Family is the answer

This is an article entitled: “Chicago working to prevent repeat of deadly weekend”

Here’s the crux of the article:

On Friday, Mayor Richard Daley took the unusual step of calling together more than two dozen officials from the police department, schools, social service agencies and religious groups for a City Hall summit on the violence. Afterward, he said it was just the start of a continuing dialogue about how to combat violent crime.

A fired-up Daley blasted the gun industry and called on parents and adults to do their part by intervening to help troubled youth and by working to keep others on the right path.

“I don’t want people to wait for Mayor Daley to call a meeting. I want you to call a meeting in your home with your children and loved ones. I want you to go next door and talk to those children next door. I want the parents of the block to say ‘This block will be free of violence,'” he said.

It is key for children to be occupied in after-school or other programs so they stay out of trouble, especially when they’re not in a classroom, Daley said.

Before the meeting, some participants talked about possible solutions to end the violence.

The Rev. Bruce Wellems, pastor of Holy Cross Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the city’s South Side, suggested that adults need to get to know the young people in their neighborhoods.

“I think they have to step into the community and accompany these kids,” he said.

And Tio Hardiman, executive director of CeaseFire, an anti-violence group, said young people need help finding alternatives to the streets.

“We need to go right to the corners and find out what some of these young people want to do, identify some employers that are willing to hire maybe 30 from this neighborhood, 30 from another neighborhood and try to get them hired somewhere so then we can get them off the corners.”

Only loosely is family mentioned. Daley says the citizens should call meetings in their homes with their children and go next door and talk to those kids as well. It’s going to take more than a family meeting to stop the violence. What we are forgetting as a society is that the family drives everything. Your family life will largely dictate how you interact in society. Dare I say that none of these violent kids have good family lives at home? It all starts and ends with the family.

It’s going to take more than one family meeting. These parents have to get involved daily  with their kids, (and that starts when they’re babies and continues until they leave the house to live on their own). They need to be proactive parents whose main concern is their children. These families (and we all) need to take back their own children; raise them themselves; teach them morals and ethics; teach them others before self. All of this can and should be taught in the family first. No family is perfect, but reliance on God and actually trying to be a good family will do a lot more for these kids.

Daley’s initial reaction was to call officials from the police department, schools, social service agencies and religious groups. He wants more after school programs, more jobs created, more legislation against guns. (Do I have to mention that it’s not the guns pulling their own triggers? It’s the idiots behind the guns who haven’t been taught the value of a human life. There are plenty of gun laws already in existence. Do you think the criminals are going to obey any more laws that are created?) You can create as many after school programs as you want, but a bad kid is a bad kid whether he’s on the street or in an after school program.

Community programs are nice, but their purpose is to be babysitters to our kids. They are not teachers of morals and ethics. Family is the answer. People of Chicago–don’t rely on government to raise your kids. Do it yourselves and you’ll virtually wipe out the violence that’s plaguing your streets.