When I first arrived in Chicago the first thing I wanted to do was document gang culture and gangs. Not only because they had reached such a level of sophistication breadth and depth, but there was no doubt it was going to develop into one of the biggest social problems in the history of the city, and that would be shootings. Unfortunately I had very limited resources, I was working hard on other projects and the people I was involved with on a media level we’re not interested in this subject and there was no way I could convince them even though it was guaranteed to develop into a major Chicago event down the road one that history has proved, and is now harder than ever to eliminate. The same independent media people tried to play catch-up to the plague of violence, but the time to start intervention had passed by the 1990s. When I saw the good-intentioned violence interruptors fifteen years ago, it was eye-rolling.
First, I have to give credit where it’s definitely due. Zach website Chicago Gang History has put the the definitive view of Chicago gangs through time, and it’s a great source and is confined to the culture, formative history and events of gang life, and not its causes or roots, other than what we can infer from, not concepts, institutional thinking, but reality, and, in particular economic reality.
I first set out to capture the culture of the gangs with their work that expressed, but also marked territory and mourned comrades. Non-moralizing in both the religious and secular PC and IP sense and, thus, objective, in this curiosity of a select group of gang signs.
Shooting the signature pieces of gangs in the various neighborhoods would eventually get me closer, and be trusted, as someone whose been seen regularly, is a known entity and is no threat. By the time I left Chicago this was happening, but I never got the time to finish.
All the years of theories, speculation and ideas about stopping the gangs, did nothing. Here’s the lesson – only unstoppable gentrification can eliminate certain social problems, as Zach Jones repeats in many of his histories of the gangs. It’s also where the prejudicial statement, “we made your homes and neighborhood better.” comes from. How would they know what is better, relative to us? They weren’t here to experience what they replaced. They brought with them, what they were born into and what they were leaving, and they seem to make things relevant to that.
By the mid 1980s the Chicago gang structure had reached enough of a level of criminal sophistication, it not only did business with the major cartels, but even starting doing business with the leaders of countries, particularly ones that wanted only to destroy America. I’m referring to the El Rukns, formerly the Stones, whose leader became a Muslim in prison, then demanded members to respect women, avoid alcohol and pray to Allah.
As we all know later everything would devolve into the chaos of money and drugs and murder, as told in the movie, Scarface. But for a long time until that happened, there were the rise and golden years of the Chicago street gangs.
Removing the lurid, academic or social analysis and seeing structure, culture and even a philosophy built into an overall code that was refined by each gang and their geography, usually nationalities and demographics, is
There’s the lurid, academic or social analysis and there’s seeing structure, culture and even a philosophy built into an overall code that was refined by each gang and their geography, usually nationalities and demographics, but not always.
One thing is certain, with gang history so long now, we have complete proof of the only thing that will take out the problem, after all the belated media attention, police work, studies and interventions, and that’s gentrification which is unstoppable and legal, whether anyone likes it or not. Extinction of the poor, by getting them to move on.
Some innate roots of art, a culture of mourning by virtue of belonging, loyalty through the birth, life and death model of the basic family unit, whether reinforcing an existing one, making up for one that may never have existed, and usually just being able to feel like a man, perhaps, with a little power and some slickness amidst what working-class and slum life in Chicago, might have to offer. And being young.
I was young, and more the age group of gangbangers, so they looked at me as a threat in Chicago and elsewhere. Back then a photographer, itself, is a threat, not too many had cameras and there were no mobile phones. ironically, when i got older, everthing was much cooler, then, when i began to show age, anyone new i meet thinks, i’m a cop, which is a real prejudiuce. Race, a permanent marker, would immediately make you a threat to most gangs, if you didn’t match their race, although Chicago gangs didn’t always exclude. Even well-known and feared veterans like the Insane Unknowns, a Spanish gang, was founded by whites – a vast label that includes dozens of nationalities, numerous religions and with representation everywhere, and refereed to like a large white blob.
Speaking of being young and broke, the no budget aspect to this gangs project made, what I have done, possible. Probably the biggest factor in no-budget work is being able to walk out your door and into the locations. (When leaving the field, I’m, often still in it) I was living on Albany Avenue just north of Diversey Avenue. in Logan Square. It meant that, not only, was there gangs galore outside my door, the people downstairs who I rented from, had gang connections mainly, their sons.
There were still neighborhood bars all over the place, the one across the street was the Rendezvous and it could rock. In 1980 it was half Polish and half Puerto Rican, on the way to being fully Puerto Rican, until folks and people with the same color – green – arrived in Logan Square and every gang vanished.
