[updated] I said I'd have more to say on the Juggalo march...
Juggalos are fans of the rap group Insane Clown Posse. As a group, many of them self-identify as outcasts and have suffered some sort of abuse or trauma in their lives. Most are white, live near or below the poverty line, and may be homeless. They are more prone to drug use and violent behavior, and more likely to be suicidal than non-Juggalo-identifying youth. (Petering, et al., "Violence, Trauma, Mental Health, and Substance Use Among Homeless Youth Juggalos," Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 2016).
In 2011, the FBI labeled the Juggalos a gang, despite the fact that most law enforcement officers don't see Juggalo violence as a serious problem. Are there Juggalos who have committed violent acts? Of course. Are they as a community violent? By most all accounts, no. Together with the ACLU, the Insane Clown Posse sued the FBI, but lost.
The Juggalo March is an effort to call attention to the adverse affects that the gang label has had on the members. Per the event's website: "the FBI’s inclusion of Juggalos as a 'gang' has resulted in hundreds if not thousands of people subjected to various forms of discrimination, harassment, and profiling simply for identifying as a Juggalo. Over the past five years, our legal team has heard testimonies and reports from Juggalos all over the nation who have lost custody of their children, been fired from jobs, denied access into the armed forces, and the most common consequence — being officially labeled as a gang member by law enforcement agencies for wearing Juggalo related clothing or brandishing one or more Juggalo tattoos."
Now I'm not trying to draw any kind of equivalence between what the Juggalos are facing and other forms of systemic oppression (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.). Being a Juggalo is a choice: unlike people of color, Juggalos can remove their face paint and reap the benefits of white privilege. People join gangs to experience a sense of belonging and security in the face of a system that has failed them (I might go so far as to say, in the case of the Juggalos, a system that they *believe* has failed them).
I got to thinking about the Juggalo march again when I read about the Criminal Alien Gang Member Removal Act, which would make gang membership grounds for deportation. The bill allows DHS "to designate a group of five or more people as a criminal gang. Those immigrants determined to have participated in the gang or have furthered its illegal activity can be detained and deported."
"We're down with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five!"
"What is that--a gang?"
This bill unquestionably has roots in racist and xenophobic thought, and seems to be directed primarily at the MS-13 gang, which "is Trump’s perfect villain," writes J. Weston Phippen. "It’s exclusively Latino and recruits in heavily migrant neighborhoods, its members known for their face tattoos and savagery." Phippen argues that MS-13 and other gangs like it are *American* gangs and that changes to immigration law and accelerated deportations will do little to fix the problem. Laws like this highlight a pervasive and dangerous conflation of ideas: the "gang" label is typically affixed to communities of color; the label is almost always synonymous with violent behavior (which reinforces the perception that people of color are violent); and in the case of Latino gangs, becomes tangled up with the idea of the "illegal immigrant."
The ease with which the Juggalos were labeled a gang--and the prospect that *any* group of five or more people could be called a gang--coupled with the passage of a bill that effectively makes membership in a group a deportable offense is a scary prospect.