Hillarysworld

Hillarysmygirl16 · Administrator

Teenage Girls and Gangs (CASA Resources)

Kbentleyis · Diamond

HMG, where do we get the answers and solutions? It breaks my heart reading the disadvantages and threats towards our children. And, this is all over our country. There isn't enough good guys.

Hillarysmygirl16 · Administrator

Kbentleyis wrote:

HMG, where do we get the answers and solutions? It breaks my heart reading the disadvantages and threats towards our children. And, this is all over our country. There isn't enough good guys.

We have to get them before the streets gets them. Both boys and girls need mentors Race/gender not important. We need people to give their time to our young folks because they are our future.
Sometimes former gang bangers can become a positive force I know because I was one.

thebword · Super Moderator

Great article. Thank you for the link.

mslas4hillary · Moderator

You know what I love? Now that these females are starting to start gangs of their own everyone is so scared. They think only males are in gangs and that is ok but when a female is in a gang everyone better watch out and break them up.

I am in no way promoting gangs of any sort I just see a double standard. Same thing with female murders people thinks it is so terrible that a woman is capable of doing something like that but the big strong males are expected to because they have so much anger.

-- Edited by mslas4hillary on Tuesday 28th of July 2009 08:31:29 PM

Hillarysmygirl16 · Administrator

mslas4hillary wrote:

You know what I love? Now that these females are starting to start gangs of their own everyone is so scared. They think only males are in gangs and that is ok but when a female is in a gang everyone better watch out and break them up.

I am in no way promoting gangs of any sort I just see a double standard. Same thing with female murders people thinks it is so terrible that a woman is capable of doing something like that but the big strong males are expected to because they have so much anger.

-- Edited by mslas4hillary on Tuesday 28th of July 2009 08:31:29 PM

Actually girl gangs are no where near the problems that male gangs are girl gangs tend to fight more with their hands while their male counterparts use weapons. Girls in gangs need as much help as the males. Gang life is not an easy one but to alot of these kids that is the only love or acceptance these kids have ever had.

Alice Paul · Platinum

Clearly, no one really seems to be giving these young women the support they need to grow up with a healthy sense of themselves at a YOUNG enough age. This doesn't all just "happen" These young women have backgrounds of neglect, abuse, seeing their mothers abused and neglected OR simply are the victims of poverty. Families with single moms with no money don't get to supervise and attend to their children the way they may want to. There's also the factor of parenting education and the lack thereof.

There is so much bright potential being thrown away, while bankers get bail outs. Somehow, I think if a woman were our president issues like this would begin to be addressed in a more effective way.

When I see young women with so much to offer this world disrespecting themselves and throwing away their future this way it says a lot to me about how they have been treated their whole young lives.

This is an issue for all women..our issues of course never seem to go on the front burner. We claim to care so much about our "sisters" but, where is the funding for and the programs that might make a difference to these girls when they are little? Hillary had programs that worked and many got squelched in the larger cities where they would have done the most good!! She had wanted to expand on those programs...lord knows we need that.

We are not separate from these girls. They ARE part of the larger experience of all women. It's our responsibility to act on their behalf. I don't want to see another generation of inner city young people going down the tubes while everybody talks about how much they "care"

I want to find out what more I can do. I did volunteer work in Chicago a long while ago in Cabrini Green and let me tell you something...I wondered many a day where god was. Read "There Are No Children Here" That book is old and STILL we have all the same old problems.

Obama did jack squat for those young people when HE could have acted and done so much more!

I think we have to give very young children the tools they need and maybe that means helping these families to move from these neighborhoods for a time. I do not know all the answers on this and am SO open to suggestions as to the best and most effective way to act for the benefit of these young people.

Hillarysmygirl16 · Administrator

Alice Paul wrote:

Clearly, no one really seems to be giving these young women the support they need to grow up with a healthy sense of themselves at a YOUNG enough age. This doesn't all just "happen" These young women have backgrounds of neglect, abuse, seeing their mothers abused and neglected OR simply are the victims of poverty. Families with single moms with no money don't get to supervise and attend to their children the way they may want to. There's also the factor of parenting education and the lack thereof.

There is so much bright potential being thrown away, while bankers get bail outs. Somehow, I think if a woman were our president issues like this would begin to be addressed in a more effective way.

When I see young women with so much to offer this world disrespecting themselves and throwing away their future this way it says a lot to me about how they have been treated their whole young lives.

This is an issue for all women..our issues of course never seem to go on the front burner. We claim to care so much about our "sisters" but, where is the funding for and the programs that might make a difference to these girls when they are little? Hillary had programs that worked and many got squelched in the larger cities where they would have done the most good!! She had wanted to expand on those programs...lord knows we need that.

