Analysis Of Gang Leader For A Day By Sudhir Venkatesh

Take Venkatesh at the very beginning, we learn within the first few pages key points about his life. His family are immigrants from India who moved to California and eventually he journeyed to Chicago while working on his PhD. There he lived in an area of town where it fell between the two communities of middle/ upper middle class with college students and the lower income area that housed many of the city’s African American population. With this small bit of information and Venkatesh referring to his current financial predicament as being typical for those found in university, we can assume that he was not raised under the poverty line and at this point he is the poorest he has ever actually been in his life. This gives us insight as to Venkatesh’s initial lack of understanding over the lives of the gangs in Chicago as he has never needed to be deviant in order to deal with societal pressures in order to succeed. He had a foundation and was raised in an area where it seems that it would just be expected that he would be successful. The same can be said for his professor that gave him the survey, an older white man in a university position is usually the image that stirs in our mind when we visualize a professor. Age and race can take you far when you are looking for a job and they want a “correct fit”. Just these simple facts show the conformity of society to place someone “acceptable” into a

In the book, Gang Leader for a Day, a rogue sociologist passionately dives into the lives of one of Chicago’s toughest housing projects in an attempt to develop an insight as to how the urban impoverished lived. Throughout the text it becomes clear that a conflict paradigm is being reflected. A conflict society is based on social inequality, in which some individuals benefit and thrive more than others, which tends to lead to conflict and thus change. This is evident both in the housing projects where a gang known as the “Black Kings” take over and also in the surrounding neighborhoods where the more elite citizens, including persons from the authors university, shy away from associating with the nearby poor black nearby public, thus

In the book, Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociology student from the University of Chicago starts out simply trying to understand “how it feels to be poor and black,” and ends up spending years and years figuring out the ins and outs of a gang society (Venkatesh 14). Sudhir receives the chance of a sociologist’s lifetime to see first-hand what life is like in the projects. He follows gang leader, J.T. around and studies his life at the Robert Taylor homes for years. Throughout Venkatesh’s experience he witnesses many things some people go a lifetime without seeing. For example, he was no stranger to seeing people use drugs or get beat up by gang members. One interesting aspect of Venkatesh’s experiment

In chapter 5 in the novel Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh he writes about his experience of how he began to tag along with Ms. Bailey more often. Venkatesh says the more time he would spend with her, the more he would understand her work ethics and why she is so important to the community. Since Venkatesh was spending more time with Ms. Bailey he began to help her with food drives and food donations in the community as well as go to meetings that she would run. Venkatesh says the reason that Ms. Bailey was helping the housing projects, community and their building was because it was low on clothing and food for the winter. This portion of the novel teaches us about how many people out there have needs and the altruism in the way some

Gangs of New York (2002), a bold and violent movie directed by Martin Scorsese takes us back to a New York without skyscrapers and modern-day lavishes that shows the rise of violent gang power and political corruption. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis, the film features a personal struggle placed within the context of gang warfare between Nativists and immigrants, which is set in the larger context of the Draft Riots and the Civil War. It is a reconstructed historical narrative that uses interlocking events filled with gang violence and political corruption to show how the modern New York was born.

Picture Manhattan in 1860, a time before the city had been dolled up and gotten ready for the silver screen, before the glamour and allure took over. Amsterdam Vallan (DiCaprio) is a young Irish man that migrates to the USA at a young age. Amsterdam’s story takes place in Five Points District of New York, a filthy and dangerous part of the city before it was deleted form history. As a young boy Vallan witnessed his father’s murder at the hand of William Cutting or Bill the Butcher (Day-Lewis) during one of their many gang wars. As Amsterdam’s story progresses along side The Butcher they become inseparable, but Amsterdam had ulterior motive. Ultimately, Amsterdam attempts to betray his new found ally in order to avenge his father’s death.

