Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs

Criminology ◽  
2021 ◽  

Outlaw motorcycle clubs (OMCs), also referred to as outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMCGs), such as the iconic Hells Angels MC, emerged as a subculture after World War II in the United States, being attractive to a number of veterans. The clubs were originally outlaws from the motorcycle club community rather than the law. The “1%” patch that distinguishes these clubs as outlaw motorcycle clubs dates back to the infamous Hollister riot in 1947 during the Annual Gypsy Tour motorcycle rally organized by the American Motorcycle Association (AMA), following which AMA is said to have stated that 99 percent of motorcyclists were law-abiding and that the riot was caused by the 1 percent of deviant law-breakers. The AMA has denied this statement, but the 1% patch has since been worn as a badge of honor, and outlaw motorcycle clubs came to be known as “One Percenters.” The subculture grew over the following decades, as clubs established chapters in new localities in the United States and in the 1960s began their transnational expansion, which accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. Simultaneously, they became a powerful figment of popular culture and have ever since straddled the fine line between fact and fiction, reinforcing their “power mystique.” The most influential outlaw motorcycle clubs, such as Hells Angels MC, Outlaws MC, and Bandidos MC, have morphed into strong transnational organizations, counting thousands of members worldwide. These clubs have, through skillful self-commodification and branding, inspired the global growth of the 1% subculture and a worldwide proliferation of outlaw motorcycle clubs with the same organizational structures, laws and by-laws, core values, and marks of distinction: the three-piece patches consisting of a club logo, top rocker with the name of the club, and bottom rocker with location, along with the 1% patch. OMCs have been connected to a broad specter of illegal and criminal activities and are considered organized crime groups by law enforcement agencies worldwide. Considerable resources are channeled into the fight against these groups. Despite the size of the phenomenon, criminological research on outlaw motorcycle clubs has been limited and is still dominated by studies from United States, New Zealand, and Australia, albeit growing recently in Europe. This bibliography includes references to key works from criminology and related disciplines, such as anthropology of crime, as well as literature concerned with the policing of OMCs. While there are numerous accounts of OMC life written by (ex-)members and undercover agents that can be of interest to researchers, this bibliography summarizes only high-quality research.

Author(s):  
Keith L. Camacho

This chapter examines the creation and contestation of Japanese commemorations of World War II in the Mariana Islands. As an archipelago colonized by Japan and the United States, the Mariana Islands have become a site through which war memories have developed in distinct and shared ways. With respect to Japanese commemorations, the analysis demonstrates why and how they inform and are informed by Chamorro and American remembrances of the war in the Mariana Islands. By analyzing government, media, and tourist accounts of the war from the 1960s to the present, I thus show how we can gain an understanding and appreciation for the complex ways by which Japanese of various generations reckon with a violent past.


2021 ◽  
pp. 323-350
Author(s):  
Jon D. Wisman

The United States was an anomaly, beginning without clear class distinctions and with substantial egalitarian sentiment. Inexpensive land meant workers who were not enslaved were relatively free. However, as the frontier closed and industrialization took off after the Civil War, inequality soared and workers increasingly lost control over their workplaces. Worker agitation led to improved living standards, but gains were limited by the persuasiveness of the elite’s ideology. The hardships of the Great Depression, however, significantly delegitimated the elite’s ideology, resulting in substantially decreased inequality between the 1930s and 1970s. Robust economic growth following World War II and workers’ greater political power permitted unparalleled improvements in working-class living standards. By the 1960s, for the first time in history, a generation came of age without fear of dire material privation, generating among many of the young a dramatic change in values and attitudes, privileging social justice and self-realization over material concerns.


2017 ◽  
Vol 83 (11) ◽  
pp. 1193-1202 ◽  
Author(s):  
David V. Feliciano

Although abdominal trauma has been described since antiquity, formal laparotomies for trauma were not performed until the 1800s. Even with the introduction of general anesthesia in the United States during the years 1842 to 1846, laparotomies for abdominal trauma were not performed during the Civil War. The first laparotomy for an abdominal gunshot wound in the United States was finally performed in New York City in 1884. An aggressive operative approach to all forms of abdominal trauma till the establishment of formal trauma centers (where data were analyzed) resulted in extraordinarily high rates of nontherapeutic laparotomies from the 1880s to the 1960s. More selective operative approaches to patients with abdominal stab wounds (1960s), blunt trauma (1970s), and gunshot wounds (1990s) were then developed. Current adjuncts to the diagnosis of abdominal trauma when serial physical examinations are unreliable include the following: 1) diagnostic peritoneal tap/lavage, 2) surgeon-performed ultrasound examination; 3) contrast-enhanced CT of the abdomen and pelvis; and 4) diagnostic laparoscopy. Operative techniques for injuries to the liver, spleen, duodenum, and pancreas have been refined considerably since World War II. These need to be emphasized repeatedly in an era when fewer patients undergo laparotomy for abdominal trauma. Finally, abdominal trauma damage control is a valuable operative approach in patients with physiologic exhaustion and multiple injuries.