We are not separate from these girls. They ARE part of the larger experience of all women. It's our responsibility to act on their behalf. I don't want to see another generation of inner city young people going down the tubes while everybody talks about how much they "care"

I want to find out what more I can do. I did volunteer work in Chicago a long while ago in Cabrini Green and let me tell you something...I wondered many a day where god was. Read "There Are No Children Here" That book is old and STILL we have all the same old problems.

Obama did jack squat for those young people when HE could have acted and done so much more!

I think we have to give very young children the tools they need and maybe that means helping these families to move from these neighborhoods for a time. I do not know all the answers on this and am SO open to suggestions as to the best and most effective way to act for the benefit of these young people.

There are no children here was an excellent book and very true but the problems are worse now.
Children here aren't really children because often times they have to fight their way in and out of gang terrioritory. By the time a typical child in the ghetto reach five they more likely know a family member who had been shot or murdered.
I was 11 years old when I joined a gang I was jumped in so there wasn't anyone brave enough to disrespect me. My father was a gang member and so was his father before him. When I first joined a gang it was much different. The gangs were less organized and there were no large streetgangs.
Now its different most gangs are still unorgainized but there are two gangs that have over 200,000 members nation wide. The Crips and the Bloods started out as two Los Angeles street gangs and now they are nationwide from LA to NY and everywhere in between.
Poverty is just one aspect of why kids join gangs. So many parents are on crack or in jail that these children have no one.

Alice Paul · Platinum

The drug problems were a huge issue when my step mom worked in inner city schools in Little Rock. How are you going to give a first grader homework when no one IS home to help? What chance does that child have to advance with the serious problems they face at home? Often food money, clothes money etc and even electricity money goes to drugs and these kids are expected to do the best they can. They are little adults, you are right...

It's no excuse on any of the rest of us. The problems are HUGE and they are HARD problems but, we have to face up to them. I think part of all this is there is no real organized total effort to address it because everybody wants to look the other way. Yes, we all have problems....but, most of us are SO SO much more fortunate than we even know...everybody can do one thing.

Gangs don't "love" anybody...but, they provide a "home" where one is lacking...despair and lack of knowledge about ones own potential lead to drug use. These society ills are passed down generation to generation. Why? There is a lot of talk and little intervention. The people who ARE trying are working on a shoe string and have to go begging for funds to keep any current programs even going at all.

This is one of my biggest disappointments with Obama. This is the chance having him in office to bring these issues front and center..to fund programs, to get the schools fixed so they aren't cesspools of disrepair, to get parenting education classes to YOUNG people so they know what it means and requires to be a parent, to help young women understand their worth and give them opportunities...so much can be done and won't be.

A lot of people care about these young women...a lot of people WANT to help. But you have to have funds and direction...where is this administration on these issues? Why don't these communities ask this man to stand for them??? DEMAND he stand for them instead of kissing his butt.

He's got the power now to begin to turn the ship around...why won't he use it for the good of this country. Ghettos should not even EXIST in this day and age with all the wealth we have! Mind and soul numbing poverty should not exist in a country this wealthy not even during hard economic times...cost effective ways to help CAN be put on place if ONLY someone in power makes this a focus issue and not just a sad news story...Obama can stand up there and defend a university professor but, he cannot speak to these ills one time in any serious way??? Who has a voice the professor or the people living in poverty??

These young women are bright *if you can survive in a gang you are no dummy* and can give this world SO MUCH. But first THEY need to know they can do something better and that WE will back them up. No wonder young poor women of color don't think the women's movement backs them up. It doesn't put money where it's mouth is and never have we had a govenment that really did it either though I DO think the Clintons tried over the years.

Where is this administration on these problems and issues? I haven't heard a peep.

Hillarysmygirl16 · Administrator

Alice Paul wrote:

The drug problems were a huge issue when my step mom worked in inner city schools in Little Rock. How are you going to give a first grader homework when no one IS home to help? What chance does that child have to advance with the serious problems they face at home? Often food money, clothes money etc and even electricity money goes to drugs and these kids are expected to do the best they can. They are little adults, you are right...

It's no excuse on any of the rest of us. The problems are HUGE and they are HARD problems but, we have to face up to them. I think part of all this is there is no real organized total effort to address it because everybody wants to look the other way. Yes, we all have problems....but, most of us are SO SO much more fortunate than we even know...everybody can do one thing.

Gangs don't "love" anybody...but, they provide a "home" where one is lacking...despair and lack of knowledge about ones own potential lead to drug use. These society ills are passed down generation to generation. Why? There is a lot of talk and little intervention. The people who ARE trying are working on a shoe string and have to go begging for funds to keep any current programs even going at all.

This is one of my biggest disappointments with Obama. This is the chance having him in office to bring these issues front and center..to fund programs, to get the schools fixed so they aren't cesspools of disrepair, to get parenting education classes to YOUNG people so they know what it means and requires to be a parent, to help young women understand their worth and give them opportunities...so much can be done and won't be.

