Mike’s Change In the story “86th street and the summer of love” by Colin C. Conway, Mike the 18-year-old thug from New York, encounters many conflicts that cause him to go from knowing what he is doing was wrong to following his gangs “rule” and doing what is right. Mike’s gang is known as the 86th Street Choppers, the gang goes around to find innocent people to beat up. Before the gang beats up whatever innocent person they found they tell the person to “Fight back or it will get worse” (Conway2). Their rule means that when they are beating up the person they choose if they fought back hard enough they let the person go, but if they do not they get beat up even more. As Mike and the gang began to beat up an innocent “pudgy kid”, Mike thinks to himself, “Fight back, I chanted to myself in hopes it would …show more content…
Mikes chant in his head shows how he wants the fat kid to fight back hard enough so he will not have to beat him up and he can follow by his rule. Mikes and his gang roam the streets to find another innocent person to beat up. The gang walks up to the tall skinny kid they find walking the street, Ronnie confronts the kid. The tall skinny kid surprisingly throws a punch right into Ronnie’s face, which angers Ronnie and he goes after him. Mikes realizes this skinny kid is going by their rules and yells at Ronnie, “Let him go” (Conway5). Mikes action to try and stop Ronnie from going after the kid shows how he has noticed the kid is fighting back hard, and wants to enforce their gangs rule. When Mikes confronts Ronnie, it upset him and he kicks Mike out of their gang. A while later Mike is walking the streets when he is confronted by his old brothers from the gang, they state the rule to him and he knows what about to happen. Mike gets kicked, punched, and tackled by the members of the gang, but he also puts up a very good fight knocking two of them out. As Mike goes to curb stomp Ronnie’s teeth out, he sees stares at his only friend that didn’t
Kody Scott was born into the gang life weither he liked it or not. Born on 1963 in South Central Los Angeles Kody?s life would be affected by the growing number of gangs inevitably. Kody knew he had a choice to be made, be a gang member or be a pedestrian. He viewed pedestrians as spineless nerds who were always victims of someone?s ridicule or physical violence, who never responded to an affront of any type. He himself had a taste of pedestrian life in grade school were he was picked on and had his lunch money taken from him. ?Early on I saw and felt both sides of the game being played where I lived. It was during my time in elementary school that I chose to never be a victim again, if I could help it?(Shakur 100). Being in a gang gave Kody a feeling of security in a city of violence. ?I felt very different, older, more attached than any of...
1-The story tells, Real facts occurred in the 1940s, where it was a racist society. Gangs were scattered throughout the cities, and regions, and the streets. To live, you have full get away, or belonging to one of them. You should help the gang members that they were right or on falsehood. Also, it is a kind of bigotry, not much different from intolerance, national, ethnic, and sectarian That were prevalent in American society. in fact, it is the inevitable result of this society. When the corruption becomes prevails, injustice and lawless prevails too, and justice will disappear.
This book also has the perspective of the police, which show the gang violence as a more black and white or good versus evil issue, and their militant approach to gang reformation. Jorja Leap holds a view that to stop gang violence, the same members that were once gangbanging need to divert the youth away from the same lifestyle.
Mike was also a paranoid person. For example, he gave the wrong address and phone number to the school so if something happened they could not contact him.
With no father figure in his life and a broken home, Kody turned to the streets in search of love and security. He became good friends with a guy by the name of “Tookie” Williams. Williams just so happened to be an early leader of the Crips, a notorious Los Angeles gang. The more Kody hung out with Tookie, the more respect he had for the gang’s power of authority and at the young age of 11 he was initiated into the 83 Gangster Crips (Kody, 2008). When someone is initiated into a gang they are “beat in” meaning they get beat up by 5 or 6 men for a certain length of time (usually around 30 seconds). Right after joining the gang he helped steal a car and shot and killed many rival gang members in a drive by shooting (Kody, 2008). When Kody was 13 years old, he robbed and beat a victim so bad that the police called it the “work of a monster,” which is where he got his nick name (Kody, 2008).
The gang violence situation has changed dramatically over the years. It has changed from fist fights to people getting ...
Tobin, Kimberly. Gangs: An Individual and Group Perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2008. Print.
