Street Wars is an eyewitness story of peacemakers among street gangs in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and El Salvador. Tom Hayden argues that, like war veterans, gang members need counseling, treatment, training and alternatives, as well as public investment in jobs and education. He shows how gang members have become scapegoats and serve as justification for the continued growth of repressive law-and-order politics. The book also describes the phenomenon of street gangs throughout American history, predicts their growing globalization, and calls for a peace process as an alternative to the undeclared war. Though never officially acknowledged, over 25,000 young people have died in America's gang wars since 1980. Members of the Crips, Bloods, Mara Salvatrucha, 18th Street, Latin Kings, Blackstone Rangers, and Gangster Disciples are like traumatized war veterans with no way home. Tom Hayden, who spent ten years as an activist and public official working to understand and prevent gang violence in Los Angeles, here delivers a searing indictment of the neo-conservative politics of law and order that dominates current policy and suffocates inner city youth. He discusses how globalization has created a force of unemployable men and women around the world who are defined as incorrigible, outside law and community. Fears of white liberals have been exploited to support a conservative public policy that perpetuates the very conditions in which people join gangs as a way of life. The police/prison complex only serves to reinforce gang identity through humiliation and punishment. Weaving together cutting analysis with numerous first hand stories from gang leaders, Hayden reveals how an internal peace process based on empowerment, and a New Deal for the forgotten classes at home and abroad, could address the devastation of America's urban youth. For fans of Monster: Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member, for anyone wanting to better understand how young men and women get involved in gangs and how they might successfully get out.

Author Biography

Tom Hayden has been a human rights activist, community organizer, and public thinker since the 1960s. A California State Senator for 18 years, he is the author of eleven books and hundreds of essays. He lives in Los Angeles.