Youth Violence Puts School Safety In Jeopardy

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MICHEL MARTIN, host:

I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.

Later in the program, how do American elementary and secondary schools stack up against schools overseas? We'll talk about this in a few minutes, and the answer may surprise you.

But first, we're going to talk about another pressing issue for students, educators, and parents in some parts of the country, an issue that for some students has literally become a matter of life or death. We're talking about the trip to and from school.

Three weeks ago, a Chicago high school honors student, Derrion Albert, was beaten to death on the way home from school. He was unwittingly caught in an after school brawl, a brutal killing that was captured on a cell phone camera and prompted a hasty trip to Chicago by top Obama administration officials.

But Chicago is not the only place where after school violence is taking a toll on young lives. In Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, two teens were killed and three wounded in an after school neighborhood dispute. One of the dead, a 15-year-old innocent bystander, according to the police, and a relative of the victim.

Unidentified Woman #1: He was coming home from school, and he was in a crossfire that's what happened. He's a good boy, you know, he go to school everyday. He's an A student.

MARTIN: And the Washington Post has featured an angry campaign by columnist Colbert King demanding more security for students who are being routinely attacked on their way to and from school. We wanted to talk more about the risks faced by students on their way to and from schools. So, we've called upon the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Colbert King.

The Reverend Jackson has been riding the bus home with students from Christian Fenger Academy. That's the school attended by 16-year-old Derrion Albert, who was killed three weeks ago, and Colbert King has been writing about the security risks faced by students simply traveling to and from school. Gentlemen, I thank you both so much for joining us.

Reverend JESSE JACKSON (Civil Rights Leader): Good morning.

Mr. COLBERT KING (Columnist, Washington Post): Good to be here.

Rev. JACKSON: Very well.

MARTIN: Reverend Jackson, why did you decide to ride the bus home with students the other day?

Rev. JACKSON: To make visible the need for safe passage. We guaranteed safe passage to children in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, and we must do no less today. And it means several levels of intervention. One, where you have guns and drugs in and jobs out, those are the zones that have a big factor here.

But also, you need not only a kind of intervention to stop the violence, this physical violence, but intervention into the trauma children suffer from seeing so much violence into anger and fear management. But (unintelligible) job training and jobs. And lastly, beyond that, they need a sense of future hope and raised expectations, and they are denied that as well.

MARTIN: And of course, the incident that got everyone's attention has gotten national attention. But, Colbert King, you've been writing about something that I would call a story hiding in plain sight. For the last couple of weeks, you have been writing with mounting rage, I have to say, about students who attend something called Friendship Collegiate Academy in Washington, D.C.

You wrote about the, quote, "paralyzing fear of children who sit in class knowing that trouble waits outside at the end of the day," unquote. What exactly is the trouble awaiting students attending this charter school?

Mr. KING: Well, not only at this charter school, but at other schools, and that is the core question that what happens when I leave the building in the end of the day? And what's happened with the kids at Friendship Charter School is that because of who they are and the way they look and the way they dress, they are accosted by this group called the 37th Street Crew that will come up to them and demand to know where they live and they intimidate him or they beat him up.

And as part of even the gang initiation, to get into that group, you have to beat up a kid at Friendship Charter School. But it's not just Friendship Charter School, it's happening in other schools as well in the Washington area. And the problem is that the kids sit in class, and it's hard to concentrate on the studies knowing that they're going to take their lives in their own hands when they leave the building at the end of the day.

The question, of course, is wanted more police protection so the kids can have safe passage, as Reverend Jackson said. But it goes beyond just that question of security or police protection, and that is those individuals that goofs the gangs that prey on these kids, and that's a larger problem because we're looking at kids who are for better or worse being raised not by parents, not by mothers and fathers, they are being raised by the streets. And they are the ones who are not only causing the problems, they are problems for themselves. And they need the kind of intervention that we haven't seen in this city and probably in a lot of other urban areas as well.

MARTIN: And in your column, you quote from a letter sent to you by the Charter school's board chairman, Donald Hensley(ph), wrote will we have to have a murder like the one in Chicago before anybody listens. What about that? Have the - and you wrote about the fact that the head of school, the parents, the chairman of the board, all have reached out to city officials, police officials for help in protecting the students, what's been the response?

Mr. KING: Well, here's the response. Don Hensley wrote the letter and said do we have to have a murder like in Chicago? Well, we just had it. We had it on Tuesday. So that's the response, because we have meetings all the time. You have the police coming together with the teachers and with the principals and political leaders. And they all would decry the problem and they ring their hands and they all get together and say let's develop an action plan. But their plan never gets really executed.

MARTIN: Can I just clarify one thing, why are the students at this particular school - and I understand your point, it's not just a school - but why are these students a target? In Chicago, it was noted that, you know, kids are kind of crossing neighborhood boundaries to go to schools outside their neighborhood, and for whatever reason that seems to spark something. Is that the case here?

Mr. KING: Well, it's a part…

MARTIN: What (unintelligible)

Mr. KING: …because charter schools, in this particular charter school, it attracts kids from all around the city because it is such an excellent school. It's not a neighborhood school in the sense where kids have mandatory attendance zones. Parents elect to send their kids to this particular charter school because it is a very good school with very dedicated teachers and parents. And those kids then become sort of lightening rods. They represent, without trying to, they represent something to the other kids in the neighborhood that causes them to fuel resentment.

