Black and Gold

"My brothers and sisters, it's time to go down town. Jesus Christ went down town. He hung around uptown for 33 years and they didn't even notice him, and then he went down town and they killed him in a week. You can't go back, you got to take them downtown."

In the film Black and Gold, how one defines "downtown" makes all the difference. A Big Noise film, Black and Gold was made by Jacqueline R. Sooher '90 and Rick Rowley '90 and documents the apparent transformation of the Latin Kings, the largest and most powerful street gang in New York City. In 1994, they became the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation, claiming to have abandoned their criminal past and following the examples of the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, a Latino street gang that became a political force in the late 1960s in Chicago. This change to a socially and politically active organization is what the Nation means when it talks about "going downtown."

But the Nation is not to be confused with the League of Women Voters or the American Association of Retired Persons. They refuse to accept nonviolence as the only alternative, preferring militant action. The NYPD calls the Nation of over 3,000 members "a vicious gang with a P.R. campaign." One member of the Nation declared, "Let's get one thing clear: if you fuck with the Kings, then you have to be prepared to deal with the consequences."

Black and Gold starts with a seemingly endless chanting of "Amor de rey! Amor de reina!" (Love of the king! Love of the queen!) and the "crown" (middle and ring fingers held in, other three extended) being thrown around all over the place, on top of some heavy beats provided by Sasha Costanza-Chock, who mixed the soundtrack. King Tone, the current leader of the Nation, then talks about his own sense of transformation and that of the Nation, saying that it forces young people to ask themselves "Who are you ? If you don't know who you are, you don't know where the hell you're going." Tone took over the leadership from King Blood, who is now serving a 145- year prison term, the first 45 years of which will be spent in solitary confinement. Tone referred to this aspect of Blood's sentence as being "buried alive. You don't see anybody else getting a sentence like that. What about Gotti? What about the guy that blew up the World Trade Center? No. Why Blood? Because he's a Puerto Rican!" Tone himself is currently serving 10 to 15 years in prison in what he claims are unsubstantiated drug charges. He was arrested as part of "Operation Crown," a somewhat incredulous sting operation supposedly involving more than 1,000 police and federal agents that did result in the arrest of more than 100 members of the Nation on various charges.

So if the Nation has gone "downtown," why are the police so concerned? According to Richie Perez, the founder of the Young Lords, the police ignore gang activity as long as the gangs are fighting each other. Their greatest fear, says Perez, is that "street gangs will become politicized." King Tone describes his dedication to this cause, saying "I'm willing to die to change my people's condition." Responding to the arrests of "Operation Crown," Tone states "that's power-when they arrest you for nothing but being you."

It's not as if the Nation doesn't have problems to fight back against. Since Rudolph Giulani was elected mayor of New York city, crime has decreased by 40 percent but police brutality in the same time period has increased by 60 percent, and 80 percent of the victims of this police brutality are people of color. Anthony Baez was murdered by the NYPD-he asphyxiated when an officer threw him to the ground in a choke hold after Baez had argued with the police for accosting his brother. The police warned Baez's mother to stay away from the Nation, but she ignored them. "I lost one son, but I gained hundreds," says Baez's mother of the Nation's support after her son's death.

Can the Nation truly survive as a political organization, or will its roots of crime and violence allow the police to continue to fight to destroy them? One thing is certain--the Nation is coming, and "the City will never be the same when the Nation goes downtown."