Gang Deconstruction

and lack of opportunity for working-class youth, has remained at constant levels despite
the severe repression.
While gangs are not generally progressive, working-class organizations at this time,
they can provide a way to organize resistance to racist repression.
Politicians Want More Cops
Marxists understand that the capitalist state requires “special bodies of armed” men and
women—the police—to do the bidding of the capitalist class and protect the current
government and system.
California’s Senator Diane Feinstein and Congressman Adam Schiff, both Democrats,
understand this as well. This is why they just introduced legislation that would allot $700
million dollars to so-called “gang suppression activities.”
Helping the police terrorize working-class communities, especially communities of color,
remains a priority of both leading capitalist political parties—it’s the way they maintain
their rule.
“It’s unfortunate that this new legislation threatens to continue this legacy of waste,” said
Judith Greene, another author of the report.
In Chicago, the extreme police repression and high rates of incarceration, coupled with
the legacy of racist segregation in the city, has caused gang activity to remain
constantly high. The report confirms this. More police repression means more gang
activity, not the opposite.
Even so, gangs play a relatively small part in the drug trade. The Los Angeles District
Attorney’s office reported that only one in seven L.A. gang members participate in drug
sales. This remained consistent across the country, in stark contrast to police sources
that claimed that gangs are “the primary retail distributors of drugs in the country.”
Cop Racism Targets Youth of Color
According to the report, law enforcement claims that over 90 percent of those in gangs
are people of color. But survey data shows that the largest single ethnicity of adolescent
gangs is white, accounting for 40 percent.
The Los Angeles Police Department describes on its website the racist ways cops
identify gang-involved youth:
“Examples are preferences for wearing baggy or ‘sagging’ pants or having baseball
caps turned at an angle,” explains the LAPD website.
“Excessive amounts of dark clothing or a predominance of one-color outfits, white t-
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