While teaching for two years in inner city Baltimore, the same scene played out just about every day. Kids would tag the walls or halls of the school with whatever markers, paints or pens they could find. After school, our hard-working, sleepy custodian would then be carefully painting over them with silver or red paint – the colors of our school. “I got to do this everyday. “These kids,” he’d say.
Gang leaders recruit all types of kids. The smart ones handle the money and more responsibility. The ones with ADD or learning disabilities are typically the ones standing on the corners or running the drugs to and from. Girls are prevalent in gangs too; often, in order to get into the gang, girl’s are “sexed in,” meaning they have sex with many other gang members until proven worthy of acceptance into the gang. The kids who enter gangs are basically brainwashed; they are promised protection, prestige and a type of family environment they might not be getting at home. At least that’s what the Baltimore City Police Dept. detectives would tell us when they’d come and brief teachers about gang activities and wars. We had these briefings a few times per year.
Much attention is paid to the violent drug wars in Mexico. Not enough is paid to the drug trade fueled by deadly gangs on our streets. Thousands have died in Mexico since the government began battling like hell against the armed cartels. Thousands die in cities like Baltimore every year across our country; it’s not much better than Mexico, if at all better in the slums of urban America where gangs thrive and residents are held hostage.
The deaths of gang members or drug dealers (it’s of course too broad to say they are one and the same) are usually written up as little blurbs in the paper, if at all. BaltimoreSun.com has a little map checker where one can pinpoint where recent murders were. The dots represent humans killed. It’s eerie looking at it – to think how far removed one living in an American suburb can be from a city that is only a few miles away.
Gangs are too often dismissed as a result of urban issues such as bad schools, lack of job opportunities, institutional racism, broken homes, drug addiction and the like. They ought to be treated more as a cause of these things.
The counterterrorism strategy our military uses in Iraq and Afghanistan is “clear, hold, build.” Something similar is needed to sweep out gangs in this country, particularly in our inner cities, where huge numbers of residents feel they are held hostage by hot-headed, violent, destructive and angry young men and women.
This doesn’t need to be done by police, but by residents demanding to take back their cities. There are movements to end gang killings. There are brave and proud individuals and community groups who try so hard to combat the gang problems in Baltimore. The gangs and drugs and violence, which perpetuate the same old urban issues, are winning though, and it’s not even close.
I go into the city and meet with my students to run or talk about books I’ve given them to read over the summer. These are good kids and they come from good families. They go to church on Sunday, help their grandparents, and do their best in the awful school they attend. But across the street, there are kids chilling around in white tanks and blue K.C. Royals hats. They are there to show who is in charge of the neighborhood. And it’s sad because I know who is winning. I don’t even speak about it with the kids I go and visit; it’s unspoken that they are just trying to get the hell out of this city alive and with a possibility to live a better life somehow. I go not to preach about any kind of better life. I go to talk about running and the goals that can be set to achieve personal greatness. I go to talk about the universal themes and ideas that literature represents to people of all races and backgrounds.
Test scores just came out for the year and Baltimore City and P.G. county, a suburb of D.C., were in dead last in Maryland, a state that was awarded a title for best public school system in the country. The scores in the cities and slums don’t have to be so bad; they are a sign that people give up on each other and their country. There is no hope and no true freedom without an education.
We have more than enough political pundits in this country; we need more people discussing life and death issues like gangs and inner city violence and poverty and test scores that reveal that our nation is not equally committed to education as a civil right. These shouldn’t be treated as abstract “social issues” but as issues that make or break the heartbeat of our nation.
Inner-city America might never vote Republican, but the liberal ideal will only keep the blame game going. The liberal ideal keeps people dependent on a government structure that will never be big enough to clear the Crips and Bloods off the corner, hold them at bay while kids work uninterrupted in school to receive the education they deserve before they can come back to build tradition and foundation for generations of greatness to come.
10 responses so far
1 ottovbvs // Jul 25, 2009 at 10:09 am
…….Now “liberalism” is responsible for street gangs……..what next the scrofula?
2 sinz54 // Jul 25, 2009 at 10:33 am
It’s interesting that Mr. Gibbon mentions Afghanistan. One of the things that funded the Taliban is opium from the abundant poppy fields in that country. Poppy production continues to rise through 2007 at least, making Afghanistan the primary producer of opium/heroin in the world. The U.S. and the new Afghan government are trying to wipe out this business–but since it brings in billions of dollars of revenue to impoverished people, it’s tough.
Criminal gangs, whether in Afghanistan or America, are fueled by drug money. You want to fix the gang problem, you have to fix the drug problem. And after 100 years of trying, the law-enforcement approach has not succeeded.
It’s long past time to change course on how we treat illicit drugs–from a law enforcement problem to primarily a medical problem.
The hysteria over “Drugs!” is just not matched by actual experience. Rush Limbaugh was addicted to Oxycontin; Larry Kudlow was addicted to cocaine. Because of their wealth and their social support networks, they kicked their respective addictions and are still at work earning big bucks.
3 midcon // Jul 25, 2009 at 11:45 am
This post does have some valid points but as usual approaches it from a primarily partisian viewpoint and consequently does a disservice to the topic.
1. The drug problem is not just a matter of supply. Demand is equally a cause of the problem. Demand exists at all ecomonic levels in our population.
2. Gangs are the most significant actor in the drug supply chain, but they are criminal enterprises that will seek to exploit whatever the demand is in order to obtain power and money. If not drugs, then guns, contraband, whatever.
