Economics at root of violence
Re “Latino gang tried to force blacks out, indictment says,” Oct. 17
This is an issue of economics, not race. If you sent all the brown people in the U.S. out of the country, another demographic would simply step up and take their place. Why? Because race is not the problem, socioeconomics is. Our government would rather spend tax money on fighting wars and building walls than on helping solve the real issue that feeds illegal immigration, gangs and crime: poverty.
Poverty does not make criminal behavior pardonable, but it is not a stretch to see how indigent, hopeless youth of any race get sucked into gangs. Too many see it as their only real chance at money, power and prestige. This is nothing new. Our current system of incarcerating gangsters only serves to breed angrier, more violent gangsters -- black, Latino or others. Real change will only be decided and enacted at a grass-roots level. We must take back our neighborhoods by protecting our youth. (Think about it: Are many 35-year-olds joining gangs?) We must better educate them (our global rankings are downright shameful), mentor them, parent them and offer them real opportunities to make something of themselves. It’s easy to be angry and assign blame. But it’s the doers, not the complainers, who will ultimately affect change.
Aretha Crout
Tarzana
To underscore the madness of the violence that has plagued the Florence-Firestone area, it is worth mentioning that one of the many victims during the peak of the killings was a young man named Eric Henderson, who was murdered on Jan. 26, 2005 (his 19th birthday) while waiting at a bus stop on the corner of Florence Boulevard and Central Avenue. While his father was black, his mother was of Mexican descent. He embodied the bridge between the Latino and African American communities that is so desperately needed in our city at this time. Eric, a former gang member, had turned his life around over the two years leading up to his death, and he had recently begun working for our organization as a teaching assistant in a violence-prevention-themed poetry workshop at a local middle school. It is my hope that some young members of Florencia 13 follow Eric’s lead and learn to recognize the beauty in themselves before they continue to victimize others whose roots and wounds are not so different from their own.
Chris Henrikson
Co-Executive director
Street Poets Inc.
Los Angeles