Chicago Again! Rap/Gangsta Culture?

Typical Conservative Babble ...

 

Here yea go ...

 

here ya go....(god I love cholas)

 

Back in the old days, being a "gangster" got you shot...



No more liberal catch and release, and this "ganster culture" will die too.... People wouldn't emulate these new "gansters" as much.

 

I need your guys Google. Then again Google is bringing up lots of sexing so I guess I shouldn't complain. Better than a porn free internet that's for sure!

 

or you live long enough to die of Syphillis like Al Capone

 

Either way, gangsters don't get cuddled.

 

We live in a culture where we are so concerned about celebrities and other distractions. We don't look up to the doctors,firemen and other people making a difference in the community. They're lots of rappers who don't talk about violence,murder and drug dealing but there not considered cool. We need to embrace the people who make society better not tear it down. I talk about it in my Radio blog.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/urbanwarzone/2012/01/16/urban-war-zone-ep-6the-hollywood-experienment

 

I think that's because rap sucks for the most part. Guys like Tupac, NWA, Brotha Lynch Hung, had some good stuff going on. Then there's guys like PuffD or whatever he's calling himself now who are just a joke (not that Brotha Lynch isn't a joke but at least he's funny).

I don't know. From my perspective some of that old gangasta rap is the only rap tolerable. I don't know what the hell is on the radio now, R&B I think? I always confused that stuff with rap because it sounded the same but my god it is just awful. It's like what happens when DidPeedi (*)(*)(*)(*)s Radiohead. Just the worst of rap and alternative with some electronica all thrown in one ball of junk. Then again who am I to talk, I listen to hardcore punk and oi.

 

You are funding both. The Left is the party of immorality.

_

 

Gangs and Politicians in Chicago: An Unholy Alliance

LAWBREAKERS, LAWMAKERS: In some parts of Chicago, violent street gangs and pols quietly trade money and favors for mutual gain. The thugs flourish, the elected officials thrive—and you lose. A special report.

By David Bernstein and Noah Isackson


A few months before last February’s citywide elections, Hal Baskin’s phone started ringing. And ringing. Most of the callers were candidates for Chicago City Council, seeking the kind of help Baskin was uniquely qualified to provide.

Baskin isn’t a slick campaign strategist. He’s a former gang leader and, for several decades, a community activist who now operates a neighborhood center that aims to keep kids off the streets. Baskin has deep contacts inside the South Side’s complex network of politicians, community organizations, and street gangs. as he recalls, the inquiring candidates wanted to know: “Who do I need to be talking to so I can get the gangs on board?”

Baskin—who was himself a candidate in the 16th Ward aldermanic race, which he would lose—was happy to oblige. In all, he says, he helped broker meetings between roughly 30 politicians (ten sitting aldermen and 20 candidates for City Council) and at least six gang representatives. That claim is backed up by two other community activists, Harold Davis Jr. and Kublai K. M. Toure, who worked with Baskin to arrange the meetings, and a third participant, also a community activist, who requested anonymity. The gang representatives were former chiefs who had walked away from day-to-day thug life, but they were still respected on the streets and wielded enough influence to mobilize active gang members.

The first meeting, according to Baskin, occurred in early November 2010, right before the statewide general election; more gatherings followed in the run-up to the February 2011 municipal elections. The venues included office buildings, restaurants, and law offices. (By all accounts, similar meetings took place across the city before last year’s elections and in elections past, including after hours at the Garfield Center, a taxpayer-financed facility on the West Side that is used by the city’s Department of Family and Support Services.)

At some of the meetings, the politicians arrived with campaign materials and occasionally with aides. The sessions were organized much like corporate-style job fairs. The gang representatives conducted hourlong interviews, one after the other, talking to as many as five candidates in a single evening. Like supplicants, the politicians came into the room alone and sat before the gang representatives, who sat behind a long table. “One candidate said, ‘I feel like I’m in the hot seat,’” recalls Baskin. “And they were.”

The former chieftains, several of them ex-convicts, represented some of the most notorious gangs on the South and West Sides, including the Vice Lords, Gangster Disciples, Black Disciples, Cobras, Black P Stones, and Black Gangsters. Before the election, the gangs agreed to set aside decades-old rivalries and bloody vendettas to operate as a unified political force, which they called Black United Voters of Chicago. “They realized that if they came together, they could get the politicians to come to them,” explains Baskin.

The gang representatives were interested in electing aldermen sympathetic to their interests and those of their impoverished wards. As for the politicians, says Baskin, their interests essentially boiled down to getting elected or reelected. “All of [the political hopefuls] were aware of who they were meeting with,” he says. “They didn’t care. All they wanted to do was get the support.”

Baskin declined to name names, but Chicago has learned, through other sources at the meetings, the identities of some of the participants. They include: Aldermen Howard Brookins Jr. (21st Ward), Walter Burnett Jr. (27th), Willie Cochran (20th), and Freddrenna Lyle (6th). Alderman Pat Dowell (3rd) attended a meeting; upon realizing that the participants had close gang ties, she objected but stayed. Also attending were candidates who would go on to win their races, including Michael Chandler (24th) and Roderick Sawyer (6th). Darcel Beavers, the former 7th Ward alderman who would wind up losing her race, and Patricia Horton, a commissioner with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District who lost her bid for city clerk, also met with the group.

