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DVD Review: Flyin’ Cut Sleeves – Dir. by Rita Fecher & Harry Chalfant

DVD Review – Flyin’ Cut Sleeves
Directed by Rita Fecher & Harry Chalfant
Sleeping/MVD

For everyone who has marveled at the intricacies of early 70′s NYC gang culture, and wondered just how true to life such pre-Hip Hop shock action flicks like “The Warriors” really are, this is the hard edged testament to a time long buried beneath wave after wave of street culture, with ever increasing armament.  This hearkens back to an era of baseball bats and lead pipes, of hand painted “colours” on denim and leather, of funk, rock and heavy metal, before there was money in crime, which means essentially pre-crack.

Co-Producer Rita Fecher taught in the poverty stricken schools of the South Bronx from the late 60′s into the 70′s, becoming almost a family member to many of the kids who went on to become the most deeply involved in gang activity – and family is the operative word, for that is exactly the slang used for these collectives.  Lacking support and discipline at home, these youths turned to each other, and with many of their leaders being veterans already, the structure became essentially military.  Yet even though most initiations involved “jumping in”, or getting beaten on by all other members, many gangs went on to become organs of community support, influenced first by the Black Panthers and Latin Kings, and then by the Young Lords, whose constant presence on the block is likened by one observer to a host of Native Americans constantly watching from a ridge.

These are stories of waves of Puerto Rican immigrants whose ready cash, made by selling family landholdings back home, quickly disappeared in the barrios of New York;  of the Ghetto Boy’s Black Bennie, killed while trying to broker peace between two rival gangs; of kids caught in a deadly turf war while trying to improve conditions for their people.  While conditions for the present generation have become steadily worse, with community centers closing down and an arms race that now has pre-teens strapped with semi-automatic weaponry, it’s amazing to see how many survivors of the 70’s have become community leaders, teachers and role models to youth caught in the streets, able to counsel kids without judging them for choosing the gang life.

This era of pre-Hip Hop, pre-“gangsta” gang culture is worthy of much further study, as it marks a turning point from the methodical politicization of the people through the Black Panther Party and other revolutionary organizations, to a time when the potential for gang culture to destroy whole communities by keeping them in a state of constant warfare became the State’s preferred method of oppressing its underclass.  While groups like the Latin Kings became increasingly political, only to be ruthlessly persecuted by the police, most gangs seem to have become agents of personal aggrandizement and civil destruction with the arrival of crack money.

By  Dave “Corvid” McCallum

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