ASKETIK ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anjar Sri Wahyuni

The American state that it became the object of the first Islamic da'wah in about 1875, from what was then known as Greater Syria (Great Syria [now includes Syria itself, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine]) until the end of World War I. Followed by a second wave, in the 1920s to then be stopped because of World War II. Immigration laws in this period are rather limiting. Only black or Caucasian people can enter the United States. Arabs are considered not to fall into the two categories. While the third wave, between the mid-1940s and mid-1960s took place along with the occurrence of important changes outside the United States. Muslims who enter the US in this category are more educated. Most of them migrated because of political oppression. At the same time, especially in the 1960s various changes took place in US immigration policy. The job market is expanding and the country needs potential immigrants to fill the posts. Here ethnic or racial boundaries are loosened. Then the fourth wave, lasting about 1967 and still going on until now. They are generally very fluid and fluent in English. Their immigration is in place for various reasons such as for the improvement of professional ability and avoiding Government oppression. They also have the intention to settle or preach Islam in this Country. And the fifth wave started from 1967 until now. Those who came to America in this wave, in addition to economic reasons, political factors are also the main reasons that encourage them to migrate. There are some proofs that Islam came to America long before Columbus and the West.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Davina Shanti

Organized crime is often associated with traditional criminal groups, such as the mafia or outlaw motorcycle gangs; however, new research suggests that cybercrime is emerging as a new branch of organized crime. This paper is focused on the changing nature of organized crime and the factors that influence this shift, particularly in the online space. It will address the question: Can the law identify cybercrime as organized crime? The results of this paper are informed by an in-depth analysis of peer-reviewed articles from Canada, the United States (US), and Europe. This paper concludes that cybercrime groups are structured and operate similarly to traditional organized crime groups and should, therefore, be classified as a part of traditional organized crime; however, cybercrime groups are capable of conducting illicit activities that surpass those typically associated with traditional organized crime. This shift suggests that these groups may represent a larger threat creating a new challenge for law enforcement agencies.


Author(s):  
Stephanie Hinnershitz

After World War II and through the 1960s, Asian Americans began a transformative process, from being the “yellow peril” to becoming the model minority, and Asian Americans in the South experienced, to some degree, the same transformation. The war and its mottos of fighting for freedom and democracy at home and abroad affected the way Americans viewed their own hypocrisy toward minorities in the United States. African Americans were the largest minority group to use the aims of the war to demand attention to their plight with Jim Crow, prompting the growth of a nationwide civil rights movement, but Americans also came to view the century-old forms of legal discrimination against Asian immigrants and Asian Americans in a new light. Not only did Congress repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 (making it legal for some Chinese to naturalize and allowing a small number of Chinese immigrants to enter the United States), but Filipino Americans and Indian Americans received similar treatment during and after World War II. In 1952, the McCarran-Walter Act (or the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952), although designed to protect American security during the early Cold War by prohibiting and deporting subversive aliens, also made it possible for Asian immigrants of all ethnicities to become American citizens (while the number of Asians admitted to the United States did not drastically increase). Americans also viewed the ability of Japanese Americans to overcome the massive civil rights violations of wartime imprisonment and achieve economic and educational success as a model for all minorities to follow. Asian Americans came through the fires of World War II and proved that they were loyal Americans and deserving of equal treatment and respect, and while more subtle and sometimes not so subtle forms of racism and discrimination ...


2019 ◽  
pp. 346-353
Author(s):  
David Sorkin

This chapter looks at how the Great Migration from eastern Europe made the United States a center of world Jewry. The Nazis' murder of most of European Jewry magnified that status. While the migrants and their children were citizens, their rights were restricted. Thus, in the period after World War II, American Jewry's civil defense organizations engaged in a concerted emancipation campaign. Jews collaborated with African Americans, Catholics, and other minorities to end inequality. That campaign succeeded: from the 1940s to the 1960s, state and federal civil rights laws, and court rulings prohibiting discrimination, dismantled the structure of inequality. Those events constituted American Jews' second emancipation: it positioned the immigrant's children and grandchildren to realize the promise of American equality.


