A friend pointed out this article to me. It’s a follow-up to the violence that touched my neighborhood on the 4th of July. The religious tone of the article put me off a bit…but I shouldn’t be too surprised. For years the area has been a Catholic stronghold. Getting past that, the message was positive.
“De la O says the neighborhood speculation is that the shooters are not from the area (police agree) and that they mistook the local kids for gang rivals. He has helped organize two neighborhood meetings since the shooting to help parents, police and school officials head off more problems. After putting out the gang fires 10 years ago, he says, no one is in a mood to let things go. After all, he says, there could have been half a dozen dead on the Fourth of July.”
“This kind of stuff hasn’t happened in a long time but people are still scared,” he says. “There’s a feeling like, ‘Here we go again.’ But we don’t want to go through that again. That’s why we need to educate parents to see if their children are being put in harm’s way by how they dress or how they behave or the kids they hang around with. We have to get shoulder to shoulder again, like we did 10 years ago.”
“The message is: ‘We are a community; we work together; we will rise to the challenge; we will get it done.’”