Have you ever love someone who you can’t be together with? The novel “Summer” by Edith Wharton states that during one summer, there was a girl name Charity Royall who fell in love with a young gentleman name Lucius Harney. Everything change when Charity knew Harney had the same feeling towards her. The significance of love that Charity felt for Harney was more than she can give to anyone, even if it’s not Mr. Royall who take her in when she was a little girl. At times, Charity didn’t know what to do or what decisions to make in her life unless she seek for advice, yet, she still do the opposite of what she don’t like. As it goes on, Mr. Royall would use informal ways of telling Charity not to date Harney and stop her from seeing him. Throughout the novel, Charity’s position was forces beyond her control.
One of the earliest lessons he ever learned was from his mother. She told all four of her boys to never let people think they were afraid and that they were never to become victims. This is shown with each word that Canada uses in his title. The first phase of his life consisted of “Fist”. He recalls the time when he first moved to Union Ave and he was trapped inside his apartment because he hadn’t established himself in the neighborhood. He would sit up in his 3rd floor apartment and jealously looked on, as all the other kids would play in the streets. One day his older brother John had enough and walked outside to face his fate. The rest of his brothers followed and eventually each got beat up as a pass to the streets. None of them showed their fears or their pain, a lesson that they first learned from their mother. This was only one of many steps/ factors in becoming an established individual not to be reckoned with. Age was the other factor to be considered. The older you were, the more respect you got from others. There were the young adults, who were the biggest and badest on the block. They weren’t usually around to defend their turf because they all belonged to a gang, however everyone knew they ruled all. Next were the mid-teen boys who were the “real rulers of Union Ave (18)” They were the ones who enforced the rules. The lower categories were the early teens and the pre teens. The early teens were just learning the rules whereas the pre teens couldn’t go off of the sidewalk. Geoffrey belonged to the lowest rung, the sidewalk group. As time wen...
doubted him.There were low expectations set for Mike as well as his peers. He just wanted to
CNN presents the documentary, Homicide in Hollenbeck, spotlighting gang activity in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Hollenbeck. This documentary explores the subculture of gangs existing within Hollenbeck from a several perspectives. The people documented include a mother who lost both of her sons to gang violence, a priest that has tried to help rehabilitate gang members, a police officer that has worked in Hollenbeck for five years in the gang unit, and a current gang member. For a conclusion, Homicide in Hollenbeck focuses on a juvenile exposed to gang life on the cusp of decided where they want their life to lead; gangs or freedom. Problems attributed to the high rate of gang activity and number of gangs in Hollenbeck are the high poverty rate, low employment rate, and broken families that make up the majority of Hollenbeck. The crime most discussed, as per the title of the documentary, is homicide The number of gang related homicides has risen even though the criminal behavior of gangs has ultimately decreased in the neighborhood. In order to fight the overwhelming gang presence, the police believe in increasing the amount of gun power on the streets and number of jailed gang members. The priest who runs Homeboy Industries stated that he feels most gang members are just young men who can’t get out of the gang life. With more funds and opportunities, he thinks the problem could be decreased. In the end, the documentary mentions that the FBI has formed a gang center where local law enforcement agencies can share information to gain more knowledge and to better fight the presence of gangs.
Love is a beautiful thing, it always works out in the end. Everyone is always happy and no problems occur. West Side Story, a musical by Leonard Bornstein based on Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet parallels a love story of two star-crossed lovers. The play takes place in 1961 in New York City. This musical displays importance because it shows that nothing can overcome the power of love. This play is based on a love story between the main characters of Maria and Tony. Theses two are from different gangs that trouble to get along. They are from different gangs that do not get along at all. Roughly two hundred blocks make up Manhattan’s West Side, which stretches from Central Park West to the Hudson River. For the most part, the street youths
The story opens with Ponyboy walking home alone from a movie; he is stopped by a gang of Socs who proceed to stop there car and beat him up. The Socs badly injure and threaten to kill Ponyboy; however, some of ponyboy’s gang happen upon the scene and scare off the Socs.
Hallswort, S. And Young, T. (2004) Getting Real About Gang. Criminal Justice Matters [online]. 55. (1), pp 12-13 [Accessed 10 December 2013]
Otero, Juan. “Curbing street gang violence,” National League of Cities. 21 Dec 1998. General Reference Center Gold. Jan 2007