Treating L.A.’s Gang Problem: We Need ‘Root’ Doctors

Alberto walked out of his Pico-Union building dressed in a long-sleeve shirt that covered the intricate webbing of tattoos on his arms. He backed out the entrance with a baby carriage holding his 10-month-old daughter, Angela; her mother, Sonya, followed. Angela was being taken to a neighborhood baby-sitter. Alberto would later hop a bus to an auto shop in South-Central, where he apprenticed with his brother. Sonya would go on to wait for a friend to taxi her to a small garment plant in Koreatown, where she worked.

Alberto and Sonya were members of 18th Street, the city’s “deadliest street gang,” according to a recent series on the gang in The Times.

I got to know Alberto, Sonya and some of their homeys. Alberto and Sonya were troubled, for sure. Alberto had a massive “Eighteen,” in old-English lettering, across his back. He once dealt drugs. There were times when the couple would lay deathly still on a mattress, with the infant between them; then Alberto would edge up to the window to check for possible snipers. Eventually, Alberto was deported and the couple broke up.

When I knew them, they were hard-working and thoughtful. They weren’t monsters. This is an aspect of gang life that must be understood, a complexity to challenge the “they’re-bad”-and-”we’re-good” scenario that most media and politicians love to portray.

18th Street is believed by law enforcement to have 18,000 members. (My research suggests the figure is closer to 6,000.) But even if the higher number is accurate, and even if total gang membership in L.A. County is 150,000, as estimated by police, why were there only 807 gang-related murders in 1995? Although one such incident was too many, 807 slayings seem small in light of the belief that it is easy to provoke 150,000 gang members to pull the trigger. Thus the numbers would seem exaggerated, possibly to fuel fear and justify pouring ever more public money into law enforcement, the primary source of the numbers.

As a result, a panic appears to be gripping some city leaders. Right now, the face behind the panic is 18th Street. Last year, it was the Avenues, following the slaying of 3-year-old Stephanie Kuhen. Sometimes, it’s La Eme. Or Mara Salvatrucha. Or Crips and Bloods. Often it’s just “predator” youth. A panic, unfortunately, that is inspiring critical social policy.

After Kuhen’s slaying, Mayor Richard Riordan called for “action, not talk.” But the only responses appear to be expedient, usually repressive: more laws, more police, more prisons.

Equally troubling is the notion, which helps give life to these repressive measures, that we don’t know what to do about the escalating violence. Maybe that’s simply because we are asking the wrong people. Instead, why don’t we ask the parents? Why don’t we ask long-time community activists? Or the young people themselves? Aren’t they the “experts” on their lives? If policy is targeting them, they should be participating in the shaping and formulation of that policy.

This has nothing to do with “rescuing” troubled youth. Rather, this is about community elders holding the ground while youth make their “glorious mistakes.” When the elders are not there, when community fails to guide youth through their stages of growth, the young often succumb to destructive mistakes, many times paying with their lives.

They are being “sacrificed,” whether we are aware of this or not.

Alberto and Sonya, and youth like them, are often lost because too many churches, recreation centers and employers are closing doors to them. Too many people are giving up. I’ve heard parents plead to the courts: “Take my child, please, I don’t know what to do anymore.” But the problem is not strictly unsure parents. The whole community is fractured. And many children are falling through the cracks.

Young people need a place--at home and in the community--where they encounter unconditional acceptance. Where they are honored. Where their natural gifts are nurtured. Where they can live out a meaningful and purposeful life.

All youth, troubled or otherwise, have these needs. A violent and fractured community will produce violent and lost children. We need to look at the big issues: Are the elders abandoned? Are the young people pushed aside? A megalopolis like Los Angeles cannot sustain the kind of ground-up community building that is necessary unless we look at such concerns.

We can’t rescue youth because they have to save themselves, on their own terms, tapping into their own creative energies. They have to become masters of their own lives. Finding their place in this world is an intensely personal endeavor. But where is the community that prepares them, sets clear and consistent parameters and when the ordeal is over, welcomes them home?

Any society that does not take care of the material, spiritual and educational needs of its children--in fact, the whole community: children, adolescents, adults and elders--has failed. No law, no political diatribe, no hammering fists on a podium can accomplish this. None of this has anything to do with being a “conservative,” “liberal,” or “moderate.” These terms cannot express the real content of our times, the revolutionary epoch most people today are crying out to see realized: a society humane enough to take the wondrous inventions, its advanced resources, and unleash them to heal and protect the lives of its people.

When one sees the young dying before their elders do, when there are more and more violent responses to problems, whether from the powerful or the powerless, we know society has lost its vision. The core is fragile. Developing young people from the center out requires a centered community; a community out of balance, unfortunately, contributes to unbalanced people.

It’s time to “see” people like Alberto and Sonya again. At its root, this is what “respect” means--to see again. The general plot line expressed around gangs is that they are a social disease (“they’re worse than a cancer,” a gang expert recently declared), that gang youth have nothing positive to give. I disagree. When their needs are adequately attended to, these youth will give plenty. Many have already done so despite the neglect they have experienced.

What determines the difference is a fully empowered, fully aware and committed community. Under favorable conditions, anyone can become a responsible (able to respond), competent and autonomous person.

Is there a role for policy makers and law enforcement? Of course, but as part of a whole package, developing action around the assets of a community, not the perceived deficits.

We need what some cultures have called “root doctors,” those who go to the root of a problem. Leaders are people who see farther and feel deeper. But an important aspect we sometimes forget is that they must also solve problems.