Can't Stop Won't Stop (10 page)

The photogenic, articulate Ghetto Brothers were ready. Photographers captured them relaxing at a Friday block party, looking more like playground kids than fearsome predators. Black Benjie, Yellow Benjy, and Charlie appeared on network talk shows—the hard-scarred, vulnerable faces of a forgotten revolutionary generation. Documentary producers flocked to the Ghetto Brothers' store-front to capture their transformation into “an organization.” Through it all, the GBs delivered angry soundbites and played funky music.

The Bronx youths' invisibility was over. Indeed, the Ghetto Brothers cut a romantic profile of embattled, misunderstood youths struggling to do right. When that image reflected back to the forgotten youths of the Bronx, peace seemed to be an actual, viable alternative.

In 1971, the Bronx gangs were quickly burning down two tracks—one toward peace, the other toward more blood.

As the days grew hotter, the violence in the South Bronx escalated. Even as the Ghetto Brothers moved publicly toward the revolution, they became more embroiled in growing conflicts. In May, three Ghetto Brothers were shot in the clubhouse, leaving one paralyzed. Victor Melendez, Benjy's brother, the musical heart of the Ghetto Brothers band, and then-president of the Savage Nomads, was stabbed. The Ghetto Brothers and the Savage Nomads figured that the Mongols were behind the hits. For weeks, Suarez and Buxton handed out beatings to any with the bad luck to wander near them. Beefs opened up with the Javelins, the Dirty Dozens, and the Turbans.

In November, gang wars seemed to hit a new level across the resegregated borough. “It was catastrophe after catastrophe. If it wasn't Black against Hispanic, it was Black against white,” says Suarez. “Just hate on hate on hate on hate.” The Black Spades and a white confederation of the Golden Guineas and the War Pigs called Ministers Bronx went to war at Stevenson High. The Spades and the Savage Skulls, the largest Black and the largest Puerto Rican gangs in the Bronx, erupted into a rumble at a South Bronx movie theater. There were reports
that heavy artillery was pouring into the streets—handguns, machine guns, even grenades and bombs.
⁹

Social workers urgently pressed for a peace treaty. Working with the gangs of East Tremont, a peace organizer for the Youth Services Agency, Eduardo Vincenty, secured truce commitments from dozens of gangs, including the Javelins, the Peacemakers, the Reapers, the Young Sinners and the Black Spades.
¹⁰

Separately, Suarez and Melendez had been meeting with gang leadership. “I was getting tired of being called in the middle of the night and loading a pistol or bringing down the samurai sword and running down the street to take somebody's head off and don't know if I'm ever gonna see that street again,” says Suarez. They hosted informal Friday gatherings at one of their apartments, sometimes extending invitations to leaders of gangs they were warring with. There would be women, music, spliffs, Suarez says. Then they would turn off the music and talk.

As the wars peaked in November, they convened an emergency summit meeting at Bethesda Fountain in Central Park with leaders from the Skulls, the Nomads, the Roman Kings, the Bachelors, and the Black Spades.
New York Post
columnist Jose Torres praised the gang's efforts, writing, “The ‘Ghetto Brothers' gang is moving in the right direction. They don't believe in bloody confrontations, they don't think that violence is a substitute for persuasion.”
¹¹
But nothing concrete came of either Vincenty's treaty commitments or the Central Park summit. The streets remained tense.

And then, on December 2, word reached the Ghetto Brothers clubhouse that three gangs—the Mongols, the Seven Immortals, and the Black Spades—were in their neighborhood jumping local youths. Melendez sent Cornell Benjamin to mediate. With several Ghetto Brothers tailing him, Black Benjie headed up to Horseshoe Park on 165th and Rogers where the three gangs were massing.

Earlier that day, the Immortals and the Spades had beat down some Roman Kings at the handball courts at John Dwyer Junior High School, sending one to the hospital. The rumor was that the Mongols, the Seven Immortals, and the Spades were now returning down Southern Boulevard for a rumble with the Savage Skulls. As Black Benjie descended the Park's long staircase, the park was filling up with dozens of bangers, wire-taut and waiting for something to happen.

“Listen brothers,” Black Benjie said as he walked into the park, holding up his hands to show he had no weapons, “we're here to talk peace.” The Spades, the
Mongols and the Seven Immortals surrounded Benjie and the Ghetto Brothers. “Peace, shit,” said one of the Immortals, taking out a pipe. Another pulled out a machete. In desperation, a Ghetto Brother whipped out his garrison belt and began swinging it. This was not going to be a day for peace.

