Youth Leadership
Mar Vista "Youth Community Action & Leadership" (YCAL) Program
(in development)
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Ganging up on the Talent in Da Hood
Gangs embody our nation's and our city's worst nightmare. Urban poverty, drugs, violence, apathy and despair have, in fact, conspired to give LA the dubious distinction of being the nation's gang capital, the epicenter of a deadly epidemic.
We all know that gangs destroy the lives of our most vulnerable population, urban youth. They also seriously endanger our communities, our police officers, and ourselves. And each week, they keep growing: 1500 gangs and 200,000 members and counting.
Meanwhile, the never-ending background story of how our megalopolis and our politicians have denied, distorted, abused and ultimately failed to genuinely address this civic crisis is just as scary. Just search "gangs" in Los Angeles Times and you'll see what I mean.
Yet it's not impossible to sew a purse from a sow's ear, to find hope in this neigborhood and national tragedy, if we dare to look.
Sometimes in the dark you stumble across something that inspires and illuminates. And it serves us well to pay attention and use it to light our way through.
The Mar Vista Family Center is one shining project deserving of our support. Incredibly, MVFC succeeded in recruiting the very gang members who burned down its low-income community pre-school in 1980 to help build it and their community back up. A phoenix of a community organization, if there ever was!
Then there is Jorge Peniche, a talented Renaissance man from "da hood," a diamond in the rough and tough of LA. Visit his Website and you tell me!
A young man of indisputable talent, Peniche's in-your-face photography of real and wanna-be gang-bangers alone is an eye-opener, civic education through photographs that reveal truths in a kaleidoscope of greys rather than just black, brown or white.
Peniche's photographs bring all this to the surface in a way that makes the viewer ask why, how, who, and WTF (pardon my acronym)!
Above all, Peniche's calibre of work and personal modesty as a whole is a powerful message to young people everywhere. Peniche's work neither denies nor glorifies gangs. Instead, it shows its complexity, the allure, commercialization, vulnerability and deadliness of it all.
The message seems clear: Tell your story using a camera instead of a gun. Get your high with art instead of drugs. And don't ever give up in building yourself and your community a better future, decision by decision, pixel by pixel. And hurry, before it's too late!
WARNING: His latest video below of gang bangers posing and being "shot" in Mar Vista Gardens features Hip-Hop lyrics some folks may find objectionable. Turn down the volume if it irks you and/or get any kids/immature audiences out of earshot.
- JorgePeniche.com: The images and the classical music is to die for!
- Mar Vista Family Center: A Phoenix of community philanthropy
- Streetgangs.com: A down-and-dirty hub of news and activism about LA gangs since 1995.
- Culver City Boyz: Possibly the gang in Peniche's video.
- KPCC Report on LA's anti-Gang plan
- LA Times on the "Businessmen": Geezer Gang Reform
- Mayor Villaraigosa's Gang Reduction Strategy
1 comments:
RESPONSE TO BABAK NAHID
Friday, July 25, 2008 by JORGE PENICHE
A few months ago I shot with the homies from Mar Vista Gardens, and received a call from Mr. Nahid, a gentlemen who is part of the Mar Vista Community Council. He called me to congratulate me on my endeavors, and he mentioned that he had written a piece about my work in his blog. Provided that I've been busy with several projects, my idle time is limited. Today I finally got a chance to read the piece he wrote about my work. You can check out the article by clicking here. I read the article and didn't really know what to take of it. I appreciate the praise, but my job as photographer is to paint everything raw for the public to see. I do not shoot in order to expose fallacies, but rather to expose the reality which many live. He states the following in his article: "Tell your story using a camera instead of a gun. Get your high with art instead of drugs. And don't ever give up in building yourself and your community a better future, decision by decision, pixel by pixel. And hurry, before it's too late!" I agree with some part of his statement, but what he failed to examine or rather state is that the young men whom I was shooting were artist in their own right. Often times we overlook certain things, and misinterpret them. Some individuals praise rap music, while others overlook the true art and talent involved in writing a hot sixteen. As much as photography is my passion, music is at the same level. I appreciate the arts, and feel that it's my duty as an artist to defend the things that I love. No disrespect to Mr. Nahid, but please speak with the people first before speaking on their behalf. I don't say this merely to state it, but rather I speak from experience.
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Hi Jorge,
Thanks for your response, which I respect and with which, for the most part, I agree. I believe I learned from it. I also know that sometimes it’s best to shut up and move on, but your work moved me to respond.
You're right that it would have been much better for me to dig deeper and find out more about your subjects, the gang members who are themselves artists.
That's part of the reason I called you, to express my admiration of your work, and to explore ways we could leverage your talent, your subjects' stories, and my own interest to educate ourselves about gangs and to try, using art and frank debate, to save lives.
There are indeed more to gangs than my article or millions of others assume. And while I believe they are ultimately a destructive force, in my article I was trying to point to something more than the cliche of gangs as “bad.”
But you successfully point out how I failed.
Still, I don’t think your art exposes fallacies alonep; it does a bunch of things. I wrote that your "work neither denies nor glorifies gangs. Instead, Peniche shows their complexity, the allure, commercialization, vulnerability and deadliness of it all." These are ideas I personally see in your work: the sexiness alongside the deadliness, the authentic lives next to the crass commercialization of gang life.
In the end, I think you believe me when I state that I didn't mean to dis your subjects or to dehumanize a community. I’d never claim that the phenomenon of gangs is simple to understand or address.
This exchange is a not a bad way to explore the idea. I’m really glad that you offer a fresh vision and again hope we can explore ways that full story can be told.
So, I'd love to learn more from you and others: Who are these gang-affiliated artists? How do they live/work? What choices do they make? What challenges do they face? What are their dreams? And what do they do to help themselves and others “before it’s too late?”
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Babak Nahid
July 26, 2008 2:09 PM
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