Harper High

So this week I listened to the episode of This American Life that covered Harper High School in Chicago.  It was an education concerning gangs to be sure.  I was really struck by the fact that the kids didn’t have a choice as to whether or not they joined a gang.  This is vastly different from the idea I had living here, safe in my north Idaho bubble.  My vision of gangs was largely a product of the mid D.A.R.E. program and exposure to other mid 90s anti-gang propaganda delivered to me at school.  In this 90s model, as Ira Glass pointed out, gangs are something you join and are initiated into, a conscious choice to choose evil.  I think I imagined the joining of a gang to be not unlike signing articles of piracy in the 17^th century, you know, candles, a dark room, guy with an eye patch and no teeth stands in the background with some sort of blade in his hand.  The truth that kids are simply “in a gang” because of the block they live on was astounding to me.  It seems that this being in a gang by default is something new because in the bit about Terrance Green, Terrence’s father seemed to have the same view of gangs that I did.  In point of fact, he seemed unwilling to accept that his son was a victim of something so large he couldn’t escape, the new reality of gangs. 

It is strange to me that even though most of the kids aren’t in the gang because they want to be, the violence level is still high.  I guess you have to play the part…  Personally I can’t even imagine walking to school, knowing that I have to cross through a neighborhood of enemy territory where I might be shot simply because I am a male of age.  I still can’t wrap my mind around that concept.  It sounds like something from a post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel - marauding bands of territorial teenagers with guns looking for someone to attack, tribal warlords vying for territory and power. But this isn’t a Sci-FI novel, and there is no hero standing up to them.  Even the policeman they interviewed seemed largely hopeless.  I have to wonder what the solution is, and at the same time I have to have a bit of a dark chuckle at my own schools attempt to limit gang activity.  We have policies like no wearing of bandanas and other such rules that just seem silly in light of the reality the kids at Harper face.  As if bandanas were really the issue, and as if there is anything even remotely close to Harper in north Idaho.  I do have to say that if there were a gang problem in north Idaho, the death toll would probably be much higher because kids around here know how to shoot.  I found it fascinating, in a dark sort of way, that even though kids around Harper grow up around guns, seem to be saturated with gun culture, they still can’t shoot straight.  The radio spot pointed this out, and even said that kids prefer the 15 round clips because they have such a hard time hitting anything.  I think I remember them saying too that most drive-bys are bloodless.   It makes me wonder if they are missing on purpose.  One of my friends from Germany, whose grandfather was forced to fly for the Nazi’s during WWII, told me that his grandfather purposefully missed allied planes because he didn’t want to kill anyone and he knew that the Nazis were bad.  He also knew that the Nazis would kill him if he refused to go on missions.  Maybe this is a similar situation.