Skip to footer

Readers Write: How I fight gun and gang violence, as a former gang member

Letter to the Editor for the March 25, 2013 weekly print issue: As a mentor for youth involved in gangs, I agree that the combination of law enforcement and clergy mentorship is a great dynamic to implement in high-risk neighborhoods. I should know. I'm a former gang member myself.

| Santa Barbara, Calif.

Regarding “The Monitor’s View” of Feb. 18, “Filling hearts, ending gangs”: As a mentor for youth involved in gangs, I agree with the way Chicago is handling the gang and gun problems in its area. The combination of law enforcement and clergy mentorship, praised by the editorial, is a great dynamic to implement in high-risk neighborhoods. That is why I volunteer for a nonprofit, Freedom4Youth, that employs a similar strategy in utilizing local college students, ex-gang members, and former troubled youth, with the combined support of our local probation system.

The reason I enjoy being a youth mentor is because I was a former gang member. I became a father, and I cannot imagine losing my daughter to gang violence because of my gang history. It’s up to ex-gang members like myself to dismantle the gangs we created. I cannot just change my life and ignore the fact that others may join gangs and cause an endless cycle of pain and destruction. I do not want to have any more families and youth going through this unnecessary violence.

I believe in what President Obama says: “It is up to us, as parents and as neighbors and as teachers and as mentors, to make sure our young people don’t have that void inside them. It’s up to us to spend more time with them, to pay more attention to them, to show them more love so that they learn to love themselves, so that they learn to love one another, so that they grow up knowing what it is to walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes and to view the world through somebody else’s eyes.”

I will be the first in my family to graduate from college. I am graduating from California State University, Northridge, in May 2013 and then moving on to pursue my MBA. I did this with little guidance since there were no outreach programs or help. I want to help prevent senseless acts of violence and needless deaths like that of Hadiya Pendleton, an innocent bystander who was killed in a gang-related shooting in February 2013 in Chicago.

As the editorial points out, the collaboration efforts and mentorship strategy of involving police and religion are effective. Connecting “troubled” youth with the beauty and opportunity surrounding them in their community benefits the individual and the community as a whole.

Simon Arias

Santa Barbara, Calif.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Readers Write: How I fight gun and gang violence, as a former gang member
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Readers-Respond/2013/0325/Readers-Write-How-I-fight-gun-and-gang-violence-as-a-former-gang-member
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe