Forum; Youth Violence

This is KQED. I'm Michael Crasney. More than 1,400 children die each year from guns, a total that has more than doubled over the last eight years. What we do about this epidemic of violence and what we do about our young people at risk may ultimately tell us more about ourselves and most anything else we do. But here in the Bay Area, curfews, which already exist in San Jose, are being proposed in San Francisco by Mayor Jordan as a way of ameliorating teen violence and criminal activity. The Saturday, at Urba Boena Gardens, with Willie Brown as keynoter, there will be a citywide campaign to expand opportunities in San Francisco to help children. And Tuesday, at the Alumni House, the University of California, there will be a special program on teens at risk. In this segment of forum, we're going to look at the effect of violence on young people and strategies to curb youth violence. And with us to do that, much-claimed writer, Jeffrey Canada, who is president and CEO of Redland Centers for Children and Families in Harlem, New York, is the author of Fist Stick Knife Gunn. It's a personal history of violence in America, subtitled, and also a Heinz Award recipient, which means he got about 250 grand, no strings attached. Welcome to the program. Good to see you. Thank you, Michael. Let me also welcome

Eva Coutino, who is one of the founders of WIMAC Youth Making a Change. She is currently a member of Step Student Empowerment Project. WIMAC is also involved in this flurry of activities going on with respect to youth this week. They're doing a conference called Free Your Mind, by and for youth at the first Unitarian Church tomorrow on Friday, June 2nd, and Eva come up to the microphone and say, good morning, if you would. Good morning. Let me begin talking with Jeff Canada. I read your book last night, and it is quite a personal testament and quite a story in many ways. I mean, it really takes us through your whole life in the South Bronx, and gives us a sense of what violence has meant to you, and very thoughtful, reflective, if I may say so, a sense of what violence has meant to you, and how you've dealt with it. And the sense that keeps coming through is it's much worse. It just keeps getting worse. You know, Michael, when I grew up in the South Bronx, the South Bronx was considered at that time, the epitome of Urban Decay in New York. This was in the late 50s, early 60s, and we grew up in a really rough neighborhood. It was tough. This was considered the toughest it got

in New York City. And we were as young people, violent, and you know, and I think about those days now, you know, the worst that would happen. You'd come home with a bloody nose, a black eye, and maybe your ego a little bit in tatters. Well, I look at what young people face today. I mean, now the issue is, if young people get into a violent confrontation, they are just as likely to face sudden death. There's no chances to sort of make it up or figure out what to do or to avoid these kinds of situations. Now, young people face a much more critical time period. And I think that many of us have sort of missed the boat in terms of the changes that have happened over the last 20, 25 years. It's, you suggest a handgun generation, maybe even an Uzi generation is what we're moving into here now, like war for children. And it really is war for children. People really need to understand that, you know, there's been over 50,000 children killed in the last 15 years here in the United States. You know, and I, when Americans think about this issue of violence, if you look at the images we've been seeing over the last couple of days of these peace keepers

in Bosnia, a chain to fences and everybody is so terrified and you see the citizens running for their lives, that's, that's child's play in compared to what's happening to our children here in this country. They are being slaughtered literally by the thousands and no one's paying any attention to it at all while we're focused on all these things happening around the rest of the world. We ought to really be focused on what's happening to our children right here in this country. Eva Kutino, the senses in, in Jeff Canada's work and certainly by many people's lights that it gets worse in the summer that youth are more restless, they're more, perhaps, given to violence or the propensity of violence. What do you think about the idea of bringing a curfew in which is being proposed right here in San Francisco now? Well, I oppose the curfew for the simple fact that it's basically, it treats us as criminals and I don't feel that innocent youth should be put in jail if they haven't been doing anything wrong. Nobody putting youth in jail with this curfew, though, they shouldn't be detaining you. Detaining patterns, right? Because the thing is, I believe personally that for me, if I had more things to go do, I wouldn't be out there

kicking it on the streets. I wouldn't be out there with my friends, you know, out late at night if there was something for me to do. So more activities, night basketball type of things, in other words, recreation. And things like that because I worked with youth line and I actually went out in my community with a bunch of teenagers and we went and we surveyed how many different programs and things that really were out there for youth. I mean, in the Bayview area, all we found were about 10 different programs in that whole neighborhood and it's obvious that there's, there's not enough programs out there. And the ones that were open, I mean, it was spring, you know, it was spring break. None of them were open. Half of the places we went to were closed during the vacation times. So that's the time when they should be open. These are the kind of times when they need to be open. These are the times when youth aren't in school, when they don't have anything to do. Jeff Candace, is this one of the ways you say failed our children? Is this one of the things you

