It's so easy for a kid to join a gang, to do drugs... we should make it that easy to be involved in football and academics.
Gang members aren't frightened into acceptable behavior by increased penalties, enhanced punishments, and the promise of new detention facilities.
It is important that gang members are aware that if they engage in aggravated assault, maiming, kidnapping, or manslaughter that they will receiving a minimum sentence of 30 years.
Like the suffering child, gang members act out of their despair, and their actions are all the more alarming now for our not having heeded their cry long ago. The shortsighted neglect that keeps us locked up in our outrage has also kept us from viable solutions.
I have never supported amnesty, and I led the fight against Chuck Schumer's gang of eight amnesty legislation in the Senate.
I am excited to bring elements of my lifestyle to the masses with the Rich Gang, and with Lil Wayne to be able to share the feel of our labels with the YMCMB Apparel brand.
But sports carried me away from being in a gang, or being associated with drugs. Sports was my way out.
We are so lucky Americans are impressive with what they're willing to give. We get bashed too much. And, so many young people in this country give so much. They're not all gang bangers.
People have to see that there is a high degree of complexity about belonging to a gang. It's a symptom, not a problem.
I would like to be a gang leader on 'Sons of Anarchy' or own a lemonade stand on 'Boardwalk Empire.'
There's an old little jingle: 'The chief use of slang is to show that you're one of the gang.' What that means is that every social group has its own linguistic bonding mechanism. If there's a group of lawyers, they have their own slang. If there's a group of doctors, they have their own slang, and so on.
I founded Homeboy Industries in 1988 after I buried my first young person killed in our streets because of gang violence.
I got into punk at 17 after discovering an all-girl band from Long Island on the Internet called The Devotchkas - four crazy-looking girls with fast, driving basslines and high-pitched gang vocals who shared the same dress sense as the punks I used to eye up curiously in Camden.
The Capone gang was actually a public utility; it supplied what the people wanted and demanded.
The employer is not going to choose the gang member who's just been released from prison: they're going to choose the person with the skills.
No kid is seeking anything when he joins a gang; he's always fleeing something. He's not being pulled; he's being pushed by the circumstances in which he finds himself.
We need to send a clear message to gang members that violent crime will not be tolerated.
I'm not really part of any group or clique or gang because that's always been my nature.
On 'This Is England,' everyone is mates. The nice thing is that when you watch us, you're watching a gang. They're young, and they're adventurous. There's a real closeness there.
I do believe in lessons learned. I have learned that you work with gang members and not with gangs; otherwise, you enforce the cohesion of gangs and supply them oxygen.
