Gangs are a form proletarian self-organization takes among people who have been deemed "surplus populations" and don't have access to traditional labor marketplaces. They are what unions look like outside the possibility of direct capitalist investment. Like unions, they bring

jobs, money, economic organization and a sense of belonging and communal identity. However, since they must do this through black markets, they can also bring a tremendous amount of state pressure (which, since it doesn't have a capitalist to worry about, can repress fully) not

to mention the social violence they are most associated with. Like unions, they mostly function as a reactionary intermediary force between proles and state and capital, managing and disciplining their forces on behalf of capitalist production. Also like unions, however, since

they are organizations mostly made of proles, in certain moments they can aid or accelerate rebellion and provide insurrectionary organization and power (this was most clear in the LA riots of 92) as well as act as mediating anti-riot repressive forces (like in Baltimore 2015)

There's a good portion of a chapter in my book about the LA riots and the role of gangs (and their post riot repression and disorganization by the state) which I hope helps us not have shitty "pro" or "anti" gang discourse in the future, that doesn't imagine they are all the same