gaps in their lives,
the one thing that I've often resented about some of Springsteen's early
songs (as much as I may love 'em) is the way that
he romanticizes gangs.
Okay, so now you substitute "switchblade knives" with "gun"...but dead-end
still strikes me as dead-end.
That's one reason why I appreciated his writing "American Skin" (not that
it really had much to do with a gang-banger's life),
but at least the deadlier/cruder elements of the streets weren't made to
sound like a rougher version of ROMEO AND JULIET or WEST SIDE STORY.

Yea, well... I probably romanticize them in my own writings too. But ya
gotta go with the flow of whatever comes out. Writing & music provide a
romanticization of subjects that under different lights might not look so
pretty. Heck, if it weren't for writing & music love itself, striped of
pretense, might look more like stupidity.

Will look forward to it.

Don't know if I have the energy to attack it again. I'd like to, because
there were some interesting avenues taken, but other stuff is in the way.
I'm sure you know how it is when a post gets away from you. It starts
taking out line and soon you're not sure if you're playing it or it's
playing you? Anyway, I'll try to cut it down from "colossal" and get it to
actually make some sense.

Wise call. Since Vallejo is often referred to as Parolee City,
particularly its downtown area, I've known a lot of guys and gals
who've done time. Some talk of it, most don't. I'm a bit suspect of
those who talk too openly about it....much in the same way as I am about
guys who talk loosely about their years in combat (it seems to me that
those who were in the roughest/most vile of arenas are usually have the
tightest lips when it
comes to telling what they went through).

I would never ask about it, just out of respect. I figure if he wants to
talk about it he will, and if he doesn't he won't. The guy has made a life
for himself (and it wasn't a bit, it was serious
years) and is a solid person, so as far as I'm concerned that was then and
this is now.

Oddly enough, it's often the women who seem to be more open about
it...and, more often than not, I come across them
come the time of year when we hold our annual Parent-Teacher Conferences.
That they're grinding their teeth and smacking their lips (in other words,
wired for sound), might have something to do with their being loose-lipped
about the time they've served.

And it would be so much better if they had the freedom to take care of
themselves in the privacy of their own homes, without stigma. Simple human
dignity. Not being put in situations that jeopardize themselves & their
families. Would be nice too, if they were judged only on how well they
handled all the other stuff in their lives, yet could request and get help
(from people who are not overworked & underpaid) once THEY decided THEY were
ready.

This goes to a point: in your other post you mentioned the Latin Kings.
When we were kids bombing down Kedzie Avenue to Humboldt Park the Latin
Kings were two dozen scary looking guys on the corner of Spaulding & Beach.
By the time I was in 8th grade they were a couple hundred hanging at various
places in that same neighborhood. By the time I was in high school they
were maybe 500 guys and by the time I graduated high school they were maybe
2,000 at most. But over the decades they've used Spaulding & Beach as a
springboard to jump from state to state, and now they have what... 20,000
members?

THANK YOU WAR ON DRUGS!!!


to think that there's a bit of bravado behind those who view jail as just
another four-letter word.

I think that's a given.

I know that there are those who are so accustomed to that system/lifestyle
that the thought of being out in the "free world" is often a scarier
thought to them than the thought
of routine/regime/consistency of prison-life. Myself, I think I'd pretty
much lose my will to live if I knew that the next 20 years (or, worse, all
the years of my life) were going to
be spent in small cell, surrounded by large towers and fences of
barbed-wire and a bunch of male brutes every which way I turn.
It amazes me that folks in those type of surroundings can hold onto any
sort of straw of hope or find any joy of life.
Then again, maybe it's all relative...and, when compared to where they
were before they got to prison, the difference isn't all that profound.
I dunno...

Maybe the subject of this NG summed it up best:

Eight years in
Feels like you're gonna die
But you get used to anything
Sooner or later it just becomes your life.


Shut Up & Fish!
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