A lot of people care about these young women...a lot of people WANT to help. But you have to have funds and direction...where is this administration on these issues? Why don't these communities ask this man to stand for them??? DEMAND he stand for them instead of kissing his butt.

He's got the power now to begin to turn the ship around...why won't he use it for the good of this country. Ghettos should not even EXIST in this day and age with all the wealth we have! Mind and soul numbing poverty should not exist in a country this wealthy not even during hard economic times...cost effective ways to help CAN be put on place if ONLY someone in power makes this a focus issue and not just a sad news story...Obama can stand up there and defend a university professor but, he cannot speak to these ills one time in any serious way??? Who has a voice the professor or the people living in poverty??

These young women are bright *if you can survive in a gang you are no dummy* and can give this world SO MUCH. But first THEY need to know they can do something better and that WE will back them up. No wonder young poor women of color don't think the women's movement backs them up. It doesn't put money where it's mouth is and never have we had a govenment that really did it either though I DO think the Clintons tried over the years.

Where is this administration on these problems and issues? I haven't heard a peep.

I have been saying this for years now Obama doesn't give a damn about black people he thinks we are prone to violence. He doesn't give a damn about the hood the hood was only a place where he and his black middle class friends could exploit. Yes the biggest exploiters of the people in the hood are black middle class. Funny how they complain when its others that do the same thing. Another funny thing for the amount of stores that Middle Easterners own they do not exploit the poor neighborhoods.

Building 4112 · Moderator

Promoting self respect, and self esteem in young girls is what is needed. And we need to get the young girls to help other young girls, and be the model for change.

Make no doubt about it, America will never be free of poverty, and ghetto's. And yes, we've tried to get those in poverty to help themselves, but the more I read, and see, that isn't working. And like you say drug abuse is a big factor. All nations, including USA want them where they are, in the ghetto, and poverty stricken. Oh, they might tear down the ghetto, like what was done in New Orleans, but it just springs right back up in the cities.

Just sit back and watch what the Urban Renewal Czar has in mind for changing our slums. Obama never had, & doesn't have a program that removes poverty! He might banish the poor from one place to the next, but that's not the solution.

-- Edited by Building 4112 on Friday 7th of August 2009 01:09:02 PM

Alice Paul · Platinum

When urban planning is taking place I have never understood why housing for the poor is not more evenly dispersed! Spread it out for heavens sakes and sprinkle this housing in mixed neighborhoods. See, that won't work because it's always a case of "Not in my back yard" If you had mixed housing instead of tons of gated communities with the poor all housed in ONE section of a city then there is less chance for gangs to take over and for crime to run as rampant as the policing would HAVE to take the over all safety of the neighborhood more seriously. It has happened that way in certain cities around the world.

Society is still in many ways segregated though that is changing in some minor ways it's a very, very slow process and not enough people are on board. I do think the poor are marginalized and when these young people see that their communities don't care about them and that's all they know all their lives it is hard to instill self esteem from a young age.

Trillions in debt now...how do you all think these communities are going to fare? I see crime sky rocketing as it always does when we are in debt and cannot provide for the poorest among us. Do you think Obama was considering while doing all this spending how the least well off among us will be affected? ALL of us will be affected by neglecting these problems on such a large scale!

Hillarysmygirl16 · Administrator

Alice Paul wrote:

When urban planning is taking place I have never understood why housing for the poor is not more evenly dispersed! Spread it out for heavens sakes and sprinkle this housing in mixed neighborhoods. See, that won't work because it's always a case of "Not in my back yard" If you had mixed housing instead of tons of gated communities with the poor all housed in ONE section of a city then there is less chance for gangs to take over and for crime to run as rampant as the policing would HAVE to take the over all safety of the neighborhood more seriously. It has happened that way in certain cities around the world.

Society is still in many ways segregated though that is changing in some minor ways it's a very, very slow process and not enough people are on board. I do think the poor are marginalized and when these young people see that their communities don't care about them and that's all they know all their lives it is hard to instill self esteem from a young age.

Trillions in debt now...how do you all think these communities are going to fare? I see crime sky rocketing as it always does when we are in debt and cannot provide for the poorest among us. Do you think Obama was considering while doing all this spending how the least well off among us will be affected? ALL of us will be affected by neglecting these problems on such a large scale!

Your right. The Tenants of Allegheny County sued HUD about 15 years ago and the courts ordered that the Public Housing Projects be totally remodeled and that the Authority buy houses in upper class and middle class neighborhoods. No one wanted us to move in but they couldn't stop it legally so they turned to harrassment. The program still exists but NO One wanted to move into a neighborhood and face the kind of harrassment that the people who did move out into these beautiful homes.
I refused to move because frankly I didn't want my kids to have to deal with that and the apartments in the Housing Projects were unbelievablely beautiful. I desegrated highschool as a teen and didn't want to do that to my kids.