Letter From... Chicago
            by  Shadd Maruna.


This summer, the Chicago Tribune discovered a new gang activity that is
shocking politicos and concerned suburbanites. It seems that four
volunteers--two members of the Gangster Disciples (GD) and two Black
Disciples--have been patrolling one of the public schools on Chicago's
South Side for the last three years as part of a "gang deactivation program."

According to school officials, the volunteers monitor the grounds and
hallways of the school in order to guard against violence--especially
gang-related disputes--enforce attendance and promote respect for teachers
and school rules.

Mayor Richard M. Daley called the gang members' volunteer program "a
disgrace," and the media has blasted the program with exaggerated
characterizations of gang members beating students who do not behave in class.

Former gang member Hal Baskin, who ran for alderman in Chicago's last city
council election, says his "message for Daley and the other naysayers" is
simple: "Until they come up with some viable programs that they can
introduce into those schools, I suggest they stop talking against a
program that has the potential to be so great.

Following the barrage of negative media attention to the program, Englewood
residents recently held a rally to support the gang monitors. The event
was attended by former political figures from the area as well as Patricia
Hill, the president of the African-American Police League.

Moreover, in a letter to the Chicago Tribune, University of Northern Iowa
professor Clemens Bartollas called the gang program "one of the most
innovative and effective means across the nation to create a quality
learning environment within an urban school."

Bartollas, who observed the school several times, says, "I was delighted
with the quality of the educational environment I experienced at the
school. Although other urban schools are consumed by disruptive activities
in and on school grounds, drive-by shootings, criminal attacks and
trafficking of drugs, these factors are controlled at Englewood."

Former Alderman Anna Langford was more direct to the program's critics:
"Those of you who don't live in this community, get the hell out of our business.

For Langford and other sympathizers, a gang is nothing more than a
community-based citizens collective trying to gain social and political
strength by bonding together rather than struggling and suffering in
isolation. "That's what a gang is all about: common interests and common
programs. The AMA [American Medical Association] is a gang under that definition."

Several influential members of Chicago's larger gangs have been promoting
just that "AMA" image in recent years. For instance, the two-year-old
group 21st Century VOTE (Voices of Total Empowerment), consisting largely
of current and former gang members, has enjoyed considerable success with
its voter registration, job placement and community placement programs. In
1993, members of 21st Century VOTE organized a march of 5,000 people on
City Hall to protest municipal cutbacks in health care.

To the dismay of many city officials and political observers, the group has
been able to raise over $200,000 in contributions and even flexed its
populist muscle in ward-level politics by sparking run-off elections in
the 3rd and 16th Wards this year. Desperate for ways to combat the
violence and poverty plaguing their communities, thousands of voters in
these districts looked past the criminal records of Hal Baskin and Wallace
"Gator" Bradley in hopes that the former gang members could provide the
leadership needed on the South Side.

Bradley was also a key member of last year's gang peace summit, attended
by such notable figures as Benjamin Chavez, Jesse Jackson and Louis
Farrakhan. Two of the peacemakers honored during the summit included Larry
Hoover, one of the founding members of the GD nation, and Vice Lord
chairperson Willie Lloyd, who both have urged an end to the violence in
Chicago's neighborhoods.

Hoover, a prisoner in the Dixon Correctional Facility, says the Gangster
Disciples gang is now a pro-social, community-service organization called
Growth and Development. An illiterate murderer when he went into prison in
1973, Hoover has since obtained his GED and emergency medical technician
license and even started his own business, marketing a line of hip-hop
sweat shirts and jerseys called "Ghetto Prisoner, Inc."

The premise behind Chicago's gang make-over is simple and persuasive. As
Baskin says, "We live in desperate times, and desperate times call for
desperate measures."

In the face of rampant and justifiable mistrust of police, devastated
inner-city economies, sickening prison overcrowding and the loss of
necessary social programs and services, new strategies are definitely
needed to make neighborhoods safe. Current and former gang members might
be in a unique position to provide this help by influencing urban youth to
rechannel their energies.

Former Chicago Mayor Eugene Sawyer testified on Hoover's behalf, saying,
"Our young people are not listening to us. With the help and support of
strong African-American men, it could make a difference."

Still, community members have many reasons to distrust the promises of
former and current gang members. The politics of collectives like the GD's
and El Rukns, another, smaller Chicago gang, rarely seem to transcend the
greed and territorialism of the wider society: For instance, 21st Century
VOTE lost many supporters with its controversial boycott of
Korean-American owned stores.

Moreover, some gang members' recent attempts to "go straight" have not
always proved successful. Samuel "Sharif" Willis, Minister of Justice for
the Almighty Nation of Conservative Vice Lords, had been one of the most
visible spokespersons for the 1994 gang peace initiative in Minneapolis
and even did community outreach for the group United for Peace before
being arrested for armed robbery earlier this year.

