In our third fieldwork, we interviewed Ronald “Cook” Barrett. Cook runs a gang prevention program and has been doing this for 30+ years. He was inspired to start this program because of the gang rise in his area as well as losing a 16-year-old to gang violence. This program helps youth growing up in poverty not join gangs.
We also learned that the influence of movies and rappers is sometimes a problem and convinces teens to join gang life. For example, in 21 Savage’s music, he explains multiple times throughout his songs about gang violence. 21 Savage grew up in a low-income area in Atlanta, where he joined the Bloods. He is one of the many examples of rappers speaking this way on their songs.

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On January 28th me and my partners watched an important documentary on gang violence in New York. We learned some important facts and statistics about gang violence. we learned about people and groups that worked to stop gang violence. The most important group we learned about were the Guardian Angels.
The Guardian Angels were a group of people who fought against gangs. They had nothing to do with the NYPD or the goverment. The leader and founder of the Guardan Angels was Curtis Silwa. He was inspired to make the Guardian Angels because he experienced gang violence a lot and wanted to make a change. He was constantly peer presured to join gangs and it got to the point that he would thrive as a gang member. This is why he created the Guardian Angels.
As the Guardian Angels began to grow members the state goverment started to hate them. They even started arresting and killing them sometimes. By 1976 the Guardian Angels were over 1000 strong and growing so the goverment couldnt stop them. The Guardian Angels steped in to protect the city when the police could not.
They became a memorable group of people who fought against opression and violence putting their life on the line and will never be forgoten.

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Last Friday we visited MCNY. Specifically the Activist New York exhibit. We learned about different activists and activist organizations who fought for the rights that they deserved.
Some activists we learned about were the Young Lords who fought for clean streets when the Sanitation department was not willing to clean their part of the city. The Young Lords were Black and Latino and a part of the black panther party.
Overall it was a great experience and I definetly recommend it to anyone.

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On Jan 9th we met with Alex Vitale, the Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. He also works there as a professor. We interviewed him about the topic of gang violence.
Alex gave us a lot of good information about Gang affiliation, how the gang hierarchy works, how to get out of gangs, and many more things like how gangs are different in the movies than in real life. We often imagine gangs are a lot more organized which can be true from movies and TV shows but this isn’t always the case.

We learned that kids who are in poverty are most likely to join gangs as they are desperate to earn money. There are several other reasons why people join gangs though. Some join gangs for protection and some join because they can’t get a job. Some even join for amusement and to ”fit in.”
Vitale told us that it is easier to get out of gangs depending on the size of them. Some people age out of gangs or maybe just have kids and don’t want to get their kids involved. For larger gangs, it’s a whole different story. These types of gangs will try to encourage you to stay in the gang. They most likely would use many strategies like bribing or even threatening the member or even their family.

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