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NEWS & LETTERS, April - May 2007Organizers work with Black community youthLos Angeles--A group of Black activists, some of them elderly ex-gang members with time served in prison, are organized as the Cease Fire Committee in the South Central Los Angeles, Inglewood, Watts and Compton areas. Their goals are to halt gang violence and mass imprisonment of today's Black youths by instilling in them hope for their future and an attitude of self-respect. Founded in 2005, this coalition of the organizations Community Call to Action, Unity 1, Unity 2, Cry No More and Concerned Citizens of Los Angeles, has "it takes a neighborhood to raise a child" as its theme. One member said, "Too many of our youths are dying." Cease Fire includes women, one of whom told a young youth, a gang member: "My son was 16 when he was killed. He lived as if he had no hope for his future. He didn't expect to live a long life." A youth stated, "I'm looking for a way out of the hole I'm in." The activists have a multifaceted approach to meeting their goals. Some intervene directly with the dysfunctional youths (a Black activist prefers "dysfunctional" to the word "gang"--the police now call gang members "domestic terrorists"). An example of intervention is speaking directly to the dysfunctional youths to create a safe passage for students to school by discouraging "hits" on students (a hit refers to asking what territory they live in). Others are active in seeking job opportunities and training for the youths or advising on how to fill out a job application or how to conduct themselves in an interview. Others speak of organizing homies to get their G.E.D., offering tutoring and promoting literacy and education. Still others give legal information and advice. They organize speaking engagements at various churches to speak directly to some youths and also dialogue with teachers, parents and community members. They discourage drug sales and use, as they have become paths to incarceration. These approaches go against the mass corporate media of TV, movies and radio which encourages an extensive middle-class life of unlimited consumption, as if these jobless youths had unlimited resources. The media also portrays the Black and Latino "gangs" as engaging in a race war. The Cease Fire Committee rejects the programs of the federal Department of Homeland Security and local police departments' surveillance, "gang injunctions" and suppression-only tactics, as fundamentally targeting dysfunctional Black and Latino youths into long-term imprisonment, by putting as many of these youths into the computer database as gang members. Under state law, a crime under "gang enhancement" adds 10 years. A federal proposal would increase gang enhancement to add 30 years. Politicians, such as Gov. Schwarzenegger, funded by prison guard unions, support building more prisons on the pretext of relieving present overcrowded conditions. As one youth stated, "They spend billions to put us away but have no money to educate us." --Basho |
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