Chandler, Brookins, and Burnett told Chicago they did not attend such a meeting. Sawyer and Horton did not return several calls seeking comment. A spokesman for Dowell confirmed that she attended the meeting after she objected. Beavers, Cochran, and Lyle, who was recently appointed as a Cook County judge, said they attended but were not told beforehand that former gang chiefs would be there, nor that the purpose involved gang-backed political support. “It, basically, was no different than sitting in front of any other panel that asks you questions relative to constituent issues,” said Cochran.

During the meetings, the politicians were allotted a few minutes to make their pitches. The former gang chiefs then peppered them with questions: What would they do about jobs? School safety? Police harassment? Help for ex-cons? But in the end, as with most things political in Chicago, it all came down to one question, says Davis, the community activist who helped Baskin with some of the meetings. He recalls that the gang representatives asked, “What can you give me?” The politicians, most eager to please, replied, “What do you want?”

Street gangs have been a part of Chicago politics at least since the days of the notorious First Ward bosses “Bathhouse John” Coughlin and Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna, who a century ago ran their vice-ridden Levee district using gangs of toughs armed with bats and pistols to bully voters and stuff ballot boxes. “Gangs and politics have always gone together in this city,” says John Hagedorn, a gang expert and professor of criminal justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It’s a shadowy alliance, he adds, that is deeply ingrained in Chicago’s political culture: “You take care of them; they’ll take care of us.”

To what extent do street gangs influence—and corrupt—Chicago politics today? And what are the consequences for ordinary citizens? To find out, Chicago conducted more than 100 interviews with current and former elected officials and candidates, gang leaders, senior police officials, rank-and-file cops, investigators, and prosecutors. We also talked to community activists, campaign operatives, and criminologists. We limited our scope to the city (though alliances certainly exist in some gang-infested suburbs) and focused exclusively on Democrats, since they are the dominant governing party in Chicago and in the statehouse. Moreover, we looked at the political influence of street gangs only, not of traditional organized crime—a worthy subject for another day.

Our findings:

• While they typically deny it, many public officials—mostly, but not limited to, aldermen, state legislators, and elected judges—routinely seek political support from influential street gangs. Meetings like the ones Baskin organized, for instance, are hardly an anomaly. Gangs can provide a decisive advantage at election time by performing the kinds of chores patronage armies once did.

• In some cases, the partnerships extend beyond the elections in troubling—and possibly criminal—ways, greased by the steady and largely secret flow of money from gang leaders to certain politicians and vice versa. The gangs funnel their largess through opaque businesses, or front companies, and through under-the-table payments. In turn, grateful politicians use their payrolls or campaign funds to hire gang members, pull strings for them to get jobs or contracts, or offer other favors (see “Gangs and Politicians: Prisoner Shuffle&#8221.

• Most alarming, both law enforcement and gang sources say, is that some politicians ignore the gangs’ criminal activities. Some go so far as to protect gangs from the police, tipping them off to impending raids or to surveillance activities—in effect, creating safe havens in their political districts. And often they chafe at backing tough measures to stem gang activities, advocating instead for superficial solutions that may garner good press but have little impact.

The paradox is that Chicago’s struggle to combat street gangs is being undermined by its own elected officials. And the alliances between lawmakers and lawbreakers raise a troubling question: Who actually rules the neighborhoods—our public servants or the gangs?

Continued:


http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-2012/Gangs-and-Politicians-An-Unholy-Alliance/

 

So let me get this straight. Just because this happened in the 98% white enclave of Bridgeport means that it couldn't possibly be rap/gangsta related? Careful. I think you dropped your race card.

 

Maybe not to the Italian mafia. Vowel-ending names include many in the Red mafia also.

 

luckily we arent as counter productive as your contradictory conspiracy theories would indicate.

 

...so being a "gangsta" is a civil liberty?...


Kabuki Joe

 

..."Liberal catch and release"...that is an epic quote...repped...


Kabuki Joe

 

So long as you're not committing crimes there's no problem. If someone wants to run around with your pants down talking like you just got smacked in the head with a pipe, I mean to each their own right?

 

RICO laws look them up. Strange our government doesnt target these gangs i wonder why

 

there has to be a money making structure that can be tracked up the food chain, most urban gangs are much more localized.

it has been used against gangs like MS13

 

Point being laws were made to go after the Mafia but we barely do anything about gangs.

 

the mafia is a gang

 

Mafia is a criminal organization.


1. A secret criminal organization operating mainly in the United States and Italy and engaged in illegal activities such as gambling, drug-dealing, protection, and prostitution.
2. Any of various similar criminal organizations, especially when dominated by members of the same nationality.
3. A secret criminal organization operating mainly in Sicily since the early 19th century and known for its intimidation of and retribution against law enforcement officials and witnesses.
4. often mafia Informal A tightly knit group of trusted associates, as of a political leader: "[He] is one of

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Mafia

 

and made of varoius gangs

 

What?

Someone please educate him ... please