Powerful Words

In the reading skill development textbook (John Langan, Ten Steps to Advancing College Reading Skills) is a story about Julia Burney, who so loved books that she created a program, Cops ‘n Kids, in Racine, Wisconsin that earned her one of Oprah Winfrey’s “Use Your Life” awards. In the narrative, Julia is quoted as saying, “… these kids … can’t aspire to be something that they’ve never seen.”

Those words are humming through my mind this morning after being awakened earlier with what seemed like an endless stream of police vehicles traveling code 3 on the main road through town. This morning, news reports confirm that there was a “group,” deliberately avoiding the use of the word “gang,” gathered at 1:30 AM. Shots were fired and at least 5 victims were still at the scene when law enforcement arrived, but the rest of the “group,” estimated to be about 100 people, scattered into the desert. One reader’s on-line comment indicates, however, that there are more victims coming out of hiding and finding their way to the ERs in the desert for treatment of their wounds.

[UPDATE: It is now a gang-related incident; however, many of the victims either went home or to other locations to regroup, so victims are still coming forth. About 6 dozen various law enforcement vehicles (etc) were at the primary scene, which is still being processed.]

What dismays me is that this shooting, according to the news reports, occurred in a field on the other side of a local middle school. No matter what the lesson plan is for Monday, and no matter the age group inside the classroom, the lesson for the students will be the excitement of the nearby shooting, each one sharing with the others what s/he “knows” about what happened and to whom and why. Of course, no one will talk to the police because … that’s not what people do these days unless there is a personal payday at the end of the interview. Julia Burney’s words came rushing back to me: “kids … can’t aspire to be something that they’ve never seen.”

Far too often kids do live what they see, and in this Valley, kids live gangs. There are white gangs, black gangs, brown gangs, Samoan gangs, and yellow gangs, as well as the mixed gangs that form in prison and come to the parole places along with the prisoners released early from the over-crowded jail facilities. No one wants the jail built in their community, but without the jails, we get the unfettered criminals who help children aspire to become something that the criminals have not just seen, but lived, and then delight in showing to the young wannabees who want to become them. Little strokes an adult ego like a young child's adulation.

When a local jury is convened for yet another criminal trial in this area, it’s most likely to involve gang activity, with defendants far too young to face living out their lives behind bars. But the older gang members, the ones who live to the ripe old age of their early 30s, portray the gang as family, the gang as a support group, the guys who “have got your back, bro” to the young kids who wander the streets. “Kids” living in this environment have been trained through personal experience not just to see the violence, but to give back whatever they have been given, and, perhaps, to take it to the next level as the accessibility to better weaponry provides the children with the means to get even for their lifetime of verbal and physical abuse. For these kids, and the millions of other kids just like them across the nation, it’s not a matter of what is right or what is wrong, but it’s what I see every day of my life, it’s what I know, what I have been taught by the adults in my life, what I have been trained to do myself. As the kids say, “Payback is a bitch.”

It’s never “my child” to a parent, but it’s always someone’s child who either commits the violence or is a victim of it. After the fact, whether the child is the perp or the victim, the grieving parent laments that the child was a “good” boy, a “good” girl, and swear on all that’s holy that “my child” was not involved with gangs, that “my child” would never do whatever it is that s/he is accused of doing.

Five young men, ranging in ages 13-20, broke up a birthday party a couple of years back, a party on a Sunday afternoon, by bringing death to a rival gang member who was the father of the child celebrating his birthday. That case is slowly making its way through the court system, as well as building sympathy for the youngest offenders (whose parents aver that "my child" had no idea what he was invovled with) and sanitizing the memory of the shooting victim (who "may" have been involved with gangs at one time, but not at the time of his death). That story reverberates dozens of times each year in this area, and we are not the worst geography for gangs and murders, just another part of the country where gangs and crime have become a way of life.

Are there still kids who can be turned around with a reading program, who can learn about other ways to live their lives without the violence and abuse? Sure, but I’m beginning to think that living a life filled with danger and the possibility of violent payback is far more exciting than reading about “normal” people and their boring lives. Why would any kid be happy to play with a squirt gun when s/he can obtain, practice with, and then use an automatic weapon that, with one squeeze of a trigger, doesn’t cause squeals of laughter, but screams of pain and the silence of death.

If Burney is correct that “kids … can’t aspire to be something that they’ve never seen,” we need to change the landscape our kids see each day, and that begins within the walls of our homes. It is not up to the community to be the parent, but to support the parents to show their children more and better ways to live their lives. It has to come from within, one hard day at a time, for every child. Take the violence out of the music, out of the videos, out of the media, and replace it with positive role models, positive personal interaction, appropriate language and conduct. And, maybe, with a Cops 'n Kids reading center.

Allow classroom teachers to discuss morality and ethics, rather than tying their hands with the dangers of infringing on any one child’s individual (ethnic) rights. Just because it’s okay for some cultures to condone teenage suicide bombers does not mean that the US has to condone it. Ditto the brutality to citizens in countries where ruthless dictators, such as Kony, use violence to control the people. Ditto the corrupt politicians who accept financial pay-offs to look the other way when drug lords and their enforcement squads slaughter civilians and dump their bodies into mass graves as warnings to others to support their criminal enterprise.

It’s going to take a long time to undo the damage we’ve done to our young people through the glorification and acceptance of violence as a way of life. Children do live what they see, but they also die as a result of that vision. It's ironic that kids today don't know the standard Golden Rule, but they all know the new Rule: "Never bring a knife to a gunfight!"