So I did an interview with model turned journalist Leon Bing. She wrote the award winning book "Do or Die" which was an indepth look inside the world of the Bloods & The Crips in Los Angeles.
The interview will be posted in two parts, with the 1st part already posted. If you are interested, feel free to click through to my blog to read the whole thing. I've included a snippet from the longer piece below here.
Would be interested in some feedback from people on here. Thanks!
FULL INTERVIEW (PART 1) http://www.searchingforchetbaker.com/2012/10/interview-award-winning-journalist-leon.html
=====================================================
SFCB: Your book “Do or Die” which was an inside look at the Los Angeles gangs The Bloods and The Crips, was an incredible read, and was dramatic, humorous and scary often at the same time. Talk about how you first came to write a book about Los Angeles gang members, which was not necessarily the world that you had grown up around.
LEON BING: I grew up in a very different world, in Northern California, and went to boarding school and then on to University and I didn't really have any idea that the world of gangs existed, until years and years later. I mean we all have seen movies like Blackboard Jungle, but still, that wasn't a gang, that was just unruly kids.
Then I started seeing these little snippets opposite the weather map in the Metro section of the L.A. Times, and it was always this little squib that read two black youths shot dead in South Central L.A. And it always made me sad and a bit angry, because I knew if these were two white youths, shot dead in Beverly Hills, it would supercede every other headline.
But obviously, the black kids were just the ultimate in disposable. so I had just really begun to write, and I had no idea at all what I was doing, But I, through a friend, met a deputy probation officer, and I rode with him for one day for all his cases. And I just sat quietly and listened, and at the end of each interview, I asked if I could come back alone for an interview, and everyone said yes. So within a day or so I set off alone and it was like a fall of dominoes. One interview led to another and another and another.
And word spread that I was okay, that I was kind of, walked like I talked, I guess, and certainly I was no threat. And so that was it.
SFCB: Yeah I had read an interview where you talked about how if they sensed fear in you, or if they had thought you were afraid of them, that that would have been a problem.
LEON BING: Yes, it would have been, and I didn't know it. Nobody had said "don't act afraid" I just wasn't afraid. I mean these were American teenagers, and I figured the worst they would have done was back talk. But I didn't feel, growing up either, I wasn't a teacher, I was just someone who wanted to know how these kids felt being unwanted in their own country.
SFCB: I think that a lot of the wonder of the book when it came out, wasn't necessarily that someone had gotten that close, rather that someone who was the polar opposite from them. I can't remember if there was a photo of you on the back of the book's dust jacket or not, but when I first saw the book and the author's name was "Leon Bing", and figured it was some guy or something, and then I saw your picture and was thinking, "wow".
I know I wasn't expecting that, and I think that was an added aspect to it where it was like "wow, I would never have expected that someone like Leon would go in there and have them open up to her so much."
LEON BING: Well, I don't know if it was just me that they would open up to, I think they would have, most of these kids -- and I hate using "they", it makes them sound like carpenter ants, you know, and each kid is different of course. There are really smart kids and really dumb kids, there are mean ones, there are great ones, you know it's just real life.
So it wasn't just me, I think because most these kids were teenagers, no one ever really asks teenagers what their opinions are. They're pretty much told to do their homework and keep out of the way. No one really asks, "So what do you think about what's going on in Washington?" you know? (laughs) I didn't ask those particular questions, I didn't ask them about politics, but I did want to know how they thought and felt, and particularly about being such an unwelcome part of society. I mean the only time these kids are welcome are on the front lines when there's a war. And the war with each other made me nuts, because I used to very often say, 'oh what are you doing, you're killing a kid just like yourself!" he'd say "No, He's my worst enemy", and I'd say "no, no, no, he's not your worst enemy, believe me."
SFCB: Well you point that out, and that kind of goes to my next question, as you’ve said, one of your initial thoughts was that you’d see newspaper articles buried in the back of the paper about gang members killing each other, and it struck you as outrageous, as if these were kids from Beverly Hills (or Pasadena, as you wrote about in your second book Smoked), it would be on the front pages
And I think that unfortunately that stretches across the media in not just gang violence. You had the case of Jessica Lynch, the American soldier who was ambushed during the Iraq War in March of 2003 and was injured and taken prisoner. When Lynch,a blonde white woman, came home there was this wall to wall coverage of her and she was singled out as this great story.