indict us for and we need to act on? I think this is a perfect, perfect example. Eva is so correct. This idea of a curfew, it really looks at this problem from the wrong perspective. When you look at what we've done before, we've had different issues like this before and we've tried the same solutions and I talk in the book about the war on drugs and we had this huge fight. We decided, you know, we had to do something about drugs the way we're talking about. We have to do something about violence right now. So we invested all of these dollars and locking up people, prosecuting people, chasing and trapping people and filled our jails has costed us hundreds of billions of dollars. It has been an utter total disaster. The jails are filled to overflowing. You can't get at these problems by the back end. Now here we have a problem with youth violence and youth crime and the issue is can we now trap young people, find them, identify them, detain them and therefore change people's behavior. What we have to get at is what is really driving this behavior at young people. It is a lack of things to do with a lack of connections with the rest of our society, with caring adults and a caring community. That's what we ought to be investing our money in. This is going to fail. It will cost to be very expensive and in the end

it won't work. Well, when you talk about prevention as opposed to punishment, it's certainly attractive to many, I suppose, open-minded or liberal-minded progressive-minded people. However, there are results with curfews. In San Jose, for example, they have a curfew. They've reduced the amount of youth violence and youth crime. It's statistically simply on the record book now and so people are looking for something like a quick fix. There it is, right? But the thing is that it may have been reduced during curfew hours, but we also have reports that it's went up an equal amount during non-curfew hours. So the thing is, they're not changing how much crime they have. They're just rearranging it. It's still going on. It's just going on earlier in the day. It's a shell game, you say. So it's like, if some kids are out there and they've got a problem and it's past the curfew, they're just like, well, if I don't do it now, I'll jump them tomorrow in the morning. So it's not changing anything. It's just making it earlier. And Michael, you really have to be very careful about these crime statistics. We've found over and

over, crime can be the statistics can be manipulated very easily. It just simply gets what gets reported and the way things get reported. And we've found it is very little indication nationally and the other way that by doing things like curfews, you actually reduce crime with young people. But I think it's even more important that we have to understand this country is investing in the wrong direction. For the first time this year, we spent more on jails than on schools. When you start thinking about, that's an investment we're making. What are we actually getting for that investment? We're not getting an awful lot. We know we have a problem with young people. That's clear and evident. And we ought to be thinking about how we deal with those kinds of issues instead of trying to figure out a way to simply remove them from the problem time or the problem area. Well, you have these successful programs like yours, Joe Marshall's program, which I'm sure you're familiar with. Debra Meyer, who is on forum a number of months ago. Debra Meyer is again a good friend. Why aren't we replicating those programs? Why aren't we putting our money? There's just lack of political will, lack of awareness and enlightenment in the part of the public citizenry, what? Well, I think we face probably the most revolutionary

restructuring of government that this country has ever faced certainly since the New Deal. There has been a political campaign that essentially decided to target essentially poor women and children in terms of a budget strategy in this country. And I think that we just have to come to grips with the fact that while people are saying there's not enough money to support these kinds of services, that simply is not true. I would just say one thing. People say, well, you know what? We hit this war on poverty and it failed. Well, the truth of the matter is, A, it didn't fail. And B, we had some things that happened that no one expected to happen. Who could have predicted the AIDS epidemic? Who could have predicted the crack epidemic for those of us in this field? This took us totally by surprise. We are just now recovering from those epidemics in terms of trying to rebuild our communities and to say that this has been a failure these social programs is just absolutely wrong. Remind you, we're talking about youth and violence and we're talking with actually a young person, Eva Kutino, who is one of the founders of YMac youth making a change and Jeff Canada, who is the author of Fist Stick Knife Gunn and the president and CEO of

Redland Centers for Children and Families in Harlem. There's a segment in your book that particularly had quite an effect on me as a reader and it's where you talk about going to dinner, Mary and Wright at Olman's house and she's trying to convince you to become involved in a program. But what particularly affected me was your discovery at that time of what gun manufacturers were doing, which I think the public needs to know about. It was really a devastating revelation and we were working on a black community crusade for children and what essentially happened, I think you'll probably have found this in San Francisco when I was reading your statistics and saw how there was this huge increase in violent crime in the early pawn of the 80s when we certainly experienced the same thing in New York and I thought it was a local issue and lo and behold some people from the Center for Handgun Policy in Washington DC pointed out to us that the handgun industry actually had experienced this huge slump in 1983 and they decided to do a niche marketing strategy based on the same marketing strategy that tobacco companies are used and the

