What makes someone gangster

The first gangsters were not African-American, they were Italian. Al Capone was a gangster. Tony Soprano is a gangster. Ja Rule is NOT a gangster. Of early 's decent, A Gangster-is an Italian, Irish,or Russian decent of european persons that use extortion , murder, prostitution and the sale of illegal substances in order to create wealth and power.

Buy a ticket to one movie, but see two or three. Movie hopping earns you oodles of street cred. If you drop that sh-t, oh well! Cracked screens are the third most common way to identify a gangster. Untied shoelaces and inner wrist tattoos are first and second. Next time your landlord tries to collect rent, throw a DVD copy of Rent the musical at him. Except for their Mom.

And Dad. And siblings. Maybe your friends too, but only the real close ones. If the prospects became made men, individual disagreements could grow into violent wars between families. Families use a variety of activities to accomplish the Mafia's main goal of making money. One of the most common is one of the simplest: extortion. Extortion is forcing people to pay money by threatening them in some way.

Mafia "protection rackets" are extortion schemes. The twist is that the Mafia members themselves are the criminals who threaten the business. The Mafia has made money through a wide variety of illegal activities over the years. Mobsters have dealt in alcohol during Prohibition, illegal drugs, prostitution and illegal gambling, to name a few. Sometimes, burglaries and muggings generate income, but the capos know that their activities need a grander scale to ensure maximum profit.

That's why they hijack trucks and unload entire shipments of stolen goods. Another method used by Mafioso is to pay off truck drivers or dock workers to "misplace" crates and shipments that later end up in Mafia hands. The stolen goods could be anything from stereo equipment to clothing a favorite of John Gotti early in his career. One of the most notorious Mafia schemes was the infiltration of labor unions.

For several decades, it is believed that every major construction project in New York City was controlled by the Mafia. Mobsters paid off or threatened union leaders to get a piece of the action whenever a union group got a construction job, and they sometimes made their way into the ranks of union leadership. Once the Mafia had its grip on a union, it could control an entire industry.

Mafioso could get workers to slow or halt construction if contractors or developers didn't make the right payoffs, and they had access to huge union pension funds. At one point, the Mafia could have brought nearly all construction and shipping in the United States to a halt.

In the last few decades, the federal government has cracked down on Mafia-union connections to a great extent. The current structure of the Mafia took centuries to develop. To learn about the history of the Mafia and to see how law enforcement has dealt with organized crime over the years, read on.

It began on the island of Sicily. Although there are major organized crime groups from other parts of Italy, the Sicilian Mafia is generally considered to be the godfather of all other Mafia organizations. Several unique factors contributed to the development of organized crime in Sicily. The island is located at an easily accessible and strategically important place in the Mediterranean Sea.

As a result, Sicily was invaded, conquered and occupied by hostile forces many times. This led to an overall distrust of central authority.

The family, rather than the state , became the focus of Sicilian life, and disputes were settled through a system in which punishment often went beyond the limits of the law. In the 19th century, the European feudal system finally collapsed in Sicily.

With no real government or functioning authority of any kind, the island quickly descended into lawlessness. Certain landowners and other powerful men began to build reputations and eventually came to be seen as local leaders.

They were known as capos. The capos used their power to extract tributes from farmers under their authority much like the feudal lords before them. Their authority was enforced through the threat of violence.

Their criminal activities were never reported, even by the victims, because of the fear of reprisal. This was the beginning of the Sicilian Mafia.

Several elements of Mafia life that have lasted for centuries first developed during the transition from a feudal to a modern form of government in Sicily. The phrase cosa nostra — "our way," or " this thing of ours " — was used to describe the lifestyle of a Mafioso in Sicily.

The shroud of secrecy that surrounded Mafia activities in Sicily became known as omerta , the code of silence. Mafia bosses relied on this code — in which no one spoke about Mafia activities to anyone outside the family — to protect themselves and the family from the law. The practice of recruiting young boys into the Mafia, culminating with a final test, also stems from Sicily.

In the early s, organized crime had so thoroughly infiltrated Sicilian life that it was virtually impossible to avoid contact with the Mafia. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini cracked down on the Mafia using harsh, often brutal methods. But when U. Before long, the Mafia had a firm grasp on Italy's Christian Democrat party.

In the postwar years, the various competing Sicilian families realized that their constant fighting was costing them money. They called a ceasefire and formed a group called the cupola that would oversee the operations of all the families and approve all major enterprises and assassinations. A similar system would be put in place by the American families in the s. While these committees succeeded in stifling gang wars for a time, they also left the bosses vulnerable to prosecution because with the cupola in place, bosses personally approved murders.

The fight against the Sicilian Mafia in Italy came to a head in the s. Two very prominent government prosecutors who had done a lot of damage to the Mafia were assassinated in bombings. The Italian public was outraged, and the government eventually responded with the so-called Maxi trial. More than Mafioso were tried in a specially built bunker. Large cells in the back of the courtroom held the defendants, who would often scream and threaten witnesses as the trial went on. Ultimately, were found guilty, and 19 sentenced to life in prison.

This wasn't enough to stamp out Sicily's Mafia, however. In , the Italian government sent 7, military troops to Sicily. They occupied the island until The Sicilian Mafia still exists today and is still active, but it is quieter and less violent.

Nevertheless, the article mentioned that many Sicilians still turn to the Mafia to "recover stolen goods, claim unpaid debts and manage economic competition. In its place, another mob, the 'Ndrangheta syndicate , has emerged. In early , Italian authorities brought charges against people associated with the Calabria-based organization, which has used billions of dollars made from the drug trade to expand its operation into Europe, Australia, North and South America, and Africa.

Sicilians and other Italians began immigrating to the United States in the s, but a major wave of them arrived on American shores early in the 20th century. While the vast majority worked hard at building a new life for their family through legal means, some of them brought the ways of the Sicilian Mafia with them.

Anti-Italian sentiment, much of it growing from resentment of the Mafia, was at its peak in the late s. In New Orleans in , a Sicilian crime family was pressured by the local chief of police, who was then murdered. After the mobsters were tried and acquitted, a lynch mob went to the jailhouse.

The mob shot or hanged 11 men. Mafia families spread through the country in the first half of the 20th century, emanating from New York City, where five families vied for control.

The era of Prohibition was a huge money-maker for the Mafia , which sold illegal alcohol in speakeasies around the country. The Mafia's power during this period grew exponentially, and wars between the families broke out. There was an epidemic of Mafia violence in the early s — bosses and underbosses were assassinated regularly, with few bosses ruling their families for more than a few months before they were killed.

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