Gang Involvement Quotes

We're going to show great heart. DACA is a very, very difficult subjects, one of the most difficult. You have these incredible kids in many cases, not in all cases, in some of the cases they are gang members and drug dealers, too. But you have some absolutely incredible kids, I would say mostly. They were brought here in such a way, it's a very, very tough subject.

I grew in a community where I saw the process of how one becomes a drug dealer or a gang banger or a stick-up kid. There's a series of events that happen. People don't just wake up and decide they wanna be that.

Before rap came along, I was, actually, actively in the streets; getting in trouble, doing the wrong thing.

Well to me growing, up I've had my own psychological war with my parents dying at such a young age. My mother was killed by a drunk driver, then two months later my father drowned. He was out with his friends drinking and on medication for depression, and he didn't come out of the water alive. Growing up with sexual abuse and having to be in gangs and dealing with my own trauma; finding the cultural identity when I was 16, and learning those traditional ways saved me from hurting myself.

My father died early. My mother died early. I started hanging with the gangs. I'm on the streets; I'm committing crimes. And the music came along, and this music just took me on a different road.

I know people in gangs; I could have went down that route.

I was raised inside the gang culture.

In your walks about London you will sometimes see bent, haggard figures that look as if they had recently been caught in some powerful machinery. They are those fellows who got mixed up with Catsmeat when he was meaning well.

No kid is seeking anything when he joins a gang; he's always fleeing something. He's not being pulled; he's being pushed by the circumstances in which he finds himself.

I came to the U.S. to have opportunities. I saw a lot of people in gangs. I just didn't understand that - you live in the U.S., you have all these opportunities. And then you get in a gang?

My family had been involved in gangs since the 1970s.

There are two types of Chinese growing up in America. One is the kind that does really well in school, with thick, thick glasses. And the other is involved with the gangs.

I know two L.A.s. Half my life was around the house my folks had for 46 years at 3rd and Norton. The other half was in Boyle Heights on the Eastside, working with gang members.

The gang culture - tragically - has for some young people become the only source of stability in their lives.

Trouble was almost inevitable. I grew up with so many at-risk kids. Kids had things go wrong.

We don't think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That's true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.

I've never been in a gang. None of my friends have been in a gang. I've never rolled around with big entourages.

Some of my friends were gang-affiliated or gang-related, but that was just the way things were. I was lucky because football kept me busy and away from that bad path, to an extent.

Part of the reason young people are getting involved with gangs, leading to the use of guns and knives, is not the lack of stop and search but the individualistic, consumerist society we live in.

Many kids turn to selling drugs. It's not a good career choice, but they see it as a way to get money.