same ones that lots of the sneaker companies use and they targeted youth and women and low and behold out of nowhere they began to pump advertising into our communities, communities of young people suggesting that young people ought to buy and use guns now. And they were making fancy guns like vipers and this sort of thing for young people. They changed the names of the guns so that they would appeal to young people, they put more gadgets on the guns because young people like gadgets. So what we have has been a systematic strategy in this country with gun manufacturers targeting and marketing guns to children. Those guns are used by these children to slaughter one another and people Americans are making money off the slaughter of our children. That is immoral. I think that we have to really become a lot more aware that there's a profit motive involved in the death that's going on with young people in this country and we have to really say that's enough that we have to stop that. It seems insane that we should be arguing about repealing an assault weapons ban while we're having literally

hundreds of handguns in the hands of children in this country and we need to really stop that. Even when young people do manage to find their way to a gun, do you think it's because a gun is necessary or do you think it's just a cool idea that you have a gun or both? Sometimes it is necessary depending on the students or the teen situation because a lot of times they live in a neighborhood and they feel to themselves that it's necessary for their own protection that they have this because of the neighborhood they live in. They might be clicked with one certain group of people and be living in the neighborhood of the other group and they feel they don't feel safe but at a lot of times the image of guns is so hyped up that everyone thinks oh this is cool man I got a gun I got to go bust some caps I got to go do this and you know it's like they glorify the gun and when you have the gun and someone comes up to you and they start something and they pull something I mean you're going to pull it out I mean you're scared there's

someone there with a gun in your face I mean you're trying to protect yourself but everyone makes it look so cool that a lot of people they just go out they buy them they're like and flash them around brag about them oh yeah I got a gun to do this you look and I think it's really that guns have been really glorified and people you know the teenagers a lot of them they think they're a really cool thing to have it's like a toy you know it's kind of like oh look wow am I got a gun you know it's cool I'm not realizing for example if you shoot somebody with that that they're not going to get up at the I mean like it's not going to go to an advertisement or a commercial it's it's over the life or the wound is there and so forth yeah well what we've found I mean I think that Eva's pointed out I think very clearly a problem we have all across this country are young people have guns and know about guns in the way that when I was going up we used to know about cars I mean we could look at the back end of a car and say whether or not it was a 62 Chevy you know or or a 63 Chevy we could just look at the back well young people know this kind of intimate details about guns and it's happening without most adults you know most of

us we know the basic guns you're talking about automatics as well as we are talking about automatics and firepower that's far superior than most police have in terms of guns so that we have a whole culture that's developed around guns right underneath our noses and our young people are involved in this culture and we have to actively intervene and interfere with this can developing culture of guns and it's the movies it's videos it's music I mean there is just this glorification of guns and violence in this country that we have to put our foot down well I know it's a your infinite credit you have tried to bring some pressure to bear on the media and have certainly made them aware of your presence but it seems to fall on deaf ears and they all fight behind the first amendment and the sense of bringing about change of taking guns away from kids particularly when azivis they're so cool or they need him for survival even how do we do that well I think that this issue of survival evil evil pointed out you know USA today had released some statistics that said that the age between 12 and 15 is the most victimized age in this country that more children are hurt at that age in terms of being victim than anyone else and people usually

think of victims as being seniors but they're really children and these children arm themselves in and what we have to do is really convince this talk about victims of violence victims of violence across the board we have to convince this country that we're not going to survive as a as a country if we allow this escalation to continue the real difference in violence right now with that these young people have guns and these guns last you know nothing happens to a gun is steel it'll last for 30 40 50 years it gets passed down from generation to generation are we have all the makings of our own civil war here in this country and we really need to actively get involved in and that involves the media also and we cannot let them off the hook I'm a fan of the first amendment I'm not suggesting that we need to overturn the first amendment but it's clear to me that all of us have to take more responsibility and this issue of glorifying violence let's bring our colors in if you'd like to join us with questions or comments we cordially invite you to become a part of this program where at four one five eight six three two four seven six again in the four one five area code eight six three two four seven six is the number remind you that we're talking with Jeff Candida president and CEO of Readland Centers for Children and Families in Harlem in the

author of Fist Stick Knife Gun also a Heinz award recipient and Eva Coutino who is one of the founders of YMAC youth making a change and currently a member of step student empowerment project Stan our first caller from Berkeley good morning good morning Michael I appreciate you doing this kind of program gives us a voice to important issues for our teams in our in our country I direct the data on science at the vision here at UC Berkeley Extension and we've created a new program for those who work in the children families field it's called children changing family program with them one's hosting this forum on Tuesday that looks at the effectiveness of adolescent services the premise of the program I'll say briefly is simply that there are all range of people that work with our youth teachers social workers probation police officers in adult librarians recreation directors all range of people already after our proxies with our children all of our children and as they need a better understanding of the changing circumstances in our neighborhoods and in our five families there over a million grandparents now raising kids this wasn't true when I grew up years ago there were services everywhere so my question really for