2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 459-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Gribbe ◽  
Olof Hallonsten

The cross-disciplinary field of materials science emerged and grew to prominence in the second half of the twentieth century, drawing theoretical and experimental strength from the rapid progress in several natural sciences disciplines and connecting to many industrial applications. In this article, we chronicle and analyze how materials science established itself in Swedish universities in the 1960s and after. We build on previous historical accounts of the growth of materials science elsewhere, especially in the United States, and the conceptual guidance that these studies offer. We account for the emergence and growth of materials science in Sweden from the early influences brought back by academics from postdoc stays in the United States, through the creation of the first funding programs in the late 1970s, to the breakthrough of materials science in Sweden in the 1990s and its growth to a true area of strength and priority in Swedish science today. In line with previous studies, we highlight the role of funding agencies, providing the means for new cross-disciplinary activities across and between traditional disciplinary structures, and the role of new instrumentation, providing new experimental opportunities and uniting disciplinarily disparate research activities around common goals, as crucial in the process. Also, the role of entrepreneurially minded individuals is evident in the story: materials science was developed in Sweden largely by a new generation of scientists who established new activities within existing organizational structures, and thus accomplished long-term institutional change in a well-established field and system.


Author(s):  
Paul R. Mullins

In the 1960s Edward J. Zebrowski turned the razing of Indianapolis, Indiana into a compelling show of forward-looking community optimism illuminating the power of displacement. When Zebrowski’s company toppled the Knights of Pythias Hall in 1967, for instance, he installed bleachers and hired an organist to play from the back of a truck as the twelve-storey Romanesque Revival structure was reduced to rubble. Two years later, the ‘Big Z’ hosted a party in the Claypool Hotel and ushered guests outside at midnight to watch as the floodlit building met its end at the wrecking ball (Figure 12.1). Zebrowski’s theatricality perhaps distinguished him from the scores of wrecking balls dismantling American cities, but his celebration of the city’s material transformation mirrored the sentiments of many urbanites in the wake of World War II. The post-war period was punctuated by a flurry of destruction and idealistic redevelopment in American cities like Indianapolis just as the international landscape was being rebuilt from the ruins of the war. In 1959 the New York Times’ Austin Wehrwein (1959: 61) assessed the University of Chicago’s massive displacement in Hyde Park and drew a prescient parallel to post-war Europe when he indicated that ‘wrecking crews have cleared large tracts, so that areas near the university resemble German cities just after World War II’. Indeed, much of Europe was distinguished less by ruins and redevelopment than demolition and emptied landscapes removing the traces of warfare that states wished to reclaim or efface; in the United States, urban renewal likewise took aim on impractical, unappealing, or otherwise unpleasant urban fabric and the people who called such places home (see also Ernsten, Chapter 10, for this process associated with the policies of apartheid in Cape Town). These global projects removed wartime debris and razed deteriorating prewar landscapes, extending interwar urban renewal projects that embraced the fantasy of a ‘blank slate’ as they built various unevenly executed imaginations of modernity. However, many optimistic development plans in Europe and the United States alike were abandoned or disintegrated into ruins themselves, simply leaving blank spaces on the landscape. Consequently, the legacy of urban renewal and post-war reconstruction is not simply modernist architecture; instead, post-war landscape transformation is signalled by distinctive absences dispersed amidst post-war architectural space and traces of earlier built environments.


Author(s):  
Steven Rybin ◽  
Will Scheibel

Nicholas Ray (1911–1979), the director of Rebel Without a Cause, Johnny Guitar, In a Lonely Place, and other Hollywood films from 1947 to 1958, came to filmmaking with a diverse artistic background from the 1930s. As a student of architecture, he was an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, and as an actor, he was a member of the socialist-leaning New York City acting company the Theatre of Action, which associated with the Group Theatre. He also served in various New Deal agencies—the Works Progress Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Resettlement Administration, and the Office of War Information—that immersed him in American folk culture before moving to Hollywood. In cinema studies, he is best known as the American test case for auteurist film criticism. Discovered by the French critics at Cahiers du Cinéma after World War II, Ray was celebrated as an auteur, a director with a consistent signature style and personal vision who (like an author) is understood to be the single force of control that structures the entire film. Yet, at the mercy of producers and executives, he also worked within classical studio and genre systems and was generally unknown or ignored in the United States at this time. After directing his final studio film, Party Girl, in 1958, Ray spent the late 1950s and 1960s outside of Hollywood, helming a series of international co-productions. Throughout the 1960s, he would struggle to finance projects independently; his unrealized efforts during this period include an adaptation of the Dylan Thomas story The Doctor and the Devils and a film about the trial of the Chicago Seven. Ray spent much of the 1960s outside of the United States, attending retrospectives of his work, living in Paris during the student protests of 1968, and attempting to put together production deals. In the 1970s, Ray returned to America, eventually taking a job as a film professor at Harpur College at Binghamton University, State University of New York. With his students, Ray would embark on his ambitious final project, a multi-image experimental film entitled We Can’t Go Home Again. The film would remain unfinished at the time of the director’s death, but in 2011, it was restored by his widow, Susan Ray. While underappreciated by critics in America during his career in the 1950s, the critical studies referenced below demonstrate the ongoing importance of Ray’s films to cinema scholars.


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