THUGS, GANGSTAS and WANNABES ; This post is to respond from a different perspective about the youth who are destroying parts of Arlington. This past week I took advantage of an opportunity to join with The States Attorneys Office, Youth Offender Program and did a tour of the Duval County Jail with kids being given a second chance, you know, the thing we all want when we get POPPED, yes ? I, received a upfront, close and personal view of how these kids ( 18-25, trust me, most of them are still kids as they received NO TRAINING from a father figure ) act when they are interred behind walls of high impact glass and layers of security. All the smack, hype, bad ass lingo and bravado is GONE ! I saw how isolation strips a kid of his misguided self-image and reduces him to tears, fear and loneliness. It is heart breaking to see youngsters whos next 5, 10, 20 and 30 years are planned for them in a State Facility. Their lives become a blank spot on a tape as they disappear from society to be locked away for the better part of their lives. I was staggered by the testimony of a 23 yr old who volunteered as an inmate to WARN these second chancers to never come back. He was going away for 20 years and the REALITY shook these teens who are the recipients of our disdain and in some cases, HATRED. Yeah, I hate THUGS but I also believe in REDEMPTION and second chances. One of the mothers who had a teen visiting the jail was a single parent, who herself, was a FELON and took opportunity to HUMILIATE her son in front of all those Officers and other teens. What the hell did she expect her son to become when his MOMMA did hard time and by her conduct, is still street hardened. This is a very hard post to make because it requires us to look at the less glorious side of humanity. Many of these kids have NO FATHER, a PARTIAL MOTHER and have been released to the streets to find any notion of a family. Eventually they find a new family, one to replace the one they never had.They are called GANGS and guess what kind of kids these families produce, GANGSTAS, yes ? So, with this post I offer a thought ; The next time we see or hear news of crime in Arlington, ask yourself, would you have made better choices if you were given the start in life these kids experienced ? If you can honestly say that you could have mastered ABANDONMENT by the time you were 5 yrs old, you should be writing books, doing Talk Shows or at least, visiting The Duval County Jail and offering your insights. Hats off to Angela Coreys Office for giving me this opportunity. BTW - Me and Angie dont eat fried chicken together and talk politics if you know what I mean but she does believe in second chances.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 21:25:44 +0000
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