3. Policies that attempt to influence the supply chain or reduce demand are at best marginally successful and until we understand how to eliminate demand, supply will always attempt to meet the need.
While there may be liberal or conservative ideas about how to eliminate demand, history suggest that neither the left nor the right has found the answer thus far. Unfortunately, most approaches seem to be political/social approaches rather than scientific or technical approaches.
4 barker13 // Jul 25, 2009 at 11:58 am
Re: Midcon // Jul 25, 2009 at 11:45 am –
“The drug problem is not just a matter of supply. Demand is equally a cause of the problem. Demand exists at all ecomonic levels in our population.”
Vigilante Bill at your service! (*GRIN*)
Fantasy solution: Deliberate contaminate the illicit drug supply.
Specifics: If somehow you could “introduce” deadly immediately acting poisons into a small percentage of the “product” pipeline before too long the worst addicts and general scum of the earth would be… er… leaving this earth.
Would hundreds, perhaps thousands of smiling faced little middle class and upper middle class “boys” and “girls” get caught up in the initial wave of overdoses? Sure. (*SHRUG*) I call it “thinning the herd,” “Darwinism in action.” (*WINK*)
Am I talking pot? Depends. How seriously does society take pot use? If we truly want to stamp it out…
(*SHRUG*)
Heroin? Yep. Crack… crank… meth… yep. If you can point 2%-5% of the supply you’re on your way to preventing the next generation of “hard drug” users from ever developing.
Coke? Yeah. Just so we’re not accused of “targeting” blacks and Hispanics while “protecting” the “white middle and upper classes” we’ll have to include coke in “the plan.”
Pills? Nah… except for homemade stuff like Ecstasy there’s not much you can do about “medicine cabinet” drug abuse.
Anyway… (*SHRUG*)
BILL
5 Washington Planner » Weekend Required Reading // Jul 25, 2009 at 1:37 pm
[...] besides Gates drama is going on in the world, and says: “Too many pundits, not enough talk about what matters: gangs in schools.” Also, Thomas Gibbon comments on his experiences as a teacher in Baltimore [...]
6 midcon // Jul 25, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Barker,
Contaminating the supply certaintly would have an immediate significant effect in both reducing the “safe” supply and reducing consumer demand, nature abhors a vacuum and I fear the economic system would soon weigh in through the introduction of higher priced, non-contaminated supply. I would consider an alternative contamination mechanism that would eliminate the effect of the narcotic, such as modifying the chemical structure of the narcotics. No high, no demand. Of course the logical outcome would be that the marketplace is again replaced with higher-priced “clean” product that does produce a high. Still an ever increasing escalation of contamination of the supply might soon have the effect of putting the narcotics out of reach of all but a few addicts.
Again you propose draconian measures which many would dismiss out of hand, but in which I find some measure of benefit by modifying them to be less draconian and perhaps more beneficial. Better living through chemistry!
7 ottovbvs // Jul 25, 2009 at 6:30 pm
“Would hundreds, perhaps thousands of smiling faced little middle class and upper middle class “boys” and “girls” get caught up in the initial wave of overdoses? Sure. (*SHRUG*) I call it “thinning the herd,” “Darwinism in action.” (*WINK*)”
……..Mass murder of the offspring of the middle and upper middle classes…….this becomes official Republican policy?……yes…….sounds like a real vote getter to me…..perhap you should suggest it to DeMint, Coburn, Cornyn
8 ottovbvs // Jul 25, 2009 at 6:33 pm
midcon // Jul 25, 2009 at 11:45 am
“This post does have some valid points but as usual approaches it from a primarily partisian viewpoint and consequently does a disservice to the topic.”
……..That’s the problem with far right policy it’s table d’hote….. not a la carte
9 barker13 // Jul 26, 2009 at 9:43 am
Re: Midcon // Jul 25, 2009 at 4:09 pm –
“I fear the economic system would soon weigh in through the introduction of higher priced, non-contaminated supply.”
Easier said than done. The whole point of crack/crank/meth is that it’s a relatively cheap high. Also, the scum running the actual “line” operations are often consumers of their own products and not all that bright to begin with. (*CHUCKLE*) My point… “Bill’s Good Guys and Gals” would run circles around them and with each “upgrade” of their “security” measures “we’d” easily get around it.
“…reducing consumer demand…”
Yep. That’s what it’s all about!
“I would consider an alternative contamination mechanism that would eliminate the effect of the narcotic…”
Wimp! (*CHUCKLE*) (*WINK*)
“No high, no demand.”
Seriously… no… what you’re missing is that “casual” users would very well “accept” odds of 1 in 10 times when they buy a drug that drug ain’t gonna get ‘em high; if the 1 in 10 odds are that 10% of users are gonna IMMEDIATELY DROP DEAD… well… (*CHUCKLE*)… that’s a far different “bet.” One I’m guessing most high school and college kids and 20-somethings wouldn’t take.
(*SHRUG*)
“Again you propose draconian measures which many would dismiss out of hand…”
Yep. (Bunch of frigg’n wimps…) (*GRIN*)
“Better living through chemistry!”
I’ll drink to that!
(*HUGE FRIGG’N GRIN*)
BILL
10 sasnnm // Jul 28, 2009 at 11:05 am
So, in honor of our two-year anniversary since being @ 1600 on Temple, how about you finally reveal your real name?
Isn’t “B-More” supposed to be “hardcore”? (hardcorps?)
Seth
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