“Tip, brothers, tip!” Black Benjie said, and most of the Ghetto Brothers scattered. Then the pipe came crushing down on Black Benjie's head, and he fell to the ground. The gangbangers closed the cipher around him, stomping, cutting and beating him to death.

Hours later, with Black Benjie's body lying in Lincoln Hospital, police patrols quietly circled Dwyer Junior High and reporters descended on the Ghetto Brothers' clubhouse. “What are you going to do?” they asked the gang members, as if they were sniffing blood. “Will you retaliate?”

The Daily News
's headline would read,
PEACEMAKER KILLED IN MELEE. BRONX TEEN WAR
. Dwyer Junior High principal Weinberger told the reporters, “This was bound to come.”

Black Benjie's murder threatened to destabilize the borough, and the future lay in the Ghetto Brothers' hands. They could lead the Bronx into a bloodier war than had ever been imagined, or toward a peace the borough had never seen.

Suarez could not hide his dismay at Black Benjie's weakness. “He just couldn't do what I did, walk into the fire and not get burned,” Suarez says. “He walked into the fire and was consumed immediately.” Suarez called all the division leaders, some as far away as Queens and New Jersey. “We were going to find the presidents and we were going to destroy everybody,” he says.

As the word spread across the borough the afternoon of December 2, many gangs came to the Ghetto Brothers clubhouse, hoping to avoid the GB's wrath. The Turbans came—Vietnam veterans in their throwback black-satin jackets, wearing their floppy berets topped by yellow yarn pom-pom ball, reminiscent of the early 1960s bopping gangs—to bury their beef and pledge their support. Bam Bam, the president of the Spades, personally came to the clubhouse to declare that the Spades had not been involved in the murder and would also join them in a war.

But Melendez was firm that the Ghetto Brothers needed to maintain peace. He recalls, “There were two or three Ghetto Brothers who actually told me, ‘Regardless
of what you say, if you don't declare war we're going to go out there.' I said, ‘Listen brothers, you're not going to go. I'm telling you right now we're not going to lose any more of you guys. When Black Benjie died, he went for peace and if you go out there to declare war, it will make his mission in vain.' ”

Melendez left for the hospital. Suarez prepared for war. In the clubhouse, the Ghetto Brothers stacked guns, knives, machetes, bow-and-arrows, and Molotovs. Then they went out looking for the Seven Immortals and the Mongols. “I was prepared to hurt the one who had hurt one of ours,” Suarez says.

By dusk, the Bronx police had mobilized their special operations teams, and were at a state of high alert. They had arrested a teen Black Spade in connection with Black Benjie's murder. But word on the street had come back to the Ghetto Brothers that the killer was a guy named Julio, a leader of the Seven Immortals. They knew him well. He had once been a Ghetto Brother.

Suarez and the gang returned to the clubhouse empty-handed. But Melendez was there and the spot was crowded with GBs and Roman Kings. Julio and four others, all members of the Seven Immortals and Mongols, had their legs tied and their arms bound behind their backs.

Melendez watched as Suarez took a .45 and pressed the gun to Julio's head, and then put into Julio's mouth. “I'm gonna blow your brains out,” Suarez said. Melendez stepped up and put his finger between the hammer and the bullet.

Suarez and Melendez argued. “You want to save this stupid son of a bitch who killed one of us?”

“We're all ‘one of us.' ”

Finally Suarez wheeled around and kicked Julio. The rest of the clubhouse descended on the Immortals and Mongols and beat them bloody. Then Suarez ended it, pulled the accused up and pushed them out into the winter night.

Later that evening, Suarez and Melendez went to Black Benjie's apartment to comfort Gwendolyn Benjamin, his mother. “Everyone loved Benjie. He was the man,” Suarez told her. “If something's not done all hell is gonna break loose.”

Mrs. Benjamin was clear: “No revenge. Benjie lived for peace.”
¹²

Suarez recalls, “Benjy Melendez and myself sat up that night. He was saying that war was totally crazy. ‘They're still our brothers and sisters. We got to show them by example.' And I said, ‘I don't think I can do that, man.' He said, ‘Charlie, the only way you can beat them is by showing them.' We had to beat them by example and not retaliate and call a peace treaty. All the gangs.”

