Peter Kim is managing director at the East Bay Asian Youth Center. He helps to oversee and coordinate their Street Team Counseling Program and also runs Streetside Productions, a Youth Media program. He has more than 14 years working with Asian, African-American and Latino high risk youth at EBAYC, mostly funded by Measure Y.

Recently, Oakland Local sat down with Kim to talk about community perceptions (and misperceptions) about Oakland Gangs and Youth - using several films available online as a focal point for the conversation.

Why media?

"For the folks who don't have a lot of experience with gang-affiliated, gang-impacted youth ... they're going to get their information primarily from the media," he said. "Whether it's their local news, whether it's newspapers, some online blogs that someone's put up. They're going to form their impressions of what gangs are and who gang members are from these sources.

"But these sources ... you know sensationalism sells," he continued. "So when it comes to news and newspaper articles focus on ... delinquent young people who are intentionally making bad choices that create violence in communities."

Mr. Kim chastises one show in particular for perpetuating one-dimensional stereotypes about gangs and for exaggerating their numbers in Oakland. He mentions a documentary that aired on the Discovery Channel in 2009, and that has since become a YouTube Sensation, "Gang Wars: Oakland," Parts 1 and 2.



"That Discovery documentary said that there are 10,000 gang members in Oakland. I would argue that that's a very inaccurate number, unless you're including every single young person in Oakland that hangs out with a group of two or three friends that look like them and do the same activities with them, which may be hanging out on a Friday night, smoking a little weed, drink some alcohol, maybe throwing some dice ... . If that's a gang member we very well may have 10,000 of them in Oakland. But that's not a gang member to me. That's a young person living in an Urban Oakland and growing up according to the surroundings around them," says Kim.

What's missing from most media is in-depth coverage that tackles why Oakland teens and 20-somethings might choose to hang out with gang members. Or why a select few might choose to engage in serious criminal activity like distributing large amounts of illegal drugs or moving guns and cash throughout the country - activities associated with organized crime, aka gangs.

"The problem is more systemic than the media will point out," Kim said. "Gangs are nothing new."

He also talked about a 1982 documentary called "Children of Violence" that was once featured on PBS.

"The clothes are different, the language is a little different, but you see some striking similarities to what was going on back then, almost 30 years ago, and what's going on today." He then goes on to describe several root causes that make gang culture attractive, based on his experiences counseling urban youth in Oakland.



Kim cites poverty and lack of jobs as an important factor, but also goes on to detail how gangs might seem socially rational to one community, but not another.

Socially Rational by communitybridgevideo

Not that parents aren't part of the equation. Again, using the "Children of Violence" documentary as a touchstone, Kim describes the dilemma of the working parent and the working immigrant parent.

The current economic climate means that these parents are working longer hours for less pay - sometimes at even two and three jobs. Unsupervised, teens in Oakland are often put on probation for typical teenage behaviors like hanging out with the "wrong crowd," underage drinking or marijuana consumption. But getting out of the juvenile justice system can be difficult, if not impossible.

Navigating The Juvenile Justice System by communitybridgevideo

He goes on to tell an incredibly powerful true story about one youth who was willing to turn his life around. A young person who was put on probation for staying to help a friend who had been shot - the classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What Turning It Around Looks Like by communitybridgevideo

In the end, Kim's advice to Oakland residents who want to help solve the gang problem is to support youth and youth organizations, not tough on crime measures like gang injunctions. He encourages businesses, and individuals who are open to working with young people to hire and mentor them so that they have viable options.

Kim also praises National Night Out.

"I've seen communities have block parties where the neighbors come out and they've been in that home for two or three years and it's the first time they're having conversation with their neighbors," he said. After all, "If young people are growing up knowing that their neighbor is watching them, and if they see something, they're not going to call the police, they're going to call their Mom?! That's going to go a long way."