“You can hire half the poor to kill the other half.” Boss Tweed spoke these words in reference to the Draft Riots. It shows that you can easily turn the poor against each other, if you bring money into the situation. Gangs of New York is about the separation of the Irish and the Natives, which eventually led into larger conflicts. In this film there are two important characters, Amsterdam Vallon and Boyle McGloin, who were both Irishmen in the Five Points. Amsterdam was the son of Priest Vallon and he became a positive Irish Leader who was looked up to by many. Boyle McGloin was an Irishmen who was a Dead Rabbit, but later joined Bill “The Butcher” Cutting and became a “Native”. The character

For my final paper I am going to talk about a program that in my eyes is a great way for our youth to receive different views and healthy choices when it comes to avoiding and confronting gangs or gang members. Gang Resistance Education and Training, abbreviated G.R.E.A.T., and provides a school-based, police officer instructed program that includes classroom instruction and various learning activities. The mission of the program is to provide a range of activities to our kids to keep them away from gangs or related activity as well as educate them on competency, usefulness, and personal empowerment which will prevent them from

Let's say you're by yourself on the subway in New York City. You get on and it's not that crowded, there's a bunch of open seats. As you look around, you notice that the car is filled with mainly high school aged kids, mostly boys. On one side there is a spot next to a bunch of African Americans, on the other side it's a posse of Asians. Okay, so where are you going to sit? Next to the Asian's I bet. What if it was Latino's instead of Blacks, chances are you would still say you'd go towards the Asian's and shy away from the more typical gang looking kids. When most people think of gangs, they don't really think Asian, it's a Black or Hispanic thing right? Well, Asian gangs have been becoming more and

Gangs pose a threat to the safety of United States prisons by performing illegal activities and the encouraging violence. It is important to develop strategies to reduce gang recruitment, limit their influence, and sanction their misconduct in order to create a safe environment for all prisoners. With this, inmates that are involved in gangs should be put under twenty four-hour lockdown. By isolating these members, prisons will be able to limit their influence.

This chapter is about a man named Sudhir Venkatesh he is 25 years old. He is a University student studying Sociology. After Sudhir has attended two seminars by the college he is invited to do a study on how black people live day to day. After finding a specific building he was looking for, the Robert Taylor projects, he walks right in. When walking in from left to right he could see the use of drugs. Right off the bat Sudhir is treated like an intruder, even though he is there for information and is not known around the city of Chicago. The gang that Sudhir runs in to in this book is everything but pleasant if you’re not their "own kind". Sudhir is called a Mexican, the only reason he was called Mexican was because of the way he looked. The gang, the

Prison gangs are originally formed by inmates as a way of protecting themselves from the other inmates. These gangs have turned out to be violent and thus posing a threat to security. This paper will have a look at the different gangs in prisons, their history, beliefs and missions, and the differences and similarities in these gangs.

Kody Scott grew up in South Central L.A. during the nineteen-sixties and seventies, soon after the creation of the Crips. Raised in poverty without a father, and a full family raised solely by his mother, Kody Scott led the stereotypical “ghetto” life, a poor and broken home. However he does not blame this on his own personal decision to join the Crips while only eleven year’s old. The allure of the respect and “glory” that “bangers” got, along with the unity of the “set”(name for the specific gang) is what drew him into the gang. Once joined, he vowed to stay in the “set” for life, and claimed that banging was his life. After many years of still believing this, he eventually realized that the

(1) Education, while not popular for slum residents, was a way to move up the social caste system. This is also seen in developed countries; educated residents are able to enter career paths with more opportunities, higher salaries, and greater prestige. Manju, the daughter of Asha, was attempting to complete her education at a local women’s college. If she completed this education, she could marry someone in a higher social caste and escape the slum. Her mother Asha often discouraged her because it violated the social role of women; women should be married off and serves as servants to their husbands. If Manju were able to complete her education, she would be Annawadi’s first female college graduate. Nevertheless, it is difficult for a person to receive an education when structural conditions do not allow. At one point in the story, Manju has to stop teaching the local children to assist her mother in ripping off a Western nonprofit- Asha was running a fake kindergarten program.

He saw how his father become invisible to the injustice of black around him and he decided to get involved. He had a generativity concern on improving black people rights in the world around him (Newman & Newman, 2015). As a young boy, he would watch TV, read articles, and read books regarding what people are doing to change the way blacks are treated. His father would be disappointed and hope he would just stay away for the violence, abuse, and other activist groups. After high school, he went on to Fisk University to be involve in the Freeman Riders and later the Black Panthers. Along the journey, he was kicked, spit on, arrested, and even witness brutal killings and prayed that he would not be killed for his rights.