■ by DANIEL BURKE


ROSARIES A POPULAR GANG TOOL


W


HEN SEVENTH-GRADER Raymond Hosier was suspended for wearing rosary beads to school in


late May, civil rights groups rushed to his defense.


“Without question, the continuing action taken by the school district in pun- ishing Raymond for wearing a rosary to school violates the constitutional rights of our client,” argued Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice. After Sekulow filed a lawsuit, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on June 1, telling Oneida Middle School and the school district in Schenectady, New York, to allow Hosier, 13, to wear the rosary to class.


Like school principals and superin- tendents in other states, including Texas, California, Oregon, and Virginia, Oneida officials say the no-rosary-beads rule is necessary to “protect students from vio- lence and gangs.”


They have a point, according to gang experts. After schools began banning gang-related bandanas, clothing, and hairstyles about a decade ago, students have turned to rosaries as a subtle and often First-Amendment-protected way to signal gang allegiance.


“With the introduction of strict dress codes and the use of uniforms in the school systems, these type of indicators seem to be favored by the gangsters,” says the Police Department of San Antonio, Texas, in a handbook about gang awareness. To show their allegiance, gangsters wear certain colors of beads—red for Bloods, blue for Crips, for example—and arrange them to signal their rank in the gang. Gang leaders teach young mem- bers to plead religious freedom if they’re hauled into the principal’s office, said Jared Lewis, a former police officer in


Department of Corrections. Like many gang fads, he said, it likely started in Cali- fornia and migrated east.


“One gang started it—who it was, nobody knows. Another gang saw it and thought it was cool, and started using it too,” Walker said. “These things just evolve.”


The wearing of rosaries by violent gangs is an ironic twist for beads whose use in prayer is praised by Christians, including Pope Benedict XVI, as a means to access contemplative calm. (The word bead is derived from the Anglo-Saxon term for “prayer,” bede.)


Legend has it that the Virgin Mary presented Saint Dominic with the first rosary in the 13th century, though ele- ments of the prayers predate and post- date Dominic.


California who worked in public schools. “You are often dealing with gang members who have no inkling about the religious significance of the rosary beads,” said Lewis, who now runs Know Gangs, a training group for law enforce- ment officials. “They are just trying to skirt around school rules under the guise of a religious symbol.”


No one is sure which gang started the trend of wearing rosaries, said Rob- ert Walker, a former head of the gang identification unit for the South Carolina


In Christian parlance, the Rosary refers to a sequence of prayers and meditations on the life of Jesus, as well as the circlet of beads used in reciting these prayers. Each of the beads (usually 59 or 169) rep- resents a prayer—a Hail Mary, Our Father, or Glory Be—and is grouped in sets of 10 with a crucifix hanging from a pendant. The beads help mark which prayers have been recited and guide the supplicant through the life of Jesus.


Now cherished by many Christians, rosaries fell out of favor among Protestants because the Roman Catholic Church used them to promote indulgences—papal dis- pensation to reduce or eliminate time in purgatory. After the Reformation, the beads became a defiant emblem for Catholic monks and nuns to wear outside their hab- its and a tactile tool for missionaries to pass on the faith—particularly in Latin America. Now, Latino gangsters are the most frequent—and creative—wearers of rosaries, said Lewis. The Latin Kings, for example, use colors to signal members’ rank in the hierarchy—five black and five gold beads for members; two gold beads for top dogs. Assassins wear all black. The Neta, an east-coast gang founded in Puerto Rico, wear 78 red, white, and blue beads to symbolize the 78 towns in Puerto Rico. Prospective members wear all white beads until they join the gang. Lewis said he sympathizes with prin- cipals who are torn between respecting religious rights and preventing gang wars in their schools.


“We live in a country where, obviously, people should be able to do and say what they want,” he said. “At the same time, if something happens on school grounds, the school principal is going to be held liable for not keeping students safe.” Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. Used by permission.


EVANGEL • AUG 2010 27


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