A look at youth violence

I came across the article "Combating Root Causes of Youth Violence," written by Clarence Page on the Dallas Morning News web site. In the article Clarence writes about youth violence in Chicago and the negative effects it could have on Chicago's bid for the Olympics in 2016. He mentions some of the recent violence in Rio de Janeiro as well.

In 1972 Clarence Page contributed his work to the Chicago Tribune Task Force articles on fraudulent voting, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He also won the Edward Scott Beck Award in 1976 for reporting overseas on the changing politics in South Africa. After I read his bio I feel like he is a very reputable columnist.

In the article Page mentions that some Chicagoans feel like Chicago is too unsafe to host the Olympics, he then brings up recent violence in Rio but fails to mention anything "unsafe" about the other cities (Tokyo and Madrid) in the bid for the Olympics. Before I finished the article I thought "if he is writing about the potential host cities for the Olympics then why not mention the flaws about ALL of the cities... However by the time I finished reading the whole article I realized that Page might have just mentioned Chicago's bid for the Olympics as a starting point for what he was really arguing for.

I think that Page is really arguing for some kind of support for social reform in Chicago (and Rio)... (since he really doesn't mention anything about the other cities) and using the Olympics as a "tool" for his argument. Page states, "that most of the violence happens in parts of the cities where no tourist would normally go." So it makes it easy to turn a blind eye to the problem...

At the end of the article (this is where I feel that the point of Page's argument is made) Page mentions an organization based out of Washington that has come up with a "violence-free zones" around neighborhoods and schools where there are adults (advisors) with clean background but have the street smarts to build trusts with kids to help keep them out of trouble. This program is set up in Milwaukee, Baltimore, Atlanta, Dallas and Richmond as well. The president of the organization Robert Woodson says, "Kids are targeted not for being in a gang but for coming from a different neighborhood." Page argues, "Effective advisors might be able to act as an antibody to the kids in a toxic atmosphere so that they will feel more comfortable (and not be accused or punished by other kids for snitching) when they report violence in the neighborhoods."

Page is probably targeting the parents of the children in these situation to encourage them to speak up and out about violence they come across from other children. He might also be trying to encourage other adults to become an advisors in other cities to help control violence.

I enjoyed reading the article although I thought that it would be more about the Olympics (based on his opening) and how to handle the violence if Chicago wins the bid.

On a completely random side note, I think It's funny that spell check thinks I spelled "advisor/s" wrong!!