Profile: John Hagedorn

November 22, 2000 By Lisa Stodder

URBAN ROMANTIC

"I've been a Milwaukee boy all my life," claims John Hagedorn, associate professor of criminal justice and director of the Kenneth B. Clark Center for the Study of Violence in Communities. This will mark his fifth year of commuting.

BAD OLD DAYS

"I come very late to the academy. I did many things before I came to the university." Hagedorn, who received his Ph.D. in urban studies in 1993 from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, dropped out of college in the '60s to join political movements related to draft resistance and civil rights. Though born in Milwaukee, he grew up in Clintonville, population 4,500. He returned to Milwaukee for college. "Milwaukee was an eye-opening experience -- to come to the city to see how entrenched the opposition was to basic human rights. I think that it really shaped my life."

He burned his draft card, dropped out of college and didn't return till the '80s. "My father was a bombardier in World War II. He was horrified by the destruction of innocent human life and taught me to hate war -- one of the few healthy uses of the emotion of hate. "My father's family was from a socialist party in Milwaukee, but then again, just about all Germans in Milwaukee were socialists. "My great-grandparents on both sides left Germany during Bismarck's militarization and reunification. They left rather than be drafted. So I came from a long line of draft dodgers."

Hagedorn has multiple felony convictions to show for his activism. His first arrest occurred while marching for open housing laws in Milwaukee. "We marched for 120 straight days. A mob of 10,000 white people attacked us. The result was that the mayor said it was illegal for us to march."

OUR GANG

He has two young kids, Jess, 7, and Zach, 9, with whom he loves to read and watch Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers. He has three children from a previous marriage -- Marty, Katie and Tracey. His second wife, Mary Devitt, is a poet -- with whom he's "madly in love." She has a daughter, Bryna, by a previous marriage. When everyone finally goes to bed, Hagedorn's idea of fun is to set up his Web site from "midnight to 3."

RESEARCH

His laboratories are cities, where he studies gangs. The last time he wore a three-piece suit was for a gang diversion program in Milwaukee. "The gang kids needed to see that someone from that other world was on their side. I wore that three-piece suit every day for almost two years." He contends that drug dealing, like other business ventures, replicates free market patterns. His Web site, http://gangresearch.net is aimed at "getting away from all the sensational schlock" expressed in the media. He defines gangs as "the conscious product of young people organizing their lives on the streets." "Gangs are sensationalized and made to look like crazed animals. Gang members both resent the distortions, but also respond to media images, like everyone else does."

GANG ECONOMICS

Hagedorn's books include Female Gangs in America: Essays on Girls, Gangs and Gender, coedited with Meda Chesney-Lind (Lakeview Press, 1999) and People and Folks: Gangs, Crime and the Underclass in a Rustbelt City (Lakeview Press, 1998). The latter, in its second edition, documents the transformation of the gangs into an economic organization. "For a young kid with very little formal chances in the legal economy, it's exciting. They'd like to settle down, but they don't have the skills. It's a huge economic force in poor communities. "The question of what happens when they get older has informed all my work." Hagedorn's ideas about gangs stirred up the mayor of Milwaukee, who called Hagedorn's ideas something that might be expected from "a drug-addled brain." But Hagedorn would argue that his ideas are nothing new -- gangs as a business date back to 1968, when the Vice Lords presented a report to the public, documenting their annual budget of salaries and expenses for Conservative Vice Lord, Inc. The Rockefeller Foundation had given them $15,000 to support the gang's legal business ventures and poverty programs. The foundation didn't intend that the money be used for illegal gang activities. "People today don't know what happened. Kids in gangs today don't know any of this stuff either."

HISTORY OF GANGS

To redress the balance, Hagedorn organized a Gangs in Chicago symposium Nov. 9. About 185 people turned out. "The undergraduate research conference was well attended, because it's a fact that a lot of undergrads grew up around gangs. "The students in my courses may think at the start of the semester, 'Oh, this white guy.' But halfway through the course they say, 'Hmm, he may know a thing or two.' Afterwards, they'd come and talk to me. "I've met so many people in gangs who should write their own stories. There's an old tradition in sociology called personal documents and we've gotten away from that. People have stories. "The fact that there's another history, what happened with the Blackstone Rangers or the Vice Lords -- that's all forgotten."