The War on our Youth: Violence in the Streets

Part 1 of 4 Part Series

With so much going on in the world around us, it is no wonder why when elections come around that many people forget about the people who get caught up in the middle of many political battles. Thus the lives of our youth are being ignored once again this election cycle except in speeches about how they have poured out to vote. Politicians are using our youth as a ploy to gain political capital, which is nothing new to me. However the tactic they are using our youth has become shameful. While politicians continue to talk about education and how they are going to fix it in order to help our youth lead America into a better future. But politicians have forgotten just how the innocence of our youth is nearly becoming extinct due to violence.

The innocence of our youth and the constant war on their lives in the streets of America is painful for me to continue to hear about year after year. While growing up on the eastside of Detroit, I witnessed firsthand, how gun violence and violence in general can claim the lives of so many innocent children. When I was in the 6th grade in 1996, a classmate of mine, Charles Coppage was shot and killed one early school day while walking with his dad on his way to school.

I can remember seeing the tears in all my classmates’ eyes and while Charles wasn’t the perfect student, he didn’t deserve to die the way he was brutally slaughtered. Charles might have been a jokester in the classroom at times but he kept a smile on his classmates’ faces and was a delight to all the teachers at Greenfield Park Elementary School who had the pleasure of teaching him. However, Charles is forever engraved in my heart because he is a part of a two part series that Ebony Magazine is doing entitled the “Slaughter of the Innocence”. While Ebony’s series speaks more about the slaughter of youth in America since 2004, I say that the real problem on the slaughter of the innocence begin way before 2004. The violence that is taking place on the streets of America’s urban cities didn’t just happen but it has always existed way before now.

It existed way before 1996 and while some might blame the violence on the streets of America to the raise of gangs, drugs in the urban community and the violence that gangs have created due to the selling of drugs and turf wars over property and money. However I blame the violence on America’s streets on not those factors but the blind eye of our government, political officials and law agencies who have allowed this to happen. While Nancy Reagan was on television in the 1980s telling youth to just say “NO” if they are approached with the question of doing drugs. However she didn’t tell them how to respond to the answer of what to say if you are approached with the question of do you want to join a gang. Now if she did provide youth with an answer for that, it would have probably been to just politely say “No”.

While that answer might sound good, it is not sufficient because during the 1980s and even at times in the 21st century, gang initiation involves being jumped in order to join and if you didn’t accept being a part of a gang than you could be brutally attacked and harmed or at worse killed for taking a stance against joining a gang. Thus, one might ask, why didn’t local police or other governmental agencies try to combat gang violence in the urban cities and the answer is simple, they didn’t see it as major problem like it is has turned out to be.

While Bloods and Crips still exist all across America today but there are many other gangs that have arouse in many urban cities and their turf wars result in the innocent lives of youth like Charles Coppage being killed. Thus, while the Presidential candidates are out campaigning and talking about the war in Iraq, they can look no further than the streets of America when they refer to innocent lives being killed over a war that we shouldn’t be in the first place. Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, there are just as many children dying in America than in Iraq. According to Ebony’s article, there are 8 children being killed by gun violence every day in this country. That’s 235 each month more than the number of soldiers killed in Iraq.

The sad part is that most news outlets don’t count the death tolls of these innocent children who are dying and neither one of Untied States Presidential candidates or their particularly parties have talked about this or released any press releases, held any press conferences or simply acknowledged that there is something wrong in America’s urban cities beyond economics. So what can be done in order to save our youth? The war on our youth is one that I am ashamed to witness because their are hundreds of thousands of homes across America who have one less child to take care of but the parents of these innocent children hearts go to bed heavy each night because they are hurt by the lost of their sons or daughters.

Therefore, when will all the violence and attacks on our children end. Now there are some who might say that this is an urban America problem or an African American problem, I am here to tell you that this problem is an American problem. While you might think that the killing of innocent children is not enough of a political issue to discuss but let me just threw out some more statistics that the Ebony article revealed such as last year in Chicago alone 24 public school students were shot to death. So far this school year , the number had already reached 20 and we are not even half way through the year and not to mention summer break is upon us so it’s no telling how high this number could raise if the proper resources are not given to the urban neighborhoods.

Another critical point that Ebony magazine pointed out is that while most of the violence occurs in Black neighborhoods like Englewood on the South side of Chicago, where our own Senator Barack Obama speaks so highly about in terms of where he started his grassroots work at right after graduating from Harvard Law School. While I commend Senator Obama for not going into corporate America and getting paid the big bucks, I do have to question why he hasn’t done more to try to solve this critical gun violence problem that exists in Chicago. This is not an attack on Senator Obama because Senator McCain hasn’t offered any type of legislation or aide to help deal with this issue and he probably doesn’t understand what is really taking place on the urban streets of America in terms of gun violence because the only violence he might recognize is perhaps that which is taking place billions of miles away in the Middle East against American troops.

I commend our American soldiers for the sacrifice they are making overseas to protect Americas interest abroad and at home but I know our American soldiers wouldn’t think they were protecting America’s interest at home if they heard that in 2004, the Children’s Defense Fund reported that 2,825 children and teens died from gun violence in the United States. Thus one can imagine what the number has become over the last 4 years. Ebony magazine goes on to state that while most of this violence takes place in big cities such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Baltimore and my hometown of Detroit, news reports of schoolchildren victimized by what the media often refer to as “random gun violence” have become commonplace in these areas.

Thus what American interest are we fighting overseas that we can’t fight right here in America. Something has to be done to protect our youth and by no means am I blaming the American government, politicians, and law enforcement agencies for the whole problem because each of them have played a role in this senseless war on our youth but the parents, guardians and families as well as our educational system plays a role in this problem as well. Our youth need to be loved at home and away but if you look across most of our urban cities, parks and recreation in many city budgets have been cut to pennies and many youth programs and projects as well as after school programs are becoming nearly extinct. Thus the issue of how to protect our youth in the streets of America is a collaborative effort that everyone in America bears the grunt of.

Yes this includes suburbs and rural areas too because while the violence seems to mostly take place in large cities and black neighborhoods but the reality is that if it isn’t contained and properly treated than it will sooner or later spill over into the suburbs and rural neighborhoods like a plague. Just look at where the problem stands right now and this problem has existed for 28 years or more already. Like most small problems, when they aren’t properly treated, they become a bigger problem than what they originally were. Since America didn’t deal with this issue properly in the first place, now we are witnessing its growth and the time to change the course on this problem is not now but right now.

The war on our youth is America’s problem and we all must play a role in correcting this problem and saving our youth because Lord knows that I wish I could have saved my classmates Charles Coppage life. So imagine a child that you could have saved from this problem if you only cared back than to do something. But there’s no sense on looking back on the past when you can prevent a future child’s life from being slaughtered by doing something right here, right now.

SAVE THE INNOCENT!