Kids without a home have usually been welcomed into my home for a very good
reason. As a fifteen year old I was "Kicked" out, (though in the South they
call it "Run Off"). I very much remember the wonderful Harris family who
took me in for the first little while of that time. I went on to some very
interesting times as one would imagine. This is why I get real upset when I
see the "pigeon" catchers to keep people from being able to sleep under the
bridges. I eventually was taken into my uncles "house" and given a home and
education. Yes, my "Uncle Sam" was happy to take me when I turned
seventeen. He gave me shelter, clothes, food, an education, and the most
important thing of all, he gave me discipline. Though I must say that the
chores of that "family" were sometimes very difficult and dangerous. Many of
my "brothers" died doing their chore.
No, I do not believe a child should be "kicked out". Parents are still
responsible for that child, no matter what the child's age. So a child
engaging in gang behavior should not be kicked out they should be "Kicked
In". As in "Kicked In the butt". We need to stop throwing children away,
they are just too valuable to waste. They are our future, good or bad.
Wizard is correct about the "families", and all of us in the "hood" in
Minneapolis know such families. We as a society should simply declare such
people as unfit to raise children or even be around children, and society
should remove those children after the maybe 20th arrest in that family. We
would certainly do the children and society a favor. But do it when the
child is a baby or very young, not when removing the child means sending the
child away to reform school and jail. By then it is just too late and the
child is lost.
Children do not deserve to be condemned to such abused and neglected lives.
We measure the quality of our City by the way we provide for our elders, our
handicapped, but most of all by the way we provide for all of our children.
Minneapolis may be a quality place to live for RT Rybak's children, but
Minneapolis has a miserable quality of life if measured by that of the
children in the impacted neighborhoods. If ANY of our children have less of
a quality of life, and suffer and fear today, then we as a City have failed.
And should feel shame, not pride in the "Quality of Life" in Minneapolis.
Such gangs and crime families are terrorist in every meaning of the word.
In areas where such drug gangs and families operate there is an attempt to
threaten the normal population so as to not be bothered by residents acting
as witnesses and calling the police or hassling their customers. Their
children are even encouraged to participate in the terrorist acts. I
personally think the names locations and the pictures of such chronic crime
families should be published and they should be given only one choice,
straighten out or be banished from the City of Minneapolis. I think any
landlord renting to such a family should have their rental license removed
and subject to civil action for the harm they do to surrounding property
values and the deterioration of quality of life for residents surrounding
such buildings. Knowingly renting to such a family should put that landlord
on warning that they control a potential "Disorderly House" and even one
more arrest at that residence should constitute "prima fascia" evidence as
prescribed by State of Minnesota law. There are simply people that should
be put beyond the pale because they CHOOSE not to be part of civilized
society.
I, like the others who have experienced the terrorist threats, have my
memories. Memories of the cost, and what it has taken in the war to raise a
neighborhood from the heart of darkness. Memories of a StarTribune article
calling me the "Sheriff of the Southside" which generated the delivery on
the same evening of a silver bowl from an appreciative person and that same
night a brick through the window where my wife had sat nursing a baby only a
second before. But perhaps there is a God, because she got up with the baby
and started to walk into another room just before the brick hit the window.
We kept lexan "bullet proof" storm windows until those children were older.
Fortunately, I was away doing work in Costa Rica when the incident happened,
or someone would surely have died that night.
Our whole City should feel the same moral outrage as I felt when that phone
call came telling me what had happened that night and the danger my baby and
wife had been put in. Our whole City should feel the same moral outrage
that "OUR" children are at risk every day in our city. I guess we just need
more people who care enough, but mostly we need a few politicians who show
their care by their actions, not just PR fluff about how good they have made
Minneapolis. We need politicians who look for solutions, not just media face
time.
Jim Graham,
Ventura Village
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