Revolutionary Worker

More and more cities across the United States are using public nuisance laws in the form of civil injunctions as a weapon in the war against gangs. The injunctions prohibit gang members from meeting in public, wearing certain clothing, carrying beepers, and engaging in other legal behavior. In the following viewpoint, the Revolutionary Worker argues that this use of civil injunctions is an infringement of the gang members’ civil rights. The injunctions allow the police to legally harass minorities and treat them as if they had no rights at all, the Revolutionary Worker maintains. Civil injunctions criminalize a class of people not for what they have done, the author contends, but for what some members may do. The Revolutionary Worker is a publication of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

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