jstol3's Blog

As I tend to go back to this I most likely always will. So here goes...If we as parents would step up to the plate, and raise our children with morals and values, you know, the "old fashioned way" and take more interest in their upbringing and be active in their lives, perhaps there would be less crap going on. I realize this can't change the world overnight, but I also realize there isn't an easy answer that will either. I am sick to death of hearing the ever so famous rebuttal that oh I am a single parent, oh, I have to work, oh, I this and I that. No, I am not a single parent, however, while my husband served the country, I was a single parent. I do work. So, I've somewhat walked in some of those shoes. I am active in my childrens lives. There have been times where I didn't work, yes, I could have been working, but I made sacrifices so that I could be home with my children, available to them, and to their schooling, education, etc. We did without, we lived without the extras. Did my children survive? Most definitely. So, America, it is time to throw the excuses out, and live up to the expectations of being a parent. If you didn't want the responsibilty of being a parent 100% of the time, then perhaps you should have considered how much time and devotion it takes. Having children is more than a tax deduction.

redhotz -

You make an excellent point. Respect for others and for the law begins at home. The point of my blog is that when the home fails the community and the society as a whole must be willing to step in.

Response Cont:

need for city funds. It’s time that city and community leaders stopped living in a state of denial. Perhaps they need to take a page from the war in Iraq and the use of the surge approach.

Over several decades billions of dollars have gone into the inner city for education and various other forms of development, and the only thing the city has to show for its efforts is a long list of mismanagement and failure. I don’t recall anyone in the inner city asking for more police to patrol the streets. Nothing will change until people in the community take the responsibility to change it themselves.

redhotz-You are very right. I was watching a story about the LA Gangs the other day (no not one from the 90's, one from THIS YEAR). Most of the kids involved do not have any positive male role models (i.e. no hard working fathers in the home) so they turn to the older (O.G) gang members to be their father figure. If people cannot see that we are in the middle of some of the largest gang related violence we have seen since the 90's then they are mistaken! The news does not want to talk about "gangs" because it may make the city "look bad" just like they don't tell people there is at least one armed robbery a day at the Plaza, or there is a shooting in Westport every night...well, what looks bad is our murder rate. The scared community needs to understand the police WILL protect them the best they can if they come forward with information...not to mention...isn't their an anonymous TIPS hotline?! As for the people in the community that say "it's none of my business” well good then...hope your kid don't get shot walking home from school, after all it's none of your business!

I am almost siding with some of these radicals that say build a 50 foot wall around it all and don't let them come out and they can kill each other...but that is not the answer either. People that should stop having babies with 3 or 4 different men and never have a male in the home needs to be stopped!!!

Real change, doesn't take a president to do that for you. Dedication. discipline and hard work could change a community. Dedication to applying ones self in school, discipline easy money is dirty money, that simple. You want to play the game some day you will die, every mother who knows "earning boy" is helping out financially instead in the books, knows one day he could die, (Choice). Finally, hard work if so many mexicans work hard at what ever job they can work and survive with little or no education, then the black core that has some education should be able to work hard just the same. Or become slaves to your drug dealer. Choice is the answer and the solution, start preaching it, apply it the principles, and watch how it works.