Martin Millar

Louis Reyes Rivera

Urban youth gangs and street associations are viewed more often than not as training grounds for thugs and felons. Left out are their members' emotional sensitivities, their political consciousness, their individual and collective capacities to assess the social conditions that gave rise to the need for such associations. Not included in the popular dialogue on gangs is the creative impulse that has continued to manifest in popular culture - from the birth of the Blues to Rag Time and Swing, to BeBop, Doo Wop and Hip Hop. From the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to the Black Panther Party, Brown Berets, Young Lords and Brownstone Rangers to the height of the Civil Rights Movement to our current Hip Hop culture, urban gang rhetoric and its symbolisms have informed almost every major social movement of this century. They have also played a role in protecting neighborhoods, initiating food and clothing drives and in taking on housing-related issues such as gentrification. The Bandana Republic, A Literary Anthology by Gang Members and Their Affiliates, edited by Louis Reyes Rivera and Bruce George with a foreword by Jim Brown focuses on creative literature written by adolescents from such contemporary gangs as by Chaplains, Bishops, Sportsmen, Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, Black Spades, Neta, Black Gangster Disciples and others. Includes work by former gang members who have gone beyond gangbanging and into the social and cultural arenas. The anthology showcases writing by Alicia Benjamin-Samuels, Oscar Brown Jr., Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr., Commander, Comrade X, Layding Kaliba, Dead Prez, Ruby Dee, Shaggy Flores, Erica Ford, The Last Poets, Jesus Papoleto Melendez, Akua Njeri, Willie Perdomo, T. Rodgers, Luis J. Rodriguez, Leila Steinberg, Kublai Toure, Ted Wilson, Malik Yoba, and many more - all of whom have either come from urban gangs or were closely affiliated with street-based organizations. Like many adolescents, they initially attached themselves to the available rough-n-tumble street role models, becoming active gang members and adopting ''the ways of the street.'' Inside of this framework, and in spite of the stereotypical conventional wisdom concerning street gangs, they were also reared into the creative aspirations of their respective communities. Not just dancing and styling, but reading and studying, learning to develop the gall to give voice to the voice.

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