Gang Membership Quotes

What people don't understand is joining a gang ain't bad, it's cool, it's fine. When you in the hood, joining a gang it's cool because all your friends are in the gang, all your family's in the gang. We're not just killing people every night, we're just hanging out, having a good time.

People don't understand that where I come from, everyone is either a convict, been in jail, been in a gang, is a hooligan of some sorts, but those are my brothers, my family and the people that I travel with. Those are the people that I roll with.

But I was also a brat. I used to belong to a gang that went looking for fights with other gangs.

I'm not a gangsta.

Don't join too many gangs. Join few if any. Join the United States and join the family- But not much in between unless a college.

W a gang member, and especially in a Latino gang, gets jumped in, and then he's given a name, and he has that name forever, but it's not so much the name as being called by name.

I wanted to be a gangsta from birth, not because of the music but moreso what I was seeing, what my uncles were doing. I was just fascinated with the street lifestyle from a young age.

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

Gangs have evolved. The stereotypical gang member covered in tattoos and wearing colors does not really exist any more. There's this fear that it could be any kid, but by any kid, that means any Latino kid.

My father figures were all gang members.

I wanted the attention I missed at home, so I became the leader of a gang. That way, I got attention and was recognized as being important. It wasn't a bad gang - you know, in poor districts in New York, there's a gang to every block. We never robbed at the point of a gun; we'd steal potatoes from a grocery store, or crackers.

I was raised inside the gang culture.

I've written a book on gangs, taught a course on gangs at Occidental.

The truth is that those who join gangs - more often than not they are young men in their later teens - often do come from the most difficult family backgrounds, from an environment where they feel neglected and unwanted. Gang membership can bring a perverse sense of belonging which they may not have ever got at home.

I'm not a gangster, bro.

People have to see that there is a high degree of complexity about belonging to a gang. It's a symptom, not a problem.

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

What a lot of people don't realize about gangs, in my opinion, is that a gang is not there to attack you. Eighty percent of the people in a gang are there to stop anyone from attacking them. You join a gang for protection, not to go out and hit someone.

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?

We will not rest until being a gang member is a miserable, undesirable life.

I never wanted to be in a gang. I didn't want to follow anybody's orders.

I was in middle school right around the time the Bloods and the Crips started taking root in Compton and a lot of the other neighborhoods around me. I saw way too many of my peers - smart, kind, good kids - who got drawn into gangs and violence, and their futures were going to be forever scarred by that.

In Los Angeles, the gang capital of the world, we have 1,100 gangs and 120,000 gang members so it is a daunting, complex social dilemma.

If we grow up in these communities where we have gangs, well, what do you think we're going to belong to? That's what happened to me and what's still happening to hundreds of thousands of other individuals.

I think 98% of gang members in Los Angeles would agree that being a gang is just like being part of a community.