YOUTH OUTLOOK

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A Revolution of Peace

By Charles Jones

Date: 11-07-96

Experts attribute the sharp decline in violent crime nationwide (including a 15 percent drop in youth homicide) to tougher laws and more police. But could it be that young people are looking for new ways to find meaning and hope in their lives, and that violence is losing its edge? Charles Jones, a reporter for YO!, a newspaper by and about young people published by Pacific News Service, looks at why it feels safer on the street.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Lately there has been a silent revolution growing across the American monopoly board -- a revolution of peace. Yes, peace.

Youth violence has dropped and continues to drop, at a slow but steady pace. I walk the streets daily, waving and smiling (unforgivable in '93) at youngsters who are unidentifiable to me but for their color (black -- same as me) and age (young -- same as me).

Some big-time mediaheads and politicians attribute the decrease in violent crime to get-tough laws like "Three Strikes." Minister Louis Farrakhan recently credited the Million Man March for the drop in black-on-black violence. But despite the fat cats and big fish giving themselves credit, the only people who truly deserve congratulations are the thousands of young people who survived to be a different statistic. If death has taken on new meaning for these young people, then life must mean something new as well.

When the violence started in the late eighties, the question from on high was "Why has this happened, and how can we stop it?" Well, you couldn't. The only ones who could stop the killing were the killers themselves. Why now? My guess is that things got so bad they got better.

I say this because I myself once carried the banner of self hate and senseless violence, until the death of a childhood friend. What changed my mentality was the fact that he was killed by one of our "friends," over a dollar. Life has always meant more to me than money, and a dollar isn't money -- it's change. I think things got so bad for a while there that a lot of young people had an experience like this, that turned them away from what they were becoming.

And what a time for change -- a moment when the prison industry is the fastest growing business in the country. And now, all over the country, the young black men they are building the prisons for are choosing to stop the violence. Somewhere some prison warden must be crying, "Why has this happened, and how can we stop it?"