BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
X-WR-CALNAME:www.indybay.org
PRODID:-//indybay/ical// v1.0//EN
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:Indybay-18719474
SEQUENCE:18816849
CREATED:20120814T005000Z
DESCRIPTION:In JUMPED IN, UCLA professor and gang expert Jorja Leap gives voice to the 
 people who understand the gang problem best—the gang members and the 
 people who try to arrest them, control them, and help them. A noted 
 anthropologist, Leap offers one of the first genealogies of Los Angeles’s 
 oldest and most powerful black and brown gangs, including the Bloods, 
 Crips,\nFlorencia, MS-13, and 18th Street, among others, and breaks down 
 their territories street by street.\n\nTracing the family trees of gang 
 members back three generations, she shows just how strong the clan 
 mentality really is and how deep the kinship connections run. By hearing 
 their oral histories and conducting personal interviews with active and 
 former gang members, interventionists, police officers, priests, parents 
 and victims, Leap reveals the stories and traumas of gang members born into 
 a life of violence, drugs, guns and sex. \n\nThe wife of a veteran LAPD 
 officer, Leap spent years on the ground building the trust of gang 
 interventionists and gaining access to the inner gang world. Reporting from 
 their living rooms and street corners, Leap paints a gritty, authentic 
 portrait of life inside the gangs, and explains the forces that pull people 
 into them and keep them there. Trayvon Jeffers was jumped into a gang 
 by\nage eleven—the gang was his only family. “My granny’s been 
 doin’ heroin since I was born; my mother’s gone from PCP to cocaine to 
 heroin. She’s got HIV now, but she’s still an addict. I never really 
 knew my father,” he confesses.\nLeap sheds light on the many problems 
 plaguing gang members, ranging from domestic violence and mental illness to 
 post traumatic stress disorder. As a woman, Leap is particularly drawn to 
 the female gang members, the homegirls. Most come from toxic, abusive 
 families, and are revictimized in the gangs, she reports. “There are 
 stepfathers who demand blowjobs or cousins who\nforce them to have anal 
 sex,” writes Leap. She hears stories of girls getting “sexed in” or 
 gangraped as a form of initiation. “In one rumored initiation rite,” 
 the author reveals, “aspiring homegirls were forced to have sex with a 
 gang member who was HIV-positive.” Despite the sexual and physical abuse 
 they will likely face in the gangs, Leaps believes that these girls who 
 make the deliberate choice to join gangs do so as a form of empowerment and 
 a way to re-gain control. For many homegirls, life in the gang is no 
 different than life outside the gang. “I don’t\nknow what it would be 
 like to have love without pain,” says homegirl Vanity “Dimples” 
 Benton.\n\nWhile the cyclical violence of gang life is a reality, Leap 
 shows that redemption is not impossible. Throughout the book, she spends 
 much of her time at Father Greg Boyle’s gang intervention and reentry 
 program, Homeboy Industries. It is at Homeboy Industries where Leap 
 encounters hopeful exiting gang members reaping the benefits of Boyle’s 
 “Jobs, Not Jails” program. Readers meet Reverend Mike Cummings, a.k.a. 
 Big Mike, a former “original gangster” and the founder of Project 
 Fatherhood who now practices street peace ministry and plays the role of 
 father figure to neighborhood kids. “I love these children. Every last 
 one of them. The badder they are, the more I love them. I was one of 
 them,” he shares with Leap. About six feet tall and close to 300 pounds, 
 Big Mike was notorious in Watts in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. Now, 
 Big Mike spends his days in the hood trying to save children from the life 
 he lived. “They need fathers,” he urges. The father rarely plays a role 
 in the family narrative, Leap reports. “Fathers remain offstage and 
 absent—dead, incarcerated, or with another woman.” \n\nUltimately, 
 through her observations from the field, Leap shares a rare and honest look 
 into a world many fear and few understand, and presents the possibility of 
 hope.\n\n“Her view is both “aerial” and “in the weeds” while 
 always staying heartbreakingly\ncompassionate and true. Her work gives me 
 hope.”\n-- Gregory J. Boyle, S.J. Founder and Executive Director, Homeboy 
 Industries\n\n\nJorja Leap has been on the faculty of the University of 
 California at Los Angeles Department of Social Welfare since 1992. A 
 recognized expert in gangs, violence, and crisis intervention, she has 
 worked nationally and internationally in violent and postwar settings. Dr. 
 Leap is currently the senior policy advisor on Gangs and Youth Violence for 
 the Los Angeles County Sheriff.\n\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/08/13/18719474.php
SUMMARY:Jorja Leap -- Jumped In: What Gangs Taught Me About Violence, Drugs, Love, and Redemption
LOCATION:The Booksmith\n1644 Haight Street\nSan Francisco CA 94117
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/08/13/18719474.php
DTSTART:20120824T023000Z
DTEND:20120824T040000Z
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR