Scroll down for excerpts from ProPublica story or click to read it here.
This is an excerpt from yesterday’s diary about MS-13:
The following is from a non-referenced undated article about MS-13 in The Subway News: 13 Things You Didn’t Know About MS-13. One Of The Most Dangerous Gangs In The World. Origins, Rituals, And Facts. If half, even a quarter, of what it says about MS-13 is factual, it shows that the gang is as ruthless as Trump and others say it is.
Decker and Van Winkle (1996) view joining youth gangs as consisting of both pulls and pushes. Pulls pertain to the attractiveness of the gang. Gang membership can enhance prestige or status among friends (Baccaglini, 1993), especially girls (for boys) (Decker and Van Winkle, 1996), and provide opportunities to be with them (Slayton, Stephens, and MacKenna, 1993). Gangs provide other attractive opportunities such as the chance for excitement (Pennell et al., 1994) by selling drugs and making money (Decker and Van Winkle, 1996). Thus, many youth see themselves as making a rational choice in deciding to join a gang: They see personal advantages to gang membership (Sanchez-Jankowski, 1991).
Social, economic, and cultural forces push many adolescents in the direction of gangs. Protection from other gangs and perceived general well-being are key factors (Baccaglini, 1993; Decker and Van Winkle, 1996). As noted above, some researchers contend that the "underclass" (Wilson, 1987) status of minority youth serves to push them into gangs (Hagedorn, 1988; Moore, 1978; Taylor, 1989; Vigil, 1988). Feeling marginal, adolescents join gangs for social relationships that give them a sense of identity (Vigil and Long, 1990). For some youth, gangs provide a way of solving social adjustment problems, particularly the trials and tribulations of adolescence (Short and Strodtbeck, 1965). In some communities, youth are intensively recruited or coerced into gangs (Johnstone, 1983). They seemingly have no choice. A few are virtually born into gangs as a result of neighborhood traditions and their parents' earlier (and perhaps continuing) gang participation or involvement in criminal activity (Moore, 1978). From an excellent article about youth gangs published by the Juvenile Justice Bureau in 1998 but still relevant today.
The primary appeal of MS-13 to youth is the same as other gangs. It is that they offer the three F’s: family, friendship, and fun. This appeals to youth who are feeling, with much justification, that their future is bleak.
.
It happened in a park at night. Three gang members kicked and punched me all over my body — my arms, my back, my stomach, my hands, even my groin. Nothing was off-limits to them. They beat me for exactly 13 seconds, while one of the gang members kept time in the background, counting slowly.
I was 16 and had just been initiated into the most powerful gang, MS-13. I gritted my teeth so I didn’t scream out in pain while they beat me. Moments later, I was in so much pain I could barely stand up. But eventually I grew to enjoy beating others.
Hurting others made me feel invincible, like nothing is against you. If you have sadness inside you, it makes you happy.
The gang knows your weak spot. They understand you. They hear you. When they find your weakness, they go all the way in.
I was pretty weak when I first met them. I was also pretty much alone.
My family came from Guatemala, and I lost my mother to cancer when I was 6. My father died of cancer when I was 14 going on 15. My younger sisters — they were 10 and 14 at the time — were put in foster homes. I barely saw them. I lived with uncles and aunts. I was back and forth between their houses and after a while, I just really wanted to be alone. That’s when MS-13 said, “Come join us.” from “I was an MS-13 gang member — and got out alive”
The image Trump is trying to create of MS-13 is that they are bloodthirsty
brown-skinned animals who wantonly kill innocents. Trump wants to make MS-13 into
Willy Horton times 10,000, a tool as shameless as it is obvious to rally racists to support him and the GOP.
.
.
.
.
Everyone who wants to understand MS-13 should read the ProPublica article:
Excerpt
There’s one thing everyone can agree with President Donald Trump on about the street gang MS-13: The group specializes in spectacular violence. Its members attack in groups, in the woods, at night, luring teens to their deaths with the promise of girls or weed. One Long Island boy told me he doesn’t go to parties anymore because he worries any invitation could be a trap. A victim’s father showed me a death certificate that said his son’s head had been bashed in, then lowered his voice and added that the boy’s bones had been marked by machete slashes, but he didn’t want the mother to know that. A teenager who has left the gang told me he considers himself dead already, and is just trying to make sure MS-13 doesn’t kill his family.
I’m spending the year reporting on MS-13 members and their associates. I’ve been combing through their text messages. I’m talking with the detectives building cases against killers not yet old enough to buy cigarettes. And I’ve been spending long evenings with the gang’s victims, who often start crying as soon as they start talking about the violence that has marred their lives. Everyone agrees the gang is bloodthirsty. Most of the other assertions I’ve heard from the Trump administration this year about MS-13 have almost no connection to what I’m seeing on the ground.
Topics
1. MS-13 Is Not Organizing to Foil Immigration Law
2. MS-13 Is Not Posing as Fake Families at the Border
3. MS-13 Is Sticking Around, but It’s Not Growing
4. MS-13 Is Preying on a Specific Community, Not the Country at Large
5. Immigration Raids and Deportation Can Only Go So Far