Upcoming Talk at the Center on Culture, Immigration and Youth Violence Prevention, UC Berkeley

I'll be presenting on "Reconsidering Retaliation" on November 19th at 12:00.

The Center on Culture, Immigration, and Youth Violence Prevention (the Center) is a project of the Institute for the Study of Social Change, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD), the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Law (Boalt Hall), and the University of California, San Francisco. The Center is one of eight Academic Centers for Excellence nationwide funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to address youth violence.

Other Center partners include researchers from local institutions, community organizations, and state, local, and federal agencies.

The Center’s goal is to reduce youth violence, especially among Asian/Pacific Islander (API) and Latino immigrant populations in Oakland, California.

Check it out:
http://www.yvpcenter.org/

Support Alex Sanchez!

Alex Sanchez is an internationally recognized peacemaker and gang activist, currently under federal indictment along with 23 others for being a member of the Mara Salvatrucha street gang. After his arrest, statements made to the media question the value and funding of the important interventions Alex was conducting, and threatens such work throughout the city. Check out the website, and SUPPORT ALEX SANCHEZ.
http://wearealex.org/fas/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=5&Itemid=5

Decent and Street?

It is commonly accepted by most sociologists and criminologists that the decent, in Elijah Anderson's terms, must code switch to a street identity to maintain their safety, but that the street are less adept at using identity as a resource. Who you Claim powerfully challenges this thesis, showing how the decent often have much to lose by acting "street," but how many of the street are quite adept at behaving decently. Morever, this study probes gang idenity as a resource, strategically invoked and subject to who is watching, who is asking, and who cares to know. Such a portrayal sheds new light on the Code of the Street, and provides a ready compliment to it in any course in which Eli Anderson's work might be relevant.

Vicious thugs. Superpredators. An infestation. A flood.

A common concensus hold that gang members be understood by such terms. This monograph aims to penetrate such metaphors, towards grappling with the ways young people negotiate with, through and around gangs not as victims or perpetrators, but by strategically using the rituals and assumptions of gangs as resources. The central question this study asks is, is it possible to see gang members as human? What sort of world, and what sort of research, might we create if we did?