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I’m a former gang member and I’m done peddling positivity
CARLOS CRUZ MOSQUERA explains how neoliberal capitalism has an active interest in the pacification of working-class youth with depoliticised mentorship programmes
Young people are often distracted from everyday structural violence through government-funded programmes that promote capitalist idealism through motivational speakers — and 'anti-gang' mentors can be part of that

TWO days before my 18th birthday in January 2007, I had police advise me to move out of the South London council estate I grew up in as my life was in danger. My role as one of the masterminds of a local gang brawl that resulted in several stabbings meant that revenge was imminent. Just a year later, having left gang life behind and still riddled with anxiety and depression due to PTSD, a government-funded charity recruited me to speak in schools to dissuade students from joining gangs. 

I was trained to preach a sterile idealism that encouraged underprivileged teenagers to ignore their material and social realities. Their reward for staying positive and staying within the prescribed rules and laws was the prospect of a career.

 

Police, government and media focus on the issue of gangs obscures the root causes of crime: poverty and inequality
Trouble flares in Tottenham, north London, as members of the community take to the streets to demand justice after Mark Duggan, 29, was shot dead by police, August 2011


Blatant police violence against black communities going viral on social media may partly explain the recent crackdown on anti-capitalist literature. Liberal-minded educators, many of whom are increasingly from underprivileged backgrounds themselves, are losing faith in the vacuous positivity discourse that’s been a staple in the past and are now exploring alternatives.

On top of this, the Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the vast class and racial disparities in Western society. The already-existing inequalities under the neoliberal economic model have been accelerated and magnified to unbearable levels. In this context, educators are becoming willing to include more critical assessments of the existing political, economic, and social structures in their teaching materials.

The extremes that Western governments are having to go to protect their decaying neoliberal model from potential young radicals exposes its growing fragility. I experienced this fragility first hand in November 2011 when, having recently returned from the bubble of the monastery, I found myself in police custody and put on trial with 12 other student activists for peacefully taking part in a march against the hike in university fees.

Unlike my co-defendants, I was already familiar with the intensely tight grip of police cuffs and the claustrophobia-inducing cells we were thrown in for the following 23 hours and forty-five minutes (just below the maximum legal amount of time allowed) to teach us a lesson.
Young people storm Conservative Party headquarters, winter 2010, in protest at cuts to Education Maintenance Allowance and hikes in university fees
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