Misunderstanding Ms13

my knowledge of organized gang activity was limited to bloods and crips.

 sanyikah shakur and the book monster did more for documenting gangs in the united states than i ever could.

 i read about t. Rodgers in gentleman’s quarterly and how gang members not affiliated with the crips organized themselves into the bloods.

 it was not until spike TV and Gangland that i understood surenos and the Latin gang movement in California.

 but El Salvador is the Beirut of central America.

 we think we know violence in the suburbs and metropolitan areas of the continental states.

 or we moved to the suburbs to avoid the violence.

 but El Salvadorans were being mistreated in the good old USA by their Latin neighbors because they got here last and missed out on the best paying jobs.

 they got tired of being mistreated by their own so they formed MS13

at least this was one version of the story told to me by coworkers at taco bell in Suwanee, Georgia.

 MS13 was nothing to mess with, not boys dressed in sagging pants who walked around in clusters but grown men who wielded heavy artillery who were not afraid to shoot.

 six years later i was getting my battery changed in Duluth, Georgia when the El Salvadoran friend who changed the battery told me MS13 were the scum of the earth.

 They were gang members who were less than human with orders from El Salvador’s government to be executed on sight.

 and black shadow were the MS13 killers who recognized their target by their tattoos.

 i worked at taco bell from 2007 to 2009

 taco bell was a small place to work and in any small family word gets around quickly.

 i worked with a young boy from Philadelphia who was related to one of the Boston Celtics who had gang affiliations both in Pennsylvania and in Georgia.

it was interesting to listen to what young black boys were going through in gwinnett county schools.

 but he ran his mouth lot and got in an argument with one of our shift managers.

 she was a Gonzalez.

 i watched them joust with their tongues exchanging racial epithets then just as quickly as she got hold of his belt loops, she tried to suplex him on the hard taco bell floor.

 fortunately she was not strong enough to pick him up.

 they both fell backward on the cold wet surface.

 they both could have been injured.

 he was a promising athlete with a lanky build and good height.

 i told the man who hired me.

 he chastised the young man for jeopardizing his future.

 the shift manager did not lose her job.

 the young man asked me why i snitched.

 miss Gonzalez told me, snitches get no love.

 none of this made me feel better and i miss the taco bell pay.

 but time has gone on and my kids are getting older.

 my concern as a parent is to continue to give my two cents so society does not completely fall apart whether the truth be told about these gangs or not.

 fiction or nonfiction these tales are grown up campfire stories left for adults like me to find out the truth and to make sure assault and battery do not reach my two little girls.