Kids Corner

Below, first image from bottom: the filmmaker, Baljit Kaur Sangra.

Film/Stage

Money, Power & Death:
The Lure of Gangs

by RANDY SHORE

 

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA 

Filmmaker Baljit Kaur Sangra made Warrior Boyz - a documentary about teens and the lure of gang life - to answer a hard question: "Why?"

Bindy Johal was a violent gangster who was gunned down in a Vancouver nightclub, just one of more than 100 young local Indo-Canadians who have died for a false dream.

To the disaffected Indian youths who idolized him, Johal was an example of the possible. It is possible to get rich, to have power, to demand respect.

For Indian boys who are beaten by white kids, called "hindoo" [an insult if you're a Sikh] or "paki" and are pelted with beer bottles, Johal was a powerful symbol, explains former teen gangster, now UBC law student, Jagdeep Singh Mangat.

Johal was Punjabi and dangerous enough that Caucasians would think twice before tangling with any Indians.

"He had this Punjabi name and he used it unapologetically. Bindy, Bindy Johal, you can't get a more Punjabi name than that," he said. "He became a legend."

Then he became dead. But that's beside the point.

The point, says Jagdeep Singh, is that young South Asians don't just fall into gang life, they seek it out. Facing systemic and overt racism and violence, they do a cost-benefit analysis and decide that the rewards of gang life outweigh the risks, he explained.

For kids who are in conflict with their parents, the gangs are right there offering an easy life, money, drugs, the works. The senior gangsters use the young wannabees to commit the high-risk crimes as a way for the younger kids to prove themselves.

What the kids don't see - and need to see - are the real results: jail, blood, death and worse.

"A lot of them end up as drug addicts," said Jagdeep, who left the gang life before it claimed his life. He has a machete scar that runs from his shoulder across his chest to the opposite hip, plus a couple of bullet hole scars.

Jagdeep spent the next ten years working in the social services field with youths, immigrants and refugees, often on the city's Downtown Eastside, and has seen first-hand the wreckage of gang life.

For filmmaker Baljit Sangra, opening the eyes of the South Asian community and the youngsters in particular is a matter of life and death.

"This is a problem that has affected absolutely everyone," said Baljit, who notes that not only is the pace of gang-related deaths picking up, the age of the victims is dropping.

Baljit has been screening her film at local schools in Richmond, Surrey and Vancouver for students, teachers and parents to see. Warrior Boyz screened for the first time in an elementary school this week, Vancouver's Moberly Elementary School.

"We usually have an organized discussion and the kids are part of that dialogue," she said. "That's the whole point, is to stop the younger kids from going down that path."

 

[Courtesy: Vancouver Sun]

May 28, 2009

Conversation about this article

1: Raj (Canada), May 29, 2009, 12:12 AM.

I think it all depends on how a family operates, how parents nurture the kids. I raised two boys in the most right-wing white-dominated city in Canada. We never had any problem from Elementary school to University. Not to mention, they are both practicing Sikhs wearing turbans. Our family never valued "violence glorifying" culture in Punjab or Canada. What do you expect from kids when they see the current Punjabi song-videos? I took the opportunity to give the kids the best of both worlds, not the worst side of Punjab and Canada.

2: Kiddaa  (Surrey, British Columbia, Canada), November 27, 2009, 8:28 PM.

Good movie. It was guerilla, but I liked it. Gangs exist because of many factors. I believe that one main reason is the feeling of alienation and racism. The bottom line is 'whites' still try to think they are superior. But Sikhs are four generations deep in Canada. It also doesn't help that now gang lifestyle is emulated in America. And, partly, it's the parents.

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