Monday afternoon, April 27, 2009, the City Council will likely give final approval to Mayor Greg Nickels' Youth Violence Prevention Initiative.
I recently sat down with four young people in a medical school classroom at the University of Washington for a discussion about youth violence, a pressing and continuing challenge in our city. Just before our meeting, the room had been used for a class on cardiology, apropos for a discussion about the heartbreaking reality of street violence involving our children.
Each of the young “reporters”—three men and one woman—described their own histories with violence. Listening for about 90 minutes to these good people was extremely informative. They chose to be vulnerable and their comments were raw, tragic, and piercing; I’d like to share a few of the more poignant comments from my notes. I’ve blended statements from all four of the youth to provide a sense of the breadth and impact of their personal experiences.
“. . . the seeds of violence were planted at home; that’s where I learned to fight . . . I’ve never considered myself a violent person, but I kept getting into fights . . . my grandpa would pick me up after a fight and rather than steer me in a good direction would ask ‘who won?’ . . . teachers need to look past my angry words and try to understand what’s motivating those words . . . we just want people who can see our positive strengths and have empathy . . . I remember being
very angry when I was about five years old . . . I started carrying guns and selling drugs . . . the first time I held a gun it made me feel powerful, cool . . . I sold drugs to get money so I could buy better things, we didn’t have much . . . my friend was killed in a car accident and I started to think about changing my life . . . I grew up in the suburbs way south of Seattle, my father was an engineer who was doing drugs, then selling drugs . . . I was called a nigger all the time by people who hated me . . . I was fighting with people frequently, I was very angry . . . I sold drugs and did very bad things trying to gain respect . . . in the University District I experienced two worlds, all these university kids coming and going and another world of drugs, sex, violence . . . I wasn’t a bad person but I thought ‘you get justice on your own or you don’t get it at all’ . . . I realized there was a lot of unnecessary drama in my life, then somebody asked my opinion and really listened to me and I thought that I should make some different choices . . . now I work with other kids who are just looking for respect and love.”
The common experiences among these four young people are striking: violence in the home, absent or uninvolved fathers, poverty, discrimination, a yearning for acceptance and love, and a deep need to belong.
The vulnerability of these young people reinforces my conviction that solving youth violence requires a continuum of actions by police officers, social workers and counselors, teachers, clergy, and family and friends. Progress will be achieved on neighborhood sidewalks not in the offices of City Hall.
I also believe city leaders need to speak frankly about the problem and help bring people together to find solutions. I first spoke about youth-on-youth violence—much of it tied to gangs—in January 2008 when a teenager was shot to death at the edge of my Queen Anne neighborhood; four others were killed before the year ended. I will continue to speak out on this issue and provide whatever leadership I can. Good people across Seattle need to do the same.