Customer Reviews

Street Wars: Gangs and the Future of Violence

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

As a resident, educator, and community activist in Watts I have come to know the problems this book addresses intimately. Tom Hayden is an outsider to all of this, as is most of the book's audience, but you would never know it from the positions he takes. He has done us the enormous service of having listened deeply to people who many are afraid to even look in the eye. And he adds to this his own insights as a policymaker and insider to the political world that is intimately, if often destructively, connected to the social fabric from which gangs arise. A better, more insightful analysis of gangs could come only from putting down your books, turning off your computer, and working face to face with gang members yourself.

I don't like gangs. They degrade quality of life wherever they exist. But they serve a purpose to their members, providing a sense of family. Too bad the really violent gangs don't let their members quit. Hayden explains in this book why we have gangs and why we're not very successful at getting rid of them.

When we explore gangs, motivated to create safe neighborhoods that are gang free, we come up against the same set of fundamental problems. The greater issue of no work and dysfunctional schools always emerges. Even if after great effort the police authorities clear an area of gangs, we can't keep it clear if there aren't any easy to understand alternatives for young people. Young men must be kept busy in self-esteem generating activity that leads to financial independence and good citizenship. Every society has faced the same issue. Even Alexander the Great worried that his Macedonian warriors would fight and feud amongst themselves if he didn't keep them occupied conquering foreign lands.

A lot of thinkers don't like Hayden's approach because he stresses the responsibility of society in the formation of the gang problem. Whether society accepts this blame doesn't worry me, as we all have common cause to change the conditions that create a vacuum filled by gangs.

Very liberal writting on the topic of Street Gangs. However, there are many valid points indicated in the failure of the government to corral the problem early.

In Street Wars, Tom Hayden goes qualitatively past forgiving thugs for their thuggery; he presents them as heroes, warriors born at the wrong time. The fault, the blame, in the book goes entirely to America for not taking the lead of SDS and the other New Leftists of Hayden's heyday. What a vision: Somehow a coalition of stupid violent thugs and college-age "philosophers" will feed and clothe the millions.

The only positive value I see in this book is for its object-lessons in how ideology blinds. You see it best in Hayden's interviews and character profiles, where he can just report data like "So-and-so fathered 5 children with four different women, never intending to support any of them, and killed three people, all before turning 18" and then hustle to the point of the story, which is how horrible it is that we "demonize" such remarkable fellows. What garbage. Grow up, Tommy

This book is less about the problem of gang violence and more about Tom Haydens contributions to the effort. Most of the book is a self-congratulatory pat on the back. Hayden spends much of his time arguing as to why we have failed to prevent this problem, yet he offers no concrete solutions. Furthermore, he refused to even acknowledge that law enforcement does have a part to play whether we like it or not.

If you want to read about Haydens personal experience then this book is good, but if your looking for answers then you came to the wrong place.

This book is less about the problem of gang violence and more about Tom Haydens contributions to the effort. Most of the book is a self-congratulatory pat on the back. Hayden spends much of his time arguing as to why we have failed to prevent this problem, yet he offers no concrete solutions. Furthermore, he refused to even acknowledge that law enforcement does have a part to play whether we like it or not.

If you want to read about Haydens personal experience then this book is good, but if your looking for answers then you came to the wrong place.

There are so many contradictions, inconsistencies and outright falsehoods in this book that it would take an entire other book to articulate them all. It's clear that Hayden's radical notions haven't changed an iota since his days with the SDS. Which is fine. But when he allows ideology to twist facts, cherry pick statistics, screw up the timeline of events and assert outright falsehoods, he's not doing his team any favors. He misrepresents the entire section on the arrest of Ernest "Chuco" Castro, a Mexican Mafia brother who launched the initiative to vertically integrate all of Southern California's Hispanic street gangs and impose street taxes. He left out an entire chunk of the Mexican Mafia's policy initiative. He left it out because it undermines one of his pet theses that gangs are "disorganized" crime. And while he was at it, he smears the cops that arrested Castro by implying that they planted guns on him. While Hayden sees conspiracies and dark, death-squad agendas behind every police effort to stop gang violence, he perceives every gang shooter as a misunderstood victim of a "political culture that offers little or no exit for an entire generation of inner-city youth." Never mind that a lot of the L.A. cops on the front lines of the gang wars are Black and Hispanic and come from the same neighborhoods, the same projects and even the same families that produced gangsters. Hayden's culprits for the growth of the gang culture are all the usual suspects - neo-conservatives, globalization, the prison industrial complex - and some unusual ones like the Viet Nam war and the failure of the radical politics of the 60s. For an example of successful radical politics, see San Francisco DA Kamala Harris, a radical leftist, who refused to go with a death penalty indictment on a gangster who shot and killed SFPD Officer Isaac Espinoza for a simple traffic stop. Even the usually ultra-liberal SF citizens found that one hard to take. The State Attorney General stepped in and took the case away from her and will file a death penalty case against the shooter. Normally, if I disagree with a writer's conclusions, I can at least find some historical or purely informational value in a book. In this case, there's none. The book is misleading, factually inaccurate and a sticky, confusing mess.

I met this guy today at Cal State Long Beach at a panel discussion he gave with a few other authors. Talk about a waste of time. This guy is so full of himself that I'd be surprised if he could see past his ego far enough to actually help the gang problem. I'm not sure what his problem is, but he sure is rude, unpleasant, and devoid of any progressive ideas.

I would suggest staying as far away from this egomaniac as possible, and spending your money on a book by another author.