Membership. Brotherhood. Family. Is this not what we want to belong to here when we pledge our lives to a family?

Anathema let out a sigh, after the day she had witnessed, this was one thing that stuck in her craw.

It has been with great sadness that I address you today, having noticed a few of our mafiosa die without family surrounding them. No, I don't mean the recent dead from Philly in the takedown of their city, although may God rest their souls.

I mean those people who have been dropped from their crews during this time. People of rank, let go, in absentia. Only to be killed, without their family name over their heads. Nothing to mark where they were or what they achieved. Did they do something wrong to deserve dying without a name over their heads? Had they not earned their spot? 

Letting out another heavy sigh Anathema continued.

I cannot speak for the reasoning behind dropping a member from a crew and letting them float up the river without acknowledgement of where they had been but I have to say, I find it highly disrespectful to the person that was evicted and killed. How does that look to their kin?

I wonder how my family would feel if that happened to me. I would like to think that my boss had enough respect for me that if I needed to be put to death, that at the very least I could carry my family name with me, rather than be discarded like a no name cunt. 

Anathema quiets and ponders for a second.

Even if I had been a cunt, (which I frequently try to be) it would be preferable to me to think my boss would at the very least kill me with my family name and make an example of me, if that's how it needed to be.

Shaking her head with a perplexed look on her face, Anathema looked out at the few people before her.

What do you think? You got any feelings on this? Am I alone in my thinking?

Axel shuffled along from an earlier discussion. He was always about, maybe a little too much. He did need to take a shit and have a shower, so he figured this would be the last appearance for the day. His driver also wanted to get moving. The sound of a tooting horn reminded Axel the car was parked and the engine still running. 

Trying to hurry but also add his input, Axel approached and gave his thoughts on the matter.

"I think if someone has disgraced themselves and their organization by their actions, or words, or whatever, then removing the family ink and anything linking the two, even as an outsider, would be fine. Even if they had done a ton for the group they worked with, a man or woman should be judged by their most recent actions, or words."

The car horn tooted again, which prompted Axel to turn and hold up his hand in a 'wait' hand signal, before re-focusing and continuing.

"If that wasn't the case, then I'm not sure why someone would go to such an extent to wash their hands of any connections, and I would be very unhappy to hear a friend or associate had been dealt with in the way you're saying. I would see the group that they were working with as a group that doesn't respect their peers, and their own. I'd be even more unhappy and even afraid, if I were someone still working for and amongst those men and women."

Axel felt the pressure to leave, yet also remembered he had a strong backhand and his driver would be a good option to practice on. He hadn't unleashed it in a good while, so the opportunity to do so changed his hurried state to one of not giving a fuck. He withdrew a small tin, took out of it a cigarette then sparked it. Axel took a puff and kept his place at the discussion, interested to hear what others also had to say.

Anathema, I'm happy you brought this up as I've wondered about this often myself. I kept from addressing the matter in public as I never was fully convinced of the importance to the greater audience. But your claim that it's disrespectful, or atleast questionable, to remove all family ties is something I agree with. 

When headquarters are almost or fully filled to capacity, but fresh and active recruits are knocking on the door it can be tempting for leadership to swap out the less involved members and let in new talent. Being true to context, none of this is really honourable, but taking into account the practicalities of our world this happens and makes sense. Usually a member gets taken care of efficiently, but there can be times were the efficient people aren't in the right place to take care of it and  either less capable people mess up, making the victim flee. At this point, simply breaking the family ties and cleaning out the personal items is the quickest way to make room for a new recruit.

So in the end the mix of time, location and perhaps bad luck make that a different approach is taken and family ties get cut. Some families might even try to hide a negative imagine, but that would be shortsighted. In general, I assume it's because of the aforementioned things.

That said, it still looks unprofessional. Suddenly there are gangster roaming the streets, who apparently aren't affiliated with a family anymore, but are sporting the family colours and tags. It can lead to confusion and unnecessary questions within other families. Other than this, there are very few cases where a family needs to act this fast. Due to the nature of civilian protection laws or Mafia initiated protection orders, time is rarely an issue when recruiting new members. If time is an issue, a family didn't really get the point across that they are the best fit. If a readily available bed is the reason a person choses for a family, I would question if that's really the best pick for a new associate.

So I can understand why happens what you witness, but I think it's wrong that it happens.

"This is something that I hate with a passion, it really irks me that some feel the need to do this, it is disrespectful to those who have earned their rank and shows what little a crewleader thinks of their members.

I had noticed more than a few times, more so in the last fourty eight hours that those of a Made Man rank and higher are often dropped from their crews and then had a bullet placed in them. What is the point in that? It is complete disrespectful to that person who has been met with a bullet, they earned their way up the ranks to achieve the rank they have and deserve more than the shitty way out of live, they deserve respect.

You accepted them as part of the family, for reasons that you felt they had earned. What do these people gain from dropping and shooting? Absolutely nothing. The crewleader should be a little disgusted with themselves that they have shown no respect towards their members for this action. I would never dream of dropping someone so I could shoot them just to avoid being seen at the avenue or coffee shops. Even if this is so, and they wish not to draw attention to themselves, to me they in fact draw more attention to themselves when we see someone of rank die with no family affiliation, even more so when they are still found dead with certain tags that belong to certain crews.

Trying to see things from the crewleaders view without thinking about how much this irks me is very hard to do, I can't possibly see a reason why they would want to disrespect their member like that, when they'd done nothing wrong except be lazy an stay in bed for days and sometimes weeks on end.

I see no positives for this sort of action, only negatives, and whilst I know I sound rude as hell, I mean no disrespect to the crewleaders who do this, just the action. I would very much welcome a crewleader to come out here and explain why they would drop their members before shooting so they are no longer tied to them, or even why they wouldn't."

Olympia stands up and faces the group that had gathered. She cleared her throat and said, "Well.. Since this is mostly pointed at me, I feel I should speak up."

She made eye contact with each person briefly before starting, "Yesterday I made some really stupid decisions that shined a very bad light on me as a Crew Leader. And I understand that. At that time, when I should have been thinking things through completely, I made brash decisions and wrong choices, and that isn't something that I will be able to take back of course. I can just apologize to the kin of the people that I removed wrongly from my crew, and to the people that I disappointed, and hope that I will be allowed to work back up from this."

She paused to take a deep breath before saying, "So my apologies to everyone that is disappointed in me and the decisions I made, and my apologies to the kin of the two members of my crew that I dropped, disrespected and killed.. I should have made smart decisions but instead, I didn't. This is on me, so I can't put blame on anyone. Just myself for how stupid I was yesterday. I know this won't fix anything but at least I tried. Thank you guys for listening, and for bringing it up and putting shame to the choices I made. I deserve that afterall."