Gangs and Activism

In the 1920s, Frederick Thrasher defined gangs as resulting from neighborhood play groups that were bonded together without any particular purposes or goals, with the end result being tradition, internal structure, solidarity, morale, group awareness, and attachment to local territory. This definition does not mention criminal activity or social deviance. However, subsequent definitions tended to use a cultural deviance approach and later added a focus on criminality.

Contemporary theories of gangs focus solely on the cultural dimension of deviant subcultures that spawn criminal behavior. In essence, without the culture of deviance and violence there should not be any gangs. To eradicate the problem of social disorganization that spawns deviant subcultures would eliminate gang culture altogether. This understanding of gangs as deviant subcultures dominates the extant research on gangs. In an attempt to explore other ways of explaining gang culture, the following discussion will focus on a more structural analysis.

As the target of constant state violence and a self-perpetuating system of marginalization, many marginalized sectors in society have organized into gangs. Gangs serve as a form of community building, as a mechanism of survival against all the attacks and violence of society in general. Due to the threatening nature of gangs, they have become the incarnation of society's decadence, appearing in movies and television. Gangs are an organized sector in society freely engaging with the informal economy. They live on the margins of the social contract. Their laws and reality are not mainstream society's laws and reality. Much radical scholarship on gangs struggles with the antisocial characteristics while recognizing their potential for becoming a political force for social change.

Historically disenfranchised populations have always been a target of official state policy. From the vagrancy laws at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution to the lumpen-proletariat, marginalized sectors of society have always been a source of concern. From the early stages of the modern era, much analysis has focused on these populations. The archetypical work of Hobbs's Leviathan is a historical text that sheds light on why marginalized sectors of society, which do not engage in the formal structures and apparatus of the state, are a self-perpetuating source of violence, unruliness, and general social instability. The refusal to become submissive to the state's structures and social contract provokes the state's wrath. Those marginal sectors in society that do not embrace Rousseau's social contract are forced into submission by the state through its repressive apparatus.

In the early stages of the 21st century, the scenario is similar. Manuel Castells has put forth the concept of a Fourth World, which is not something outside First World countries but given the sociohistorical conditions of advanced global capitalism has become a phenomenon of First World countries themselves. Within First World countries exist groups that are marginalized from the economy. Castells explains how they are pushed out of the formal economy and forced into an informal economy. This is the domain in which gangs tend to develop.

Within a Marxist approach, the lumpen-proletariat was viewed as a source of revolution and revolutionary action. The legacy of the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords provides insight and inspiration for younger generations who are living the gang life. For instance, the Young Lords shifted from a street gang to a political organization. As part of their organizing praxis, both the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords had “lumpen-proletariat” within their organizations. In addition they conducted recruitment and political education of street hustlers to become a part of what they saw as the solution—social revolution.

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