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UNDERSTANDING GANGS · September 8 · 2 min

Vice Lords-When Help and Harm Wear the Same Uniform

The Vice Lords once ran job programs, health clinics, and small businesses with federal backing, all while remaining a criminal organization. This piece uses that history to ask a harder question about how we judge groups that offer real care alongside real coercion. It borrows from psychoanalytic thinking about mixed objects to suggest that splitting the good from the bad may be the wrong instinct entirely.

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The Vice Lords once ran job programs, health clinics, and small businesses with federal backing, all while remaining a criminal organization. This piece uses that history to ask a harder question about how we judge groups that offer real care alongside real coercion. It borrows from psychoanalytic thinking about mixed objects to suggest that splitting the good from the bad may be the wrong instinct entirely.

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