Judges, city attorneys, police and other members of our society charged with protecting us are currently seeking court injunctions to restrict the movements of the 18th Street gang. The suspected gang members are not allowed to be in groups in the street. They are not allowed to talk on cellular phones, nor to move freely through their neighborhoods. It is hoped that by controlling their movements, the police will control the activity of the gang, which includes violent behavior. There is a fundamental contradiction in this approach that will ultimately create more violence. We are trying to control gang behavior as if it exists in a vacuum. Yet gangs play a role in the functioning of our society.

 A revolution occurred in my field, psychotherapy, in the last decade. We came to understand that all behavior, including violence, occurs in the context of a family system. The person who ends up in therapy is simply the identified patient (IP) of his family. His/her role is to bind the anxiety and immature functioning of the entire family. This way the other members can point their fingers at the sick one and escape assuming the responsibility for creating a family with problems.

 In the same fashion, the members of the 18th Street gang are the identified patients of our society. They are acting out the behavior of a competitive and violent society that does not give priority to human needs. If we stop pointing the finger at them and look at ourselves for a second, we would understand their violent behavior in its societal context.

As adults we have created a society in which 22% of our children live under the poverty line and 40% of Latino and 45.9% of Black children live in poverty. Under these conditions, doesn't it make sense for the youth to organize into extralegal business ventures-gangs? Legal businesses steal value from workers everyday. They control territories just like gang members. The 18th Street gang is accused of using violence to control street corners and renting them out to drug peddlers. Can I also accuse landlords of controlling the land and renting it out to commodity peddlers? Can I get an injunction against the capitalist owners of my ancestors' land - Aztlan - for violent expropriation of territory? Why are white collar capitalist gangs allowed to plunder the world (using their cellular phones to call in the acquisitions to their stock brokers), while tattooed cholo entrepreneurs have their constitutional rights taken away?

 "It's because they're violent, "you say. Gangs kill innocent children who stray in the way of their turf wars. O.K., I agree that blowing people away sucks. Now what about our government that has shown our kids that when we disagree with someone we have the option to blow them up. Why is a drive-by shooting any different than the invasion of Panama? Our government is one of the most violent in the world, spending 326.1 billion dollars a year on weapons - 27% of the world's military expenditures. Our government has blown away millions of innocent people throughout its bloody history. It makes sense that some people will learn from the government to organize themselves into warring groups competing for territory in a city in the same fashion as the U.S. government violently competes for territory in the world.

Gangs are a logical development in our society. They are the product of violence, competition and alienation. They are also brotherhoods for many kids who have been thrown out of society. Gangs take better care of their members than the government takes care of its citizens.

 Isolating the 18th Street gang and stripping them of their constitutional rights will only create more alienation and violence amongst these fellow citizens of our city. They are not monsters. They are humans like you and I. In fact they are like they are because of the society that you and I created. It's time to stop pointing our fingers at the gangs and ask ourselves how we contribute to the chaos and violence in our society. We must explore the role of poverty, competition and the prioritization of profit over human needs in the creation of gangs.

The function of the efforts that we put into controlling gangs is to distract us from the real causes of gang violence - poverty, alienation, deteriorating social relationships and societal violence. It is instructive to stand back and see the entire picture. Capitalists and their puppets in government along with an obedient population, create the inhuman conditions of capitalism. The resultant poverty and social violence rips through our communities laying waste to generations of people. Some of these people organize themselves into extralegal groupings - gangs. They protect themselves and their investments with violence. Then the original persecutors - capitalists - attack the victims of their system of artificial scarcity with police and court injunctions. Blaming the gangs allows capitalist oppression to remain unnoticed. If we unite behind the government to stop the "hoodlums" we won't notice the government's truncheon as it crashes down on our social programs and our human rights.

We need to listen to the message that gangs are sending us and use it to explore our society. We must treat the entire family if we are to be successful in stopping the violence. If we do not do this, we will allow the society that creates gangs and violence to continue it's production uninterrupted. The court injunction against the 18th Street gang is a prescription for more violence.

 Christian Smith works as a Radical therapist in North Hollywood. E-mail <radic@primenet.com>