And they are in an unfamiliar turf, if not their own turf, and when they find out under questioning that they don't live in that neighborhood, then they become - they get attacked. But, again, it's to single out Friendship is to suggest that this is the only place where the problems exists, and that's not the case at all.

MARTIN: If you're just joining us, you're listening to…

Rev. JACKSON: (Unintelligible).

MARTIN: Yes, reverend, hold on a second. If you're just joining us you're listening to TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm speaking with Washington Post columnist Colbert King and the Reverend Jesse Jackson about violence plaguing students on their way to and from school. Reverend Jackson?

Rev. JACKSON: Now, we've become quite dismissive of poverty and in estimations as a fact that (unintelligible) poverty is kind of pooh-pooh language today. But in Chicago, there are 12,000 displaced homeless children who wander, about 1,200,000 around the country.

And I remember when Jennifer Hudson's mother and brother were killed, and I went out to Englewood one night, and was having prayer around 11 o'clock, and I saw about 35 young boys (unintelligible) gang bangers at 11 o'clock at night coming up on me. And one made a face and he began to cry and say, reverend, I want to get well but that (unintelligible), then he began to cry and then the two big ones came and said, reverend, when we get out of jail, we don't have a job.

It occurred to me if they went down the street to Englewood School, they would got five meals a week. If they go to jail, they get 21 meals a week. And so, they've become anesthetized to a certain kind of pain. And so, poverty is a fact in Chicago, 85 percent of the children get free lunch but they also need breakfast and dinner as well.

In the area where this crisis took place, kids - the library is closed and they don't have laptop computers. So, they get online homework assignments, but they don't have the infrastructure for an education. So, I think in some sense, since this is a community where President Barack Obama did cut his teeth on community organizing, this may well could be ground zero for an urban policy that looks at these new dimensions and deals with real mental, emotional and physical reconstruction.

MARTIN: Well, go ahead, go ahead Colby.

Mr. KING: Let me just add a factor, though, in the case of the Friendship Charter Schools kids, most of those kids, the overwhelming majority of those kids, also come from poverty backgrounds. They are poor kids, low income kids. The difference in their lives - and I can tell you - the difference is somebody is sending them to school, somebody has elected to send those kids to that school.

I've been over to the school, I've seen the parents driving up, waiting for their kids, escorting their kids into the building, waiting to get them home. They have an adult in their lives who care and who are making an effort to see that they get the best possible education. But these are not rich people, these are not middle class families. These are individuals, kids who are blessed with having individuals who care about them. And the flip side of that are the kids who don't have that.

Let's take Tuesday, the shooting incident that occurred. The mother of one of the shooting victims who died was interviewed by the Washington Post. He's a member of the 37th Street Crew. The mother would not give her name for fear, out of fear that she might be attacked. Now, this is the mother, fear of being attacked by the gang in the area. That's what we're talking about. And if we don't concentrate on the other side of the problem, not just the kids and the kids who are causing problems, or the kids who are victims of problems, but the individuals who had these kids, who are not able to raise these kids properly, because the streets are raising the kids.

MARTIN: Whose responsibility is this? And gentlemen, we only have about a minute and a half left, which I'd like to divide between you. So, you know, Colbert King, where do you want to start, I mean, where does it start?

Mr. KING: Well, it's collective. It starts with the community, and that's broadly speaking. It's not just - the intervention needs to take place at all levels of the community. We don't have enough of the clergy involved. We don't have enough of our social services agencies involved. We don't have enough mentors involved. We don't have enough fine, upstanding citizens who want to go across to the other side of town and get involved. Unless we have a collective intervention by the community, I don't think we're going to see the results because the breakdown has occurred in the family and there's nothing to step in to supplement or complement what's happened.

MARTIN: Okay, Reverend Jackson, final thought from you. Where does it start in addressing this? You've all sort of presented a big plate here.

Rev. JACKSON: Children are not born in gangs. That's driven by a certain culture of fear and permissiveness. And that's why the Marian Wright Edelman approach, which is more comprehensive, must be given more credence in this discussion. The levels of trauma, the fear and anger management, job training and job for the parents are in some sense of hope. And I submit to you that what made the Derrion Albert killing so spectacular, it was on TV, 400 children were shot last year and 40 were killed and so this is just another day in the life of the war zone. These are Baghdad, Iraq-type numbers and there's a sense of emergency and we must now adjust to it. I hope that we will use this occasion, or these occasions, in Washington and in Chicago, to take a hard look at the various levels of intervention required to break this cycle.

MARTIN: Reverend Jackson, we have to leave it there for now. The Reverend Jesse Jackson joined us from Chicago. And Washington Post columnist Colbert King joined us from Washington, D.C. Gentlemen, thank you both so much for speaking with us.

Mr. KING: Thank you, Michel.

(Soundbite of music)

MARTIN: Just ahead, we'll talk about how American schools stack up against their competitors overseas. That's coming up next on TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin.

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