LIFE OF DRUGS, GANGS AND VIOLENCE CHANGES FOR TEENS

The public is slowly recognizing how many children must deal with violence every day. To further increase awareness of this problem, Children's Express conducted national hearings on violence and children in October in Washington, D.C.

After finishing our work, four members from our team were searching to find a constructive way to spend our last day in Washington.

We decided to talk to kids from our audience about their views on the hearings. What we heard instead were the disturbing but inspiring stories of several teen-agers from the East Coast about the violence in their lives.

Eric and Floyd are both 19 years old and from Baltimore. Carlos, 18, is from Silver Springs, Md. Their names have been changed at their request.

Violence in the streets

ERIC: (There's) a lot of violence in (my community). Most of the times I would start violence or sometimes violence just comes toward me, be like guns, shooting, niggers killing other people.

FLOYD: Just a lot of shootings, killings, drug selling, bunch of people stealing, robbing and taking each other.

CARLOS: That's pretty much it. You know, gang-related. People selling drugs, and then people trying to take their spot away. Then it moves on to the suburban part where it's safe and then they start taking all the safe houses and stuff.

Personal experiences

ERIC: When I was out there, I just wanted to be one of those hustler-type boys, 'cause I knew for one thing, my uncle was out there, all two of my uncles out there and my brother out there and plus my boy. So I knew for one thing, I didn't have nothing to worry about if I got my family out there. . . .

My father died in '88 and it was me and three brothers and three sisters, and my mom's the only one working. . . . So I said, "I guess I gots to get out there and do what I gotta do."

I wasn't working at no McDonald's, Burger King or nothing like that for like $120 a week. I just sit back and chill and make $1,200 a week.

FLOYD: I was selling drugs, not going to school, not staying at home with my parents, not listening to instruction. . . .

My father has always told me one thing: "Whatever you gonna be, be the best that you can be in it." . . . So all right, that means if I'm gonna be a drug dealer, be the best I can be. And I tried that.

And then I looked (at) the family: My older brother in jail. Three of my uncles dead. A couple of my uncles on drugs, some of the aunts. All my friends dead, in jail, barely making.

After a while you had nobody to turn to. It just wasn't what I wanted. I got tired of it.

ERIC: When I got shot, I went down there and said, "Please Lord, don't let me die. Please Lord, I shouldn't have been out here, Lord. Lord, I'll never come back out here again."

I just knew that I was gonna die, 'cause when it hit me, I was scared. I didn't know what to do, lying up in that hospital bed. ...

They put two of my boys in the hospital and they can't walk no more now. Somebody has to go. Ain't nobody gonna just crank on us and get away with it and think it's over with just like that, especially if he try to take my life. I gotta take his.

I felt like I don't care. I go to his house. If he ain't there, I'm killing mothers, brothers, grandmothers, sons, daughters, whoever in the house. He make me suffer, he gonna suffer.

Getting on the right track

ERIC: Violence ain't gonna change, no matter how hard you try. Only one way you can really change it is by getting to the younger kids now that's coming up and try to talk to them and let them know . . . it ain't all about selling drugs, killing this man or trying to be like the next man.

So you gotta let him know the crime rate. If you sell drugs, what's the consequences, what's gonna happen to you.

Just keep telling him, letting him know that once you get in that jail system, ain't no coming out. You might only gotta do two years, but once you in there, you'll be doing seven years. That seven years of your life gone, especially if you're a young kid.

Because once you're in there, you don't learn nothing. The only thing you learn is how to survive in jail. So all your knowledge from school, that's pushed aside. The only thing you know about is how to survive in jail, what's about jail, and that you in jail.

FLOYD: Most people that commit violent crimes are in a certain group of people, a certain class of people. That's the rut that they live in. They never really get out of the rut unless someone takes time. They say, "That's not what I want to do the rest of my life. I want to do something positive. I want to do something to better educate myself, get a good job, and live a decent life."

Trouble with schools

CARLOS: The school has now become a social place for many people, where they just go to see their friends and by lunch time leave and go back to their homes. They just lie to their parents and say, "Well, we had a half day" or something. Sometimes people don't even go to school. They just walk out and say, "I'm going to school," and then they come back in the afternoon.

FLOYD: (The children) go to school, say they don't want to go to school. They might not have this, that and the other to go to school, so they don't go to school. They might not have the structure in their home like most. A lot of kids in that group come from single-parent families. Their parent might not be so hard on them about going to school because it's just them and one parent in the family.

But if kids are educated from a very early age, if they are shown some type of positive way, positive route to do something to achieve a goal, then they got something to look forward to when they get older, in that 16- to 24-year-old category.

They see a whole different lifestyle from the lifestyle that's on the street. As long as they are educated and showed a way to do something positive, showed what the positive outcome is from getting a good education, working a nice job, or working any job, just having something to do that's beneficial to them in the long run, that's not illegal, then I believe a lot of kids would turn the other cheek.

Possible solutions

ERIC: You just try to talk to (the children) and tell them to find somebody else, another role model. They need somebody else, because some kids' parents might be working hard, but their brothers or somebody are out there on the streets. . . .

When they see their brother out there, out there hustling, making more money than his mom and his pop put together, and he taking care of him, that gonna be his role model. So you need somebody else with a positive attitude, who try to talk to him and let him know how it is out there.

FLOYD: They (need to) offer more youth programs, something the majority of the younger kids can get into. Offer them something besides just hanging on the streets. Because when you hang on the streets, you just there. You do what everybody else do. If you in a program, you do what everybody else do.

The best choice would be doing something structured. You know, learning something, just doing something in the community other than standing out on the corner, hanging with the fellows.

ERIC: My little cousin came up to me one time and said, "I want to be just like you. I want to be a drug dealer just like you." I was like, "Now I gotta change."

So now I go to job corps and come home, he sees me (and says), "I want to be just like you. I'm going to school. I'm going to be a football player and all this and all that." That make me feel happy now. And by me talking to them little kids, letting them know, what I mean is I'm doing something positive.

No matter how hard you try to wish, drugs gonna be there no matter what. They've been around for centuries, and it's gonna be around for many more centuries. I just wish a lot of people would wake up and see reality, that it ain't no joke.

EDITED BY: Matt White, 15, Indianapolis.