you know leader both of your panel members who seem like they're working in a number of areas if we need to design better services preventive services for teams to look at three steps before people think about guns they're all kind of programs in this country midnight basketball counseling counter-gresolution that have been created is innovative solutions I'm wondering what they think are innovative programs they seem work throughout the country and what people who work with children and youth need to know about changing families and neighborhoods from which you get their coming okay couple of important points Jeff Kennedy yeah I think I think you've raised some really critical points and let me say that one of the things that I talk about across this country is the issue of beacon schools which is really to take a public school to open it up late evenings weekends 365 days a year and have a range of opportunities for young people within that school system not only do you provide services for young people but you provide them also for the parents of these young people and for other adults because we have to rebuild the internet

generational connections you know morals and values they get passed on from generation to generation and we've had these generational gaps right now so we need to reconnect these generations and have open dialogue and discussion but also we need to make sure that we have offer services for young people when they need them in the evenings instead of talking about curfew we ought to be talking about what kinds of activities and I hesitate please don't you know I would just caution you to you not to use the term midnight basketball because I got in a big fight with Janet Reno attorney general about this term young people need a range of opportunities and and basketball might be one of them but they also need counseling employment training or cultural activity they need a range of activities in the evenings that really make sure that they can be developed as whole adults so that we need to make sure that everybody understands that that this idea of offering opportunities for young people is critical and central and public schools should be a place that happened got to be careful when you talk about a big fight with Janet Reno there's a lot of firepower since we're talking about armaments down in in wake of Texas let me ask though a quick question you that has often brought up in the context that you just described and

are youth over a certain age pretty much lost in other words when you start concentrating these programs do you say anybody over 14 forget it you got to concentrate on the younger that's where your resources ought to be it's a kind of triage well I certainly believe that we ought to really try and deal with the issue of prevention as early as possible but you know what you know no young person is expendable in in this city and in the state and in this country there are two reasons one is that it's just morally wrong and we know that young people have the capacity to change and many of us who grew up and poor and in these inner cities you know we weren't angels I certainly wasn't an angel anybody reads the book will find that out I mean it's clear and I change and I think that there's this possibility of change at all time but it also for some of our more conservative listeners it also just makes economic sense every time you lock a young person up in a jail or prison or juvenile detention place it costs this community so much money that we ought to invest in prevention and make sure that we don't end up spending and wasting money on the back end of this problem David you're an ex-caller welcome you're on the air good morning hi I'm active in

it's a volunteer in youth programs and trying to get more youth programs including a beacon school here in San Francisco and I'm the supporter of the curfew as they're doing it in San Jose and I don't see any reason why kids you know under the age of 17 you know 15 14 should be out at school nights at 11 30 at night and if they are out at night there's there's a problem and I think the idea of the San Jose curfew and what Mayor Jordan is proposing is similar to that is that if there if kids feel that there's a reason why they can't be home at 11 30 at night or at 1 o'clock in the morning then maybe we ought to find out what that is and see if we can deal with that Jeff Cannon I you know and I'm glad you raised that question in the way you did David because I think there are a lot of folks who who feel the very same way let me just say a couple of things about that one is that I think it's very important that we have to make sure we understand whose problem is this we understand it has to be something wrong in the home if children are left unsupervised for that long a period of time and we would all want children home safely in

bed doing the right kinds of things but the question is should we punish children and make them into criminals with we haven't given them other opportunities my thing would be let's open up beacon schools all over San Francisco let's get a range of supports for young people and we've done our part and we provided support for young people and we can tell young people now the rest is on you when we can tell families now this we're putting on you when we have nothing for young people and say now we're going to drive you off the streets too I think that's the wrong message so my thing is let's do the preventive peace first let's make sure there's opportunities for young people to be evenings and then let's say how can we get those parents and make sure those parents have the kind of supports they need to make sure that young people are involved in the kinds of appropriate late night activities and then let's talk tough the talk tough before we've delivered on anything on our end I think is a mistake and either that's what you'd like to see essentially moving along the track that was just outlined by Jeff Canada basically but not only not only the recreation this recreation that we have now is sports like basketball soccer things like that but a great majority of the young women are neglected I mean most of the programs I've

