We All Belong to a Gang

During my nearly quarter-century tenure as adult education/GED teacher at the Bristol Jail, I taught countless inmates. The vast majority of my students were not members of a physically violent gang.

Oh, but a few (especially if they came to Bristol by way of a big city) certainly were.

It may surprise you when I say that I often found gang members to be among the most socially charismatic and loyal people I ever knew.

But these gang members could also be shockingly cold-blooded and violent, if you were not part of their “inner circle” - their “family”.

If you and I had no real family in this world … we, too, would grow desperate (yes, even you and I, my friends). We all long to be a part, to belong, to have an “inner circle” that we can call our own … to have a real “family”. To not want to do so is to deny our basic humanity.

And when our most basic of human social needs - that of belonging to a beloved family - is not being met, then even you and I might join a gang.

The truth is, any reader of these words is already somewhat of a “gang member”, so to speak. You have an “inner circle” of close friends or family members within whom you can confide and depend on to have your back. About the only different is that your gang probably doesn’t resort to physical violence. To exact revenge on “outsiders” who may have harmed or disrespected a member, your inner circle likely only gossips about people they don’t like (which, as we all know, can be just as damaging and long-lasting as any physical violence).

I was lucky (if you want to call it that - and I most assuredly did, as the reader will see) that I was granted “inner circle” privilege by some of the gang members I taught over the years. For many an hour I sat side-by-side with Crips, Bloods, Aryans, and MS-13s (no, I didn’t teach them all at the same time … as that would not be wise).

My students and I would sit together at the same table, in the extremely small and stuffy Bristol Jail library. I never carried a weapon, nor even a walkie-talkie, and I sat far from the only door. Yes, on purpose - to show my students how much I trusted them.

Rashad belonged to the Crips. He and I might as well have been born on different planets, our backgrounds were so different. Yet, we grew to see much in common in each other. No, I didn’t say we agreed with each other on everything (even the closest family doesn’t do that) … but we did look deep into each other’s “why” we did things as we did. Over time, Rashad and I developed such a trusted bond that we began to refer to each other as “brother”.

Leon belonged to the Bloods. He was always making hand signals of some sort. One night I brought in a band conductor’s baton, handed it to him, and told him that might make his communication easier. Yes, a sense of humor is generally appreciated in any culture. The day he left for federal prison, Leon hugged me and called me “family”, a sacred term he reserved only for his “inner circle”.

I found that most gang members could read a person as well as you and I could read a book. They knew when you hated them. And they knew when you truly cared about them as fellow human beings (no matter how misguided you may construe their beliefs or actions) without your ever having to tell them.

Santiago was an MS-13 member. Even the Bloods and the Crips and the Aryans feared this gang, who were the most cold-blooded of all. Yet even they were also capable of deep compassion toward those whom they saw as “family”.

After several nights of studying together, Santiago looked across the table at me and said, in his halting English, the following words: “I hate you. No more. You fear me. No more. We are now family. I wish it could be so. With all the world.”

We humans are, at our very core, an extremely violent species. Yet, we are also an abundantly loving one … toward those whom we see as family.