The next morning, reporters gathered at the Ghetto Brothers clubhouse. Melendez was the designated spokesperson. “All the gangs are waiting for one word—'Fire'—but I'm not going to say it because that won't bring Benjie back,” he said. “I notice you reporters look disappointed because you didn't want to hear that, right? You wanted to hear about these South Bronx savages. But I'm not going to give you the pleasure.”

Suarez recalls that many Ghetto Brothers were angry. “They said we were pussies,” he says. But after Black Benjie was buried in an emotional ceremony, the Ghetto Brothers issued a call for a truce meeting to be held on the evening of December 8 at the Bronx Boys Club, a sanctuary in the heart of the Fort Apache battleground.

And so they came, the Black and brown gangs of the Bronx. The smaller families—the Liberated Panthers, the King Cobras, the Majestic Warlocks, the Ghetto Warriors, the Flying Dutchmen. The hungry ones—the Young Sinners, the Young Cobras, the Young Saints, the Young Saigons, the Roman Kings. The established ones—the Turbans, the Brothers and Sisters, the Latin Aces, the Peacemakers, the Dirty Dozens, the Mongols. And the major families—the Javelins, the Bachelors, the Savage Nomads, the Savage Skulls, the Black Spades, and the Seven Immortals.
¹³

The unprecedented gathering threatened to explode from the accumulated fuel of unresolved slights and unpaid blood debts. Sniper cops perched on the roofs of nearby buildings. Television cameras, photographers and reporters filed into the gym.

The presidents, vice presidents and warlords, including a young Black Spade named Afrika Bambaataa, filled the folding chairs set in a circle in the middle of the gym floor. Social workers, school teachers, and other gang members filled the bleachers. The girl gangs were locked outside in the December freeze.

Inside, the tension was thick. Charlie Suarez, wearing a black beret with a red star, black vest and denims instead of his Ghetto Brothers colors, opened the meeting with a command: “I would like for the police to leave or we got nothing to say.” An undercover cop left to great applause, a momentary release.

Suarez reminded the gang leaders that they were there because Black Benjie
had died for peace, and then opened the floor. Marvin “Hollywood” Harper, a Vietnam vet and a slim Black member of the Savage Skulls sporting a beret and a gray combat shirt under his colors, stepped up. He said, “When I heard about Benjie dying, I told Brother Charlie of the Ghetto Brothers that I would take a life for Benjie. Charlie told me no, so I won't. If the Ghetto Brothers want peace, then there will be peace.”

Then he pointed at the Seven Immortals, the Mongols and the Black Spades, and accused them of attacking his fellow Skulls and taking their colors. He pointed at them and blamed them for the death of Black Benjie. One smirked, “I wasn't there man, I was in court.”

Bam Bam, the leader of the Black Spades, accused the Skulls of invading Spades' turf with shotguns. The meeting was spinning out of control. Gang members stood up in the bleachers, as if they were ready to set something off. Suarez silenced them all with a word, “Peace.”

Hollywood stepped back up to address the Spades. He gestured angrily with his cigarette: “All we did is ask you people for the colors and you people didn't give us our colors back. You don't see us stripping you people, man. You don't see us stripping the Turbans, you don't see us stripping the Ghetto Brothers. You don't see us stripping no other crowd. When we have static, we settle it among ourselves, man, because, like wow, we have to
live
in this district.”

And here the meeting turned. “The whitey don't come down here and live in the fucked-up houses, man,” Hollywood continued, his hands a blur of stabbing motion, his voice a newfound weapon. “The whitey don't come down here, man, and have all the, the fucked-up, fucking no heat in the wintertime. You understand? We do,
jack
, so therefore we got to make it a better place to live.”

The crowd, even the Spades, rose enthusiastically in assent. Hollywood called for an end to rumors, for a step toward peace. “If we don't have peace now, whitey will come in and stomp us,” he shouted.
¹⁴
The gangs roared in agreement, holding up peace signs and Black power salutes.

Bam Bam spoke about dealing with junkies and cops, and the talk turned to how to pressure politicians and change the Bronx. Then Benjy Melendez stepped forward. He looked Black Benjie's killer in the eye. “You took away one of our brothers' lives, man,” Melendez said. “You don't want us to become a gang anymore, right? Because I
know
you. You was up in the meeting and you told me, ‘Benjy I want to get out alive.' ”