16 — Wednesday, January 20, 1999 - North Shore News Jumping in to violence Fram page 10 showed a videotape of a young man being jumped into a gang with core members, age 14 to 25. The new core inember allowed himself to be brutally beaten by about six gang mem- bers ina school yard. The j jump in took phce in an affluent part of Houston. Knox called this particular group an “equal opportunity” gang with Black, Caucasian, Asian and Hispanic members. One of the gang members worked as a computer pro- grammer in Houston. Girls can choose to be “beaten senseless” or have sex with a number of the boys in the gang to juin, said Knox. “To me, Yd probably chose the beating.” said Knox. Knox said young people in gangs typically believe they know all the answers and have expectations about responses. He said thar if a gang member gets an unexpected response, he becomes corfused and doesn’t know what to do. Knox used the example of a teacher in a classroom where a gang affiliate begins swearing. The expected response would be to send the student to the Office. Knox suggested allow- ing the student to swear until he kas un out of things to say. The teacher can then say thar the students “swears very well but his sentence structure sucks... We need to study sub- ject-verb agreement.” The student stays ins the classroom and has not achieved his goal of being kicked out. “Now who is in charge of the class?® said Knox, The next time the student starts swear- ing he can be sent to the prin- cipal, but his peers will not look up to him. “Gang members don’t have plan B.” He said that what gangs usually do better than parents is enforce boundaries of behav- jour, Through rules, uniforms and physical punishment, a core or affiliate gang, member knows Chis boundaries which Knox said that if a parent sends their teenager ‘ho is associated with a gang some- place else to live, the teenager's gang problem is not solved, but usually transferred to another area. Knox said the gang subject does not need to be scary. He said communities can solve gang problems. Knox told the News after the talk that the public should know when violent incidents are gang-related. He cautioned reporters about publishing the names of gangs. He said that if the name of one gang is pub- lished and not others, some- times the other gangs will com- mit violence to compete with press coverage. Dr Coilla Gyovai DENTIST ANNOUNCES NEW HOURS [WE T TH [FR T SA | " Every second Tuesday and every other Saturday is ott ** Open 1 monday per month. First work day of the month noon - Bom. New patients are welcome =z") 929-7499 | had is good, murder is success THE following is an excerpt from a recent talk bv gang expert Mike Knox about why a young person chooses to be involved with a gana. What if you were unable to achieve success? What ifevery effort that you made, everything vou ‘did ended in failure: at home, in the education system, financial- hy, in your social fife? If vou experience filure like that over a period of time, my guess is chat you would have one of two responses. ither you would give up, in which case, you would have to believe you were a failure in the past, vou are currently a failure and you are going to be a failure in the future. ... There is no light at the end of the tun- nel. Pm going to kill mvself. That's what people do that conumit suicide. Or if you have a healthy mind, a strong desire to com- pete, and vou really wart to be successul, you would reject the notion that failure is your fault and put the fault on someone or something else. . These young men and women who join gangs have strong minds and strong wills. They want to be successful more than anything else in the world. They don’t know how to do it. And they consequent- ly blame the system for their iailites. 11’s 4 nazural response, --You believe that you live in a system that is designed to prevent your success. Now what would you do? Would you continue to hold true to the values of that system? Vould vou continue to believe in that system? F think not. You would discard those values, discard thar system. You would no longer listen to those people that are associated with that system. You would create s¥stem of VGuF Own, a systent of success that you can be in con- trol of. As it happens, you are good at failure. If failure becomes your standard of success then when I get in trouble at school and get suspended or arrested by police, then I'm building my resume. I'm doing good. Good becomes bad and bad becomes good. Kindness, courtesy, compas- sion, things the system holds as attributes, believe are weaknesses. you aggression, brutali- the things: society thinks are bad, you believe are good... Have vou heard in news reports, stories similar to when a young thug is charged with the aggravated robbery or mur- der of an individual. He rebbed somebody ai gun-peint. The person gave up the money and he short him anyway. You'll hear the newscaster or whatever say that guy has no soul, no heart. There is no rea- son for that, Thai is unex. plained violence. What if, on the other hand, you believe that bad is good and good is bad. What is the ultimate failure, consequendy the ultimate success? The tak- ing of another human lite... KitchenAid Self Clean Range Or Kitchenaid Single. Wail Oven ..$40:) Kitchendid Over: -The-Range Microwave Oven Kitchensid Dishwasher or KitchenAld Cookstop $503) KitchenAid Washer EEZPD kitchenaid washer & Dryer Pair COLGNY HOME FURNISHINGS Saving your money since 1969 985-$738 1075 Roosevelt Crescent, North Van (2 blocks behind Avalon Hotel) Mon-Thurs 9-5:30, Fri 9-9, Sat 9-5:30, Sun 12-4 Trade mack ot KITCHENAID. US.A. 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