The Chicago gang structure evolved for so long, that eventually it grew into Larry Hoover’s dream of aligning all 110 gangs or so, with either a People or Folks designation. With Al Capone in the historic background and the classic Midwest independent gangsters of Dillinger, Floyd and Nelson who had their own rotating gang members.
The Los Angeles gangs had a similar long history, but the Chicago scene was huge, in all the poorer sections which surrounded the city core and its few layers of neighborhoods that surrounded the Loop and Gold Coast. Chicago, the largest urban manufacturing center, with many large blue-collar neighborhoods, was always fertile ground for the earlier gangs, but by the late 1970s and all of the 1980s, Chicago was Rust Belt, like every town and city that banked on industry and manufacturing. Chicago’s size and more diverse economy meant that it would be dented heavily but move on into America’s boom years in the 1990s, when the greed of the gangs and its ally, hatred, would blow up into the Tony Montana effect, and, some even self-destructed.
The term gangster, technically, is supposed to have originated by a Columbus, Ohio newsman, describing the situation in Chicago around before 1900. By the Twenties, Al Capone, not even thirty years old, would be running the nations’s second largest city and the state itself. Chicago and Capone would popularize gangsterism and its culture and methods. The first drive-by shootings were Chicago affairs, like when eight carloads of northsiders shot the hell out of the Hawthorne Hotel in Cicero to the tune of 1000 shots, as Capone hunkered down to avoid the bullets.
Drive by shootings, the term, gangster, itself, the sale of drugs and the idea of structure was, initially, if ya gotta get all racial, a white thing, the same way the numbers game was initially black. History is like that, and doesn’t take sides, to try to be truthful and factual.
Brotherhood, protection, adventure, money, fashion and art is what was offered kids without much, including futures and art degrees. Everything, even the art was raw, unschooled and could be utilized to mark turf, honor dead, aggravate enemies and, when it was good, add punch to the message. Completely intrinsic, thus, original, it might have become a school or type of art, but, in gang life, practicing your art meant being in the danger zone, and was often done by the young pee wees. Regardless, it’s a young man’s game, now more than ever, with murder and prison cutting into street and life expectancy. Only gentrification, today, can make it go elsewhere.
As far as subject matter and popularity, the gang tag that I saw the most was, Capone.
I’ve given the “youth” gangs of Chicago free reign in their own gang history, which would, on a money level, when they got older, bring them closer to other crime organizations. The most famous of which is the Italian mob, that Al Capone brought into the modern world of urban organized crime, that is still considered the #1 gangster in all crime.
There’s Chinese gangs, and a host of other ethnic gangs, for instance, the Albanians in the Bronx that came together under Uncle Rudja, who are the newest, but are interesting because of the shortness of their reign and they weren’t necessarily impoverished, coming to America, and working hard at legitimate jobs, particularly maintenance work. They were also grown men whose business model was the Gambino crime family.
And, of course, gangs go way back, always tied to the lower classes, and have been documented extensively in the newspapers of the time and in books like those of Asbury who wrote some of the earliest histories of the underside of city life, when organized crime was really getting started, and, it seems, it was the Irish, who played an important role in the early development of street gangs, evolving as they mature, into more of an American business model, complete with political connections and structure.
The Irish gangs of the downtown area, portrayed in Scorceses’s Gangs of New York, which, unfortunately looked a bit like a Vincent Minelli musical, in which I thought they were going to break out in sing and dance. But the best example of this evolution would take place on the west side of Manhattan in the Irish gangs of the 19th century. The youth gang, the Gophers spawned Owney Madden, who would link with the black market during prohibition, returning to Hot Springs, and having Sullivan take over, who fell to the Westies, the last gang from the west side of Manhattan. Since hell’s Kitchen’s gentrification, it’s impossible for any gang to exist there, at leas, the traditional gangs from the history of the west side. the gophers, will evolve with Owney Madden as one of its members, linking with the black market gift of prohibition, and, by the 1920s, becoming a wealthy, business structured like good old American capitalism, Madden passed it along to Sullivan, who, updated things by marrying into democratic political power, and it all ran smoothly until the late seventies when a younger west side gang that became known as the Westies would challenge and kill Sullivan, and grow into an arm/ally of the Gambino crime family.
Another lesson with this whole lineage and the west side of Manhattan with the Irish, is that it was only big changes socially and economically in the neighborhood, mainly gentrification, that put an end to the gangs of the neighborhoods of the west side.
Getting back to Chicago, as far as subject matter and popularity, the gang tag that I saw the most was, hands down, Capone.