Welcome to another post on gang issues in education. I have heard from many of my readers appreciating the links I have added for their researching convenience. I hope to add more in the future, but at the same time I do not want to overwhelm you with so many that they turn into a distraction instead of a helpful resource.
If you are new to my web-page, please drop me a line and let me know if you find this information helpful, your feedback is invaluable to my research and future blog entries.
I would also like to add that up to this point in time I have been stuck in the dark ages, and was only selling copies of my book through snail mail and by word of mouth. But I was getting complaints because many people prefer to buy via the Internet because of its convenience. So in order to get up to date you can now go to my static html page at gangsinourschools.com and purchase a copy via the secure site on Pay-Pal. As I had been told by someone lately; it’s about time!!
And now to the jest of this topic. I started to notice an alarming trend that is cropping up in the gang world. It seems that the initiation practices many gangs are using are starting to become extremely violent. What I’m talking about is the practice of shooting potential recruits to be accepted into the gang. Now the intent is not to kill but to show true loyalty to the gang by taking one in the foot or the finger or wherever. It also proves to the sponsoring gang that this recruit will go to any length to protect the gang.
At this point in time I’m not sure if these practices are part of a legitimate street gang initiation or just wanna-bes going too far. But one thing is for sure, it proves that many of these wanna-be gang members will go to any length to be a part of a particular gang, by allowing themselves to get shot for sake of the gang.
This should be alarming for anyone who has to deal with gang members in the school and classroom because this violence can carry over into the school. As you can well imagine, if someone is willing to take a bullet for the gang what obstacle would you, the teacher, present to them? I am not trying to use scare tactics here, only that you should be vigilant to any underlying talk you may hear around the school and have it dealt with through the proper channels.
Trust me when I say an ounce of vigilance is worth a ton of cure. It’s just best to nip any potential issues before they become problems for the school. So my advice is to just keep your antenna’s up by paying attention to any tags they leave in your classroom and any talk you may hear. This especially holds true if you have members from different affiliations in your room.
Because once gang members start to feel as though they are falling behind in proving their hardness to other gangs it won’t be long before they start trying to prove it to each other at school.
I know that there is more to this issue than I can cover in a post, because it could literally take pages to cover thoroughly. So to get a more detailed view of why members partake in gang initiations, you can purchase of copy of my book at the link offered above. If you wish to contact me please do so a cabgil@aol.com.
Thank you and come again for another post on gang issues in education.
Gilbert Cabrera