Meanwhile in that very same attack with Lynch, was Shoshana Johnson (A Black single mother) who was also injured and taken prisoner with Lynch, as well as Lori Piestewa (A Hopi single mother from a poor background) who was killed in the attack, and neither of those two were given the attention that Jessica was.
Then later I read in the last few weeks where there was a controversy because Shoshana actually got a smaller pension than Lynch did, and there was a lot of controversy over that, and the official storyline over that was that her injuries were not as debilitating as Lynch's, and I guess the pension was based on the long term recovery, or living with your injuries or something like that. So that was the official story, but still that comes off as kind of wrong.
LEON BING: It's very wrong, and the "official story" is always one where if you dig deep enough, it's very unusual.
SFCB: It's like Pat Tillman. That one was one where ...
LEON BING: Friendly fire, and that went on for a year at least.
SFCB: And the whole time they were building him up as... I mean he was already a hero, you know, you didn't have to embellish that. Yet they wanted to sort of put a positive spin on something that was getting a lot of negative reaction. Like to say "hey, look at this guy, HE'S the reason why we're doing this." But it's like, they didn't have to do that, it's just disheartening.
LEON BING: You know, there's just so much that goes on that just makes me want to scream. And of course the media -- of which, I guess I'm a part, although I try to hold myself apart and only write about those things that really get me going, and a lot gets me going. But I won't feast upon a story as though it were carrion, and I were a bird of prey or you know, a vulture. I just won't feast on an article like that story, it has to be one that I kind of devote all of my attention to.
And as tragic as Pat Tillman and those other stories are, they were -- I was not as aware of the Hopi Indian, I would have thought that they would have been all over that, but I think I was writing another book at the time, and when I write I just absorb myself in that subject, you know, and I watch the political news and that's it.
SFCB: And, you know, there are some people I know who I’ve shown your books to, and the book “Smoked” about the white kids who had killed their girlfriends gets a reaction of “oh wow, it's crazy!” and yet “Do or Die” gets a reaction of almost --
LEON BING: -- oh well, you know THEM...
SFCB: -- you know how THEY are.
LEON BING: Right, which is, you know, blatant racism.
SFCB: Well I don't know if it is a conscious thing, but we've seen that so much in society where it's almost become expected. It's like "Well....yeah, that's what they do, you know? I mean ... what do you want?" And I don't think that the people that I was talking to, I don't think that it was a conscious thing, it was a product of --
LEON BING: It's a knee-jerk reaction. There's no thought behind it, it's the same reaction when you go to the doctor and he taps your knee with the hammer. Your knee and your leg moves. It's just knee-jerk.
The killers in Smoked, those teenagers, those murders were so much more craven, then any gang killings. Gangs killed perceived enemies. I don't mean that as if it's right, but they kill those they perceive as their worst enemies. You know, I've so often said to somebody
"You're killing a kid that's just like you, what is the matter with you? Stop it!" You know, because I was down there four or five times a week, for two years in the gang neighborhoods, and got to know people very well. And I talked completely openly with them, I didn't just ask the questions.
***REMOVED SECTION AS IT DELVED INTO ANOTHER BOOK. CLICK THROUGH TO SITE TO READ THE WHOLE THING***
SFCB: In Chicago there has been an extreme amount of gun violence and gang violence, most recently there was a local Chicago rapper Lil JoJo who had had a run in with another rapper named Chief Keef, who incidentally had just gotten a record deal with Interscope, and there was a bit of outrage about that aspect of it. Of course Interscope's a label that had also had artists like Snoop Dogg, and Tupac and Dr. Dre and other people who had in the past glorified that kind of thing --
LEON BING: That kind of life?
SFCB: Yeah, that gang violence and stuff like that, and I kind of jokingly said on Twitter that it would have been more of a outrage if Interscope had NOT signed him. Soon after that became news that Lil Jo Jo had been killed, Chief Keef tweeted out mocking comments about it, laughing and saying that he had been jealous of Keef. This has brought the police in to question Keef on this, as JoJo had had words with Keef recently.
You’ve written about this type of thing, this gang violence, and seem to be an appropriate person to ask about this. What can be done about this situation of gang violence, whether it’s in L.A., New York or Chicago, that can stop these kids, like you said, from killing other kids?
LEON BING: Other kids like them!
SFCB: Yeah.