seen out there for young women are planned parenthood teenage pregnancy it seems like you have to be pregnant to have a program when you're a teenager and they should have some more things out there for women especially since more and more young women are getting in trouble I mean the way boys traditionally have yeah it's like there's just as many women out there in gangs as there are guys nowadays and they're just as tough they're just as mean you know David you're going to add something well I just think that we need to do both I mean I know that there are pro during hours that are not per few hours like seven to eleven pm for example when there are some programs that I'm involved in there are groups of kids in my neighborhood or not you know kids and young men really who are not going to get involved in them you know because they're not they're already sort of alienated from that or they think they just not able to cope or they've been kicked out I just think you need you need to do both I mean just what we're doing now is we're ignoring the people that have serious problems that are causing them to be in gangs or causing them to be out of two in the morning let me say I'm glad we've heard from both

signs on the curfew issue I appreciate your calling David I want to get another caller in here and that's Juliette from the city Juliette hi hi I want to make a couple of comments the first ones about the reasons why we need to criminalize our youth and I think certainly that one of the reasons is that we have elected officials who cannot solve the real problems of poverty and homelessness hopelessness and drugs and these same politicians are dangerous because they are desperate to keep their jobs in power their response is always more police more prisons while sacrificing every dollar of cash money for prevention deterrence and education that would reduce crime and save our children my second comment is around I would really like to hear more conversations open up around the profit mode of about prison is industry about who's profiting from the war on crime on our citizens and our youth here listen to this program regularly yes I good well we've we've certainly brought up brunch that subject at a number of occasions and will again you can rest assured let me thank you for the call so less from Campbell hi you're on the air

hi I just like to make a comment that I think the issues go just so much deeper than having programs and not having programs for kids I think kids today do need problems that do need programs and I think what we need to look at is why they need them I work with a boys and girls club in a bad part of long beach California and in six months I saw one parent come into the center and find out what their kids were doing with their spare time and these were kids ages from four to seventeen you know the emphasis so often Jeff Canada is on the kids but like for example you point out in your book there are parents who encourage violence there are parents who are often the problem or the parents are not available they're simply negligent exactly and I want to point out too that I think part of the problem is that a lot of people well most parents and families these days both parents have to work and although I'm all for you know women's rights and I'm not going to be one of these people that says the women should be staying at home and raising the kids I think

that there's a lot of women who would like to be at home with their children and financial reasons making impossible for them to do that and I think we need to work for change in larger issues in society as far as how can how people can make a living all right Jeff can yeah Michael I think she raises a good issue and and the fact that we have to make sure parents are involved and parents are often lost on this issue when you talk to parents they often tell you I don't know what to do and the problem with the issue of curfews is let's everybody off the hook it just says you know here's the answer and it's not the answer parents to peg a roll communities plays a roll schools play a role young people play a role we have to get everybody to do their piece and you can't sort of withdraw your piece and simply say I'm going to do curfews I'm not going to do anything else about this problem because that's simply not going to fix the problem so I think we have to concentrate on parents and make sure they're involved ready you have something on curfews from San Jose hi yes my point was that the statistics on crime and curfews is kind of curious because I mean if you want to prevent crime at night why don't we just all live in a

police state and have a martial law and then we won't have any crimes at night and then police can shoot people inside if they see them outside and then there won't be any crime at all I think the main thing is that the young people need to feel like they have some control over their own future and having all the various different programs in addition to getting them into civic programs where they can where they feel like their voices are heard that empowers them much more than sticking them into a room and telling them like you can sit and watch TV and get brainwashed for the rest of your young life and then come out as a complete crony once you're grown up all right sir we thank you for that and we thank both of our guests Jeff Canada's book is fist stick knife gun a personal history of violence in America published by beacon press you can be doing a book signing I'm doing a book signing at booksmith on height street tonight at 730 all right you can meet the author there and Eva Coutino is one of the founders of YMAC youth making a change currently a member of student empowerment project thank you for being with us tomorrow on forum we are going to look at the assessor's office in our opening hour and also take

you on some happy trails that is look at some trails and walking on trails and the like here in the california area ray breadberry fame science fiction writer will be with us in the second hour and a different look at Shakespeare our programs producers robin janitacio mal david minco and holly kernan you're listening kqed in san francisco on michael christ from national public radio in washington i'm ray suarez and this is talk of the nation literatures greatest ex now held or surrounded by served forces served leaders have said all hostages could be released immediately if nato promises not to conduct any more airstrikes but according to u.n. spokesman Alexander Ivanko the u.n. will not discuss such a deal it is the opinion of this