Prisoners of the ghetto

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Description

A brilliant film that powerfully portrays the difficult and dangerous life in the black ghettos of San Francisco. At 14, Shawn Richard was a gun-toting leader of a teenage gang dealing in drugs on the streets of San Francisco. ""When you have money in your pocket, you always want more,"" he confessed. His story is that of many kids in America's black ghettos, in which dozens of people are mown down by gunfire every year. The victims are usually black and poor. The US media spotlights the violence, spurring calls for ever more repressive laws. Meanwhile, gangs carry on slaying their rivals in a merciless, meaningless orgy of violence. ""When they killed my brother, I saw it had to stop,"" says Shawn. Today he runs an NGO--""Brothers against Guns""--, which is supported by San Francisco's Mayor. He gives a civics course to local kids. He teaches them how to ask for a Social Security number, how to fill out a job application and other stuff they never learnt on the streets.