LEON BING: That's the question I'm asked -- That and weren't you afraid, are the two questions I get asked most, and still get asked. And I don't have an answer. Aside from the "Were you Afraid?" question and that was no. As to what can be done about it, all I can say is get these neighborhoods which are so isolated from the rest of society, bring them much more close to society. Get some Pop Warner football in there. Get some Little League. I mean, some of the neighborhoods have it and some don't.
Nothing can be done about parents who work three jobs, these are latch key kids in many cases. Not in all, every family is different. And my closest friend, who was married to the guy on the cover of my book, Monster Kody -- she's divorced now, and has remarried, grew up in that neighborhood and she never went near the gangs. She and Kody were sweethearts from the time they were 15 and 14, but finally she couldn't take any more. And so they divorced after three kids, and now she's happily remarried as of last week and I'm just so excited and thrilled. And she lives in another state.
But you get these guys and they become these bullshark gang members, and everything else stops in their life except for that. They go out on what are called missions, there's a passion that builds against their worst enemies, and when you sit someone down and ask, "What is this death feud between you and another set?" of Crips or Bloods, and they say, some of them will sit back and say 'well, it all started in' -- and I wrote it in 'Do or Die', -- the feud between the Rolling 60's and the Eight Tray Gangsters, started with a little leather jacket in a school yard.
And it staggers the imagination, that years later, now generations later, they're still killing each other over it without even a dim memory of why it all started.
SFCB: Yeah, it's all they've known so it's all they do. It's essentially genocide.
LEON BING: Yes, that's rather a good word -- I mean.. It's NOT, but it is, I mean there's a self loathing I suppose, but I don't want to get psychiatric about it. But some of the most feared kids were so sweet when you got them alone. When you got them away, there was no chest thumping, I mean there was no, no one did a 'Muhammad Ali in his prime', you know? No one said "I am the greatest!"
And I've seen people shrink in horror when I would bring three, four maybe five gang members into a restaurant with me and they were just horrified. And I wanted to look at them and say "look at their manners, you should have such good manners." And I never met a gang member who didn't have the most perfect table manners. Their mothers really.... you know?
SFCB: Yeah.
LEON BING: And these are really fastidious guys in so many ways. But, there is that screed of inherited hatred for the kids in the next block.
The interview will be posted in two parts, with the 1st part already posted. If you are interested, feel free to click through to my blog to read the whole thing. I've included a snippet from the longer piece below here.
Would be interested in some feedback from people on here. Thanks!
FULL INTERVIEW (PART 1) http://www.searchingforchetbaker.com/2012/10/interview-award-winning-journalist-leon.html
=====================================================
SFCB: Your book “Do or Die” which was an inside look at the Los Angeles gangs The Bloods and The Crips, was an incredible read, and was dramatic, humorous and scary often at the same time. Talk about how you first came to write a book about Los Angeles gang members, which was not necessarily the world that you had grown up around.
LEON BING: I grew up in a very different world, in Northern California, and went to boarding school and then on to University and I didn't really have any idea that the world of gangs existed, until years and years later. I mean we all have seen movies like Blackboard Jungle, but still, that wasn't a gang, that was just unruly kids.
Then I started seeing these little snippets opposite the weather map in the Metro section of the L.A. Times, and it was always this little squib that read two black youths shot dead in South Central L.A. And it always made me sad and a bit angry, because I knew if these were two white youths, shot dead in Beverly Hills, it would supercede every other headline.
But obviously, the black kids were just the ultimate in disposable. so I had just really begun to write, and I had no idea at all what I was doing, But I, through a friend, met a deputy probation officer, and I rode with him for one day for all his cases. And I just sat quietly and listened, and at the end of each interview, I asked if I could come back alone for an interview, and everyone said yes. So within a day or so I set off alone and it was like a fall of dominoes. One interview led to another and another and another.
And word spread that I was okay, that I was kind of, walked like I talked, I guess, and certainly I was no threat. And so that was it.
SFCB: Yeah I had read an interview where you talked about how if they sensed fear in you, or if they had thought you were afraid of them, that that would have been a problem.
LEON BING: Yes, it would have been, and I didn't know it. Nobody had said "don't act afraid" I just wasn't afraid. I mean these were American teenagers, and I figured the worst they would have done was back talk. But I didn't feel, growing up either, I wasn't a teacher, I was just someone who wanted to know how these kids felt being unwanted in their own country.
