Word: gangly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...safest way out of a gang -- short of fleeing -- is to fade away very carefully. This is more plausible for members 19 and older, who have paid their dues and can now use jobs, wives or children as excuses for not hanging out with the homeboys. But most younger gang members have nowhere to fade away to. Meanwhile, gang bangers are notorious for overreacting at the smallest perceived slight. "You got to earn your respect," says Salvador Nevarez, 23, who joined the Disciples at 13 but married two years ago and now works as a salesman for Montgomery Ward...
Even the military, once an honorable way out of the 'hood, has gradually closed its doors to all but the most qualified applicants, which usually excludes gang members. "There are a hell of a lot of gang members that would like to get out," says Sergeant Wes McBride of the Los Angeles County sheriff's department. "But there are not a lot of social programs out there to help them." For a 14-year-old living in a housing project run by a gang, it doesn't cut it to plead a hectic schedule when the guys come knocking...
Those who dare "drop the flag" and resign from the gang face a brutal little ceremony called being "violated" or "jumped out." The precise ritual varies from gang to gang: sometimes each member of the gang, which may be several dozen strong, gets a free swing at the victim; other times four or five members are assigned to conduct the beating for a set amount of time. Whatever the punishment, the results are strikingly similar. "They give you a head-to-toe, which means you get your ass kicked," says Frank Perez, program director for the Chicago Commons Association gang...
Eddie Hernandez, 22, formerly of the Disciples on Chicago's Southwest Side, recalls the first time he ever saw a guy being jumped out. "They made this guy walk through an alley filled with gang members," he says. "Aw, man, it was awful. That guy was unconscious after just a few feet." Hernandez doesn't shy from violence easily. In his seven-year career, he's been shot in the stomach, hit in the head with a railroad tie, had his arm broken in a fight, absorbed countless punches, and been jailed twice for auto theft -- not to mention...
Perez counsels teenagers to go public with their desire to quit a gang only as a last resort. "It beats getting killed or blowing somebody's brains out," he explains. Most antigang workers are adamantly against such advice under any conditions. "That would be like telling the kid to go kill himself," says Swope. Then there are folks like Marianne Diaz-Parton, a gang- intervention worker for the Community Youth Gang Services Project in Los Angeles, who actually condone the beatings...