Re gangs, colors, cities, and belief systems:

The discussion has conflated two concepts, the reality of gang mayhem and moral panic over gang infiltration of the hinterland. Daughter1 taught English and Bio in a children’s jail in a remote Alabama county. (The gangbangers didn’t ‘get’Jane Austen, but a curriculum is a curriculum.) The authorities were so freaked by gang influence, mostly MS-13, that any textbook in which a kid made any kind of mark was destroyed. Her experience underlines several likely points.

Little old ladies shopping in Talladega are not going to be killed for their fashion sense.

Once powerful international gangs are likely to operate anywhere in this country where poultry is processed.

Anything Anglo authorities think they know about the inner workings of gangs is incorrect/obsolete.

Somebody somewhere was probably killed for wearing the wrong colors.

It’s a bitch to teach the subjunctive to kids on suicide watch.