SFCB: I think that a lot of the wonder of the book when it came out, wasn't necessarily that someone had gotten that close, rather that someone who was the polar opposite from them. I can't remember if there was a photo of you on the back of the book's dust jacket or not, but when I first saw the book and the author's name was "Leon Bing", and figured it was some guy or something, and then I saw your picture and was thinking, "wow".
I know I wasn't expecting that, and I think that was an added aspect to it where it was like "wow, I would never have expected that someone like Leon would go in there and have them open up to her so much."
LEON BING: Well, I don't know if it was just me that they would open up to, I think they would have, most of these kids -- and I hate using "they", it makes them sound like carpenter ants, you know, and each kid is different of course. There are really smart kids and really dumb kids, there are mean ones, there are great ones, you know it's just real life.
So it wasn't just me, I think because most these kids were teenagers, no one ever really asks teenagers what their opinions are. They're pretty much told to do their homework and keep out of the way. No one really asks, "So what do you think about what's going on in Washington?" you know? (laughs) I didn't ask those particular questions, I didn't ask them about politics, but I did want to know how they thought and felt, and particularly about being such an unwelcome part of society. I mean the only time these kids are welcome are on the front lines when there's a war. And the war with each other made me nuts, because I used to very often say, 'oh what are you doing, you're killing a kid just like yourself!" he'd say "No, He's my worst enemy", and I'd say "no, no, no, he's not your worst enemy, believe me."
SFCB: Well you point that out, and that kind of goes to my next question, as you’ve said, one of your initial thoughts was that you’d see newspaper articles buried in the back of the paper about gang members killing each other, and it struck you as outrageous, as if these were kids from Beverly Hills (or Pasadena, as you wrote about in your second book Smoked), it would be on the front pages
And I think that unfortunately that stretches across the media in not just gang violence. You had the case of Jessica Lynch, the American soldier who was ambushed during the Iraq War in March of 2003 and was injured and taken prisoner. When Lynch,a blonde white woman, came home there was this wall to wall coverage of her and she was singled out as this great story.
Meanwhile in that very same attack with Lynch, was Shoshana Johnson (A Black single mother) who was also injured and taken prisoner with Lynch, as well as Lori Piestewa (A Hopi single mother from a poor background) who was killed in the attack, and neither of those two were given the attention that Jessica was.
Then later I read in the last few weeks where there was a controversy because Shoshana actually got a smaller pension than Lynch did, and there was a lot of controversy over that, and the official storyline over that was that her injuries were not as debilitating as Lynch's, and I guess the pension was based on the long term recovery, or living with your injuries or something like that. So that was the official story, but still that comes off as kind of wrong.
LEON BING: It's very wrong, and the "official story" is always one where if you dig deep enough, it's very unusual.
SFCB: It's like Pat Tillman. That one was one where ...
LEON BING: Friendly fire, and that went on for a year at least.
SFCB: And the whole time they were building him up as... I mean he was already a hero, you know, you didn't have to embellish that. Yet they wanted to sort of put a positive spin on something that was getting a lot of negative reaction. Like to say "hey, look at this guy, HE'S the reason why we're doing this." But it's like, they didn't have to do that, it's just disheartening.
LEON BING: You know, there's just so much that goes on that just makes me want to scream. And of course the media -- of which, I guess I'm a part, although I try to hold myself apart and only write about those things that really get me going, and a lot gets me going. But I won't feast upon a story as though it were carrion, and I were a bird of prey or you know, a vulture. I just won't feast on an article like that story, it has to be one that I kind of devote all of my attention to.
And as tragic as Pat Tillman and those other stories are, they were -- I was not as aware of the Hopi Indian, I would have thought that they would have been all over that, but I think I was writing another book at the time, and when I write I just absorb myself in that subject, you know, and I watch the political news and that's it.
SFCB: And, you know, there are some people I know who I’ve shown your books to, and the book “Smoked” about the white kids who had killed their girlfriends gets a reaction of “oh wow, it's crazy!” and yet “Do or Die” gets a reaction of almost --
LEON BING: -- oh well, you know THEM...
SFCB: -- you know how THEY are.
LEON BING: Right, which is, you know, blatant racism.
