"Though never officially acknowledged, as many as 25,000 young people have died in America's gang wars since 1980. In cities across America, members of the Crips, Bloods, Mara Salvatrucha, 18th Street, Latin Kings, Blackstone Rangers, and Gangster Disciples are like traumatized veterans with no way home. Yet some of these survivors have left gang-banging for peacemaking, and they have an important message to deliver: gang violence is preventable." "Drawing on ten years as an activist and public official working to understand and prevent gang violence in Los Angeles, Street Wars is Tom Hayden's comprehensive indictment of the neoconservative politics of law and order that dominates current policy and suffocates inner-city youth. Weaving together cutting analysis with numerous firsthand stories from gang leaders, Hayden shows how the prison-industrial complex reinforces gang identity through humiliation and punishment, and reveals how globalization has created a force of unemployable men and women around the world who are defined as incorrigible, outside law and community."--BOOK JACKET.