Stepping Into the Vacuum of Violence : Youths must be steered toward an uninterrupted education and honest work

Little Rock, Ark., is pretty far removed from the San Fernando Valley, but there are lessons to be found there for those hoping to sustain a tenuous peace between rival street gangs.

The HBO Special entitled “Gang War: Bangin’ in Little Rock” explored the record-setting pace of gang-related homicides in that city. During the course of the carnage, a few enterprising people did what they could to try to stop the killing. The city’s coroner drove into the neighborhoods to display shocking post-mortem photographs of dead gang members. Churches adopted a theme of planting white flags. A task force was formed, and something of a decline in the killings was recorded.

But it seemed as though most of the efforts had been spent in attempting to calm tensions and put out fires. Very little was devoted to what should have been the long-term goal of trying to persuade those youths not to just avoid killing each other, but to seek another way of life.

Here in the Valley, a truce between Latino gangs that was jeopardized by a murder this past week seems to have the very same shortcoming.

The peacemaking efforts of William (Blinky) Rodriguez and a few church leaders here have drawn enough attention to attract an entourage from Saginaw, Mich., that hopes to duplicate the truce. But Rodriguez himself admits that most of his time is spent running from confrontation to confrontation. At some point, that won’t be enough, nor should it be.

Nor should a simple truce between gangs be allowed to suffice. In the case of the Oakwood section of Venice, for example, it is widely suspected that a gang truce there has merely allowed the gangs to resume their illicit drug dealing without the publicity of open hostilities.

More people--religious leaders, civic leaders and elected officials--must get involved. They must step into the vacuum of the violence and steer more youths toward an uninterrupted education and honest work. Until then, the William Rodriguezes of the streets will struggle vainly to plug holes in a huge dam that could burst anytime.