Crips n Bloods - themes to spark your writing

'Crips and Bloods' - if you missed it in class. See below for paper prompts. Film Paper (#6) due Wed or Thur. Then Day has a week off. For evening, next Thur is portrait paper. One citation in each might be nice but not required.

1. solutions - given the problem what, specifically, are the solutions; gang interventionists are mostly privately funded; how are they really working? know anyone who got out of a gang through anything other than death or art? How? Interviews are good here. Anybody remember RLA? What would you and your team do with those millions?
2. compare a second movie, e.g., "Children of God" (gangs in Brazil) or "Death in Gaza" (teaching little kids to be martyrs). In both these, art is a way out. There are many other "second" films out there that depict gangs.
3. gangs and gender - impact on gender. G-mas. Maybe your G-ma was selling drugs, everyone selling drugs. OR gangs as hyper-masculine: all competition. Kill (win) or be killed (lose). total masculinity style: total competition: they shoot one, we shoot one.
4. history of the US and its impact on clubs - gangs.
   industry, training, WWII, automobile industry
5. control - atmosphere of denial of what the sources of gang life are. The sources are sociological while the official belief remains with the goodness or badness of the individual.
6. "controllers" - being in a service position of trying to direct paths away from tragedy and towards the light, e.g., probation officer, counsellor, etc.
7. lone white - being a lone white in the midst of it. or a confused white in the midst of it.
8. Crack and that historic story, being specific, adding something key
9. super-gangs in prison; super-controls from authority
10. Role of fathers - men - what, specifically, does a father add to a family; what is a family; what is the masculine guiding hand? It been adapted by black women. What are the special insights gained?
11. your intersection with gangs, e.g., I worked at a school for H.S. dropouts. We were supposed to send the kids home if they wore baggy clothes. Yeah. I coudn't do it because they couldn't.
12. compassion the movie brings to the viewer - is compassion drawn out; what do we do with it?
13. technology in the US history and technology in gangs: 1970s - moved from fist fights to guns. Why? .
14. Gangs control each other in parallel ways that the police create and control gangs, e.g., territory, color
15. life cycle and gangs - aging gang members
16. Kids need the authority of structure
17. gangs in other ethnic groups - similarities and differences. One of the articles actually states that Asian gang members are in part resisting the "geek" label.
18. You have "heard all this before" - was shown nothing new . . . If so, you have even more to detail to add. More for understanding on colors, signs, signals, clothing, names, gestures, events, rituals, grading, ways and means. The internal ways and means of drug sales...
19. illegality of drugs and gangs - money and hierarchy derived from becoming part of dealing
20. if resources are available for a young person, can/does he choose non-gangs? are no alternate resources available? How do some remain out?
21. gangsta culture - what do you see seeping into the non-gang culture?
22. compare w violence, warfare in other countires: guerrila warfare, Northern Ireland (fewer than 15K dead in that war). Guerrilla warfare: only one side knows the territory on which you fight.
23. technological state of affairs of resistance and control - see "extra" features on the DVD of "Children of God"
24. personal experience such that watching the film is too difficult to do - and substituting a film that shows you the route to a more thriving and humane society
25. art as the route out. This requires access to the means to the production of art. Expression - children - creation of a "we". Nurturing, not fighting. Resources for creativity. One-on-one change. Looking at humans as humans.

books: The Dark Alliance by Jack Webb or The Black Hand.