In the most frequently cited example, over 25 years ago, both Republicans
and Democrats courted a powerful, young street gang then known as the
Blackstone Rangers. Their leader, Jeff Fort, promised to bring gang peace
and improved community safety to Chicago. The Rangers received a $927,341
federal grant to start a job training program to provide instruction for
800 young delinquents.

Today, few dispute that the Rangers pocketed almost all of this grant
money. More importantly, the Rangers, now the El Rukns, have become one of
the most notorious narcotics syndicates in Chicago. Fort is allegedly
responsible (directly or indirectly) for 500 to 1,000 murders and was the
first man in the United States to be convicted of terrorism.

To such examples, Hoover retorts, "People say don't do it, because we tried
it in the sixties and we failed. If the same philosophy was used with the
space program we wouldn't be on the moon."

Nonetheless, city officials do not seem to be making the gangs' transition
into positive work very easy.

The Daley administration has been openly critical of 21st Century VOTE,
suggesting that it is merely a front for narcotics trafficking. Last year,
the Mayor rescinded a $45,000 grant awarded to the group by the
city-funded Urban League. 21st Century VOTE would have used the money to
raise African-American participation in city transportation and
construction contracts, and has carried on with this initiative despite
losing the funds.

Moreover, the heat has been turned up considerably on GD associates in a
thinly disguised attempt to undermine and discredit Growth and Development
and 21st Century VOTE.

Shortly after April's council and mayoral election, police raided the
offices of Hoover's Ghetto Prisoner clothing operation, the apartment of
his wife Winndye Jenkins and the offices of Save the Children Promotion,
the charitable foundation Jenkins runs. The simultaneous raids led to no
arrests and uncovered no illegal drugs, but police did seize $67,000 in
cash and enough files and records to fill a police van.

Then, in the nationally ballyhooed May drug bust of Lawrence McCarroll, 23,
and his mother, the media pronounced that the ring leaders for the GD's
drug business had been "exposed at last."

Next, Police Superintendent Matt Rodriguez asked a federal judge to ease
"burdensome" legal restrictions on police spying in order to re-establish
the so-called "Red Squad" in time for the 1996 Democratic convention.
Infamous for infiltrating and spying on leftist, peace and environmental
groups prior to the 1968 convention, the Red Squad will no doubt focus its
attention on infiltrating anti-Daley groups like 21st Century VOTE this
time around.

Still, possibly the most potent weapon against 21st Century VOTE and other
groups has been the daily barrage of rhetoric intended to undermine 21st
Century VOTE's support base by labeling it a "criminal" organization.
Daley, several city and state politicians, the Chicago Tribune and the
Chicago Sun-Times have all spoken out against Baskin, Bradley and the GD's
attempts to enter city politics.

Chicago Sun-Times writer Steve Neal's columns have typified the anti-GD
rhetoric. Of Baskin he wrote, "If he had two heads, he could start a rock
garden." Of Bradley, he suggests, "His candidacy is a threat to Chicago's
image as a world-class city."

That's weighty stuff, especially coming from a city famous for its paid-
off politicians, mob influence and gangsters turned politicians.

Even Richard J. Daley, Chicago's most famous mayor and father of the
current mayor, was himself the leader of an ethnic gang called the
"Hamburg Club" before beginning his reign as Chicago's "mayor for life."

In fact, Hoover credits Mike Royko's biography of Daley, Boss, with
convincing him that he and his contemporaries could become a legitimate
political organization.

Hoover says, "Every ethnic group, they start out with these street gangs,
but as they mature, they turn into something far more legitimate and
something that could be a credit to the community." 21st Century VOTE
board member Charles Kellogg similarly cites Daley's example as impetus
for their organization: "It was a gang called the Hamburgers that
functioned in the Irish-American community in Daley's neighborhood, and
they grew into the most powerful political organization in the state of Illinois."

Historian Evan Stark even suggests a direct link between the existence of
gangs and the emergence of progressive social reform for minority groups.
The threat to mainstream society posed by collectives of immigrant males
prompted first increased police protection, then the administration of
social services, then, finally, full political participation.

The difference between these "reformed" immigrant gang members and members
of contemporary groups like 21st Century VOTE seems to be primarily one of
race. Salim Muwakkil, one of Chicago's most astute social critics and a
senior editor at In These Times, writes that "both Gator and 21st Century
VOTE are walking a path paved by the American tradition of ethnic
assimilation. It's a path traveled by the Irish, Italians, Jews and other
immigrants who learned the lessons of the underground economy before
mastering the mainstream....But now that African-Americans are the
protagonists in those assimilation narratives, we suddenly want to close
the book."

21st Century VOTE's Dwayne Harris says, "It's a shame they'd rather see
these kids stand on the corner selling dope and shoot guns than be
involved in the democratic process. The minute they try to do something
positive they get chastised."

Maybe Daley and the Chicago political system's real fear is not for public
safety, but that they will lose their corrupt grip on Chicago's political power.


Shadd Maruna is a freelance writer living in Chicago.

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