Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write a 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: FBI Targets MS-13 Street Gang, 10/05/05
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec05/gangs_10-05.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What is a gang?

2. Why do you think people join gangs?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What group is the FBI targeting? Why?

The FBI has formed a national task force aimed at dismantling street gangs and has focused attention on the MS-13 gang, which federal investigators say rivals the infamous Crips and Bloods.

2. What is the MS-13 situation in Northern Virginia?

In Northern Virginia, where police estimate there are over 2,000 members, a 17-year-old Herndon High School student was stabbed to death by an MS-13 gang member who pled guilty to the crime.

"They're cutting off people's heads, they're cutting off their fingers, they're cutting off their arms," said Virginia Congressman J. Randy Forbes.

3. Who are the MS-13? Where do they come from? What does their name mean?

The gang MS-13, which stands for Mara Salvatrucha, is a mainly Central American gang whose original members arrived in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. in the 1980s after 1 million people fled a vicious civil war in El Salvador.

In Los Angeles, the refugees flocked to an established Hispanic neighborhood known as the "Rampart." But the area's predominantly Mexican population did not welcome the Salvadorans and subjected them to discrimination and the abuses of local gangs.

In response, refugees with paramilitary or guerilla experience from their days in El Salvador banded together to form the Mara Salvatrucha gang. The gang's name is derived from the Spanish word for army ant, marabunta, and Salvatrucho, which is the nickname Salvadorans use to refer to themselves.

4. According to the article, why do some believe this gang is so violent?

"Most of these members coming from the war-torn countries where, you know, killing was a regular occurrence -- violence, beating people up, stabbing people, seeing people die. I mean, they were desensitized. So, when it came time for them to deal with rival gang members, I mean, their readiness to commit a violent act was nothing; it was second nature," officer Frank Flores, a member of an anti-gang unit of the L.A. Police Department, told the NewsHour.

5. How many MS-13 members are in the United States? What are they accused of doing?

The FBI estimates that MS-13 has as many as 10,000 active members dispersed in 33 states and Washington, D.C. Members have been accused of burglaries, drug sales, weapons smuggling, extortion, illegal firearm sales, auto thefts, murder and rape.

6. How has the U.S. government responded to this gang threat?

To combat the MS-13 threat, the federal government has initiated a nationwide campaign called Operation Community Shield, part of the Department of Homeland Security's anti-gang program.

So far in 2005, immigration and customs officers have arrested 1,057 suspected gangsters.

Congress also has begun working on legislation to make gang crimes federal offenses with mandatory minimum sentences, after rumors surfaced that MS-13 may have had connections to al-Qaida.

7. How have Central American governments responded to the MS-13 gang?

MS-13 gang members deported from the United States are now in Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.

Those who return to El Salvador face a grim future. The official government policy of President Elias Antonio Saca is "super mano dura," or super hard hand.

The national police force includes heavily armed soldiers, and the government imprisons any person found with gang-related tattoos, even if they are not caught participating in criminal activity.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Why do you think people join gangs? Are there gangs in your community? If yes, how do they impact your daily lives?

2. Do you agree with the U.S. government's response to gang activity? Why or why not?

3. According to the article, many of the MS-13 members are more likely to respond to conflict with violence because they come from places where violence occurred often. What do you know about the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s? What has happened since then? What is the country like now?

Write a 300-500 word essay on either of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.