SFCB: Well I don't know if it is a conscious thing, but we've seen that so much in society where it's almost become expected. It's like "Well....yeah, that's what they do, you know? I mean ... what do you want?" And I don't think that the people that I was talking to, I don't think that it was a conscious thing, it was a product of --
LEON BING: It's a knee-jerk reaction. There's no thought behind it, it's the same reaction when you go to the doctor and he taps your knee with the hammer. Your knee and your leg moves. It's just knee-jerk.
The killers in Smoked, those teenagers, those murders were so much more craven, then any gang killings. Gangs killed perceived enemies. I don't mean that as if it's right, but they kill those they perceive as their worst enemies. You know, I've so often said to somebody
"You're killing a kid that's just like you, what is the matter with you? Stop it!" You know, because I was down there four or five times a week, for two years in the gang neighborhoods, and got to know people very well. And I talked completely openly with them, I didn't just ask the questions.
***REMOVED SECTION AS IT DELVED INTO ANOTHER BOOK. CLICK THROUGH TO SITE TO READ THE WHOLE THING***
SFCB: In Chicago there has been an extreme amount of gun violence and gang violence, most recently there was a local Chicago rapper Lil JoJo who had had a run in with another rapper named Chief Keef, who incidentally had just gotten a record deal with Interscope, and there was a bit of outrage about that aspect of it. Of course Interscope's a label that had also had artists like Snoop Dogg, and Tupac and Dr. Dre and other people who had in the past glorified that kind of thing --
LEON BING: That kind of life?
SFCB: Yeah, that gang violence and stuff like that, and I kind of jokingly said on Twitter that it would have been more of a outrage if Interscope had NOT signed him. Soon after that became news that Lil Jo Jo had been killed, Chief Keef tweeted out mocking comments about it, laughing and saying that he had been jealous of Keef. This has brought the police in to question Keef on this, as JoJo had had words with Keef recently.
You’ve written about this type of thing, this gang violence, and seem to be an appropriate person to ask about this. What can be done about this situation of gang violence, whether it’s in L.A., New York or Chicago, that can stop these kids, like you said, from killing other kids?
LEON BING: Other kids like them!
SFCB: Yeah.
LEON BING: That's the question I'm asked -- That and weren't you afraid, are the two questions I get asked most, and still get asked. And I don't have an answer. Aside from the "Were you Afraid?" question and that was no. As to what can be done about it, all I can say is get these neighborhoods which are so isolated from the rest of society, bring them much more close to society. Get some Pop Warner football in there. Get some Little League. I mean, some of the neighborhoods have it and some don't.
Nothing can be done about parents who work three jobs, these are latch key kids in many cases. Not in all, every family is different. And my closest friend, who was married to the guy on the cover of my book, Monster Kody -- she's divorced now, and has remarried, grew up in that neighborhood and she never went near the gangs. She and Kody were sweethearts from the time they were 15 and 14, but finally she couldn't take any more. And so they divorced after three kids, and now she's happily remarried as of last week and I'm just so excited and thrilled. And she lives in another state.
But you get these guys and they become these bullshark gang members, and everything else stops in their life except for that. They go out on what are called missions, there's a passion that builds against their worst enemies, and when you sit someone down and ask, "What is this death feud between you and another set?" of Crips or Bloods, and they say, some of them will sit back and say 'well, it all started in' -- and I wrote it in 'Do or Die', -- the feud between the Rolling 60's and the Eight Tray Gangsters, started with a little leather jacket in a school yard.
And it staggers the imagination, that years later, now generations later, they're still killing each other over it without even a dim memory of why it all started.
SFCB: Yeah, it's all they've known so it's all they do. It's essentially genocide.
LEON BING: Yes, that's rather a good word -- I mean.. It's NOT, but it is, I mean there's a self loathing I suppose, but I don't want to get psychiatric about it. But some of the most feared kids were so sweet when you got them alone. When you got them away, there was no chest thumping, I mean there was no, no one did a 'Muhammad Ali in his prime', you know? No one said "I am the greatest!"
And I've seen people shrink in horror when I would bring three, four maybe five gang members into a restaurant with me and they were just horrified. And I wanted to look at them and say "look at their manners, you should have such good manners." And I never met a gang member who didn't have the most perfect table manners. Their mothers really.... you know?
SFCB: Yeah.
LEON BING: And these are really fastidious guys in so many ways. But, there is that screed of inherited hatred for the kids in the next block.