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By Lakur B.
Violence has affected my life because of all the things that are happening for no reason at all. Sometimes I wonder if anymore of my family will get killed. My uncle got shot just for going outside to get some air. He saw people trying to take his car. When he told them to leave his car alone, they shot him four times. In 1999, my cousin got shot. He was riding with some family members going to their house. He was sitting in the car when someone was doing a drive-by. I wonder will that happen to me. One time my cousin got robbed, and the people were going to kill him over money. My cousin and two friends got stabbed really badly by my sister’s ex-husband’s brother. I wonder did he care about their life. That’s how violence affects my life.
To me, the causes of violence are that people see other people killing and they think that’s okay. The other reason is the movies that people are making. In the movies, the cops do not stop anything. That’s why people like to kill. Also, when people are trying to fight your cousin, you are going to help him, or her fight. Sometimes the color of people’s skin can cause a fight between two races. If someone is just moving into a neighborhood, and walking down the streets with the wrong color, the gang bangers will jump on him.
What I can do about youth violence is that I can stay after school. What I can do is stay at home for the rest of the day to study or do homework. I can stop nieces and nephews from watching violent movies. I can make some posters at school with violent things on it with an ‘x’ across it. I can stop people at my school from getting violent with each other. It all begins with me. I know how violence makes families feel and I don’t want to cause someone else to have to experience the violence I have.
One of the causes of youth violence is because of parents not being involved in their child’s life. When the parents are involved in their child’s activities and social life, then they are less likely to become involved in youth violence. When the parents don’t try to get involved in their child’s life, but treat them wrong the kids start to envy them and others. Many kids feel like they aren’t having fun in school; they tend to drop out of school and enter a gang. They enter the gang because they feel the gang cares about them and will be more interesting than school. Child abuse at home could be another cause for youth violence because when a kid is abused they seem to shut down. They think the world is against them so they turn to violence for the answer. Bullies are another cause of youth violence because they feel disgusted about themselves so they fight other kids so they can feel good about themselves again. They look in the mirror and wouldn’t see a problem so they beat up anyone for the fact that they think they’re perfect.
As a young person, I feel that in order to stop youth violence I could participate in social reform groups. By joining a social reform group, I could find the reasons why young people get involved in youth violence. When I find the reasons for youth violence, I could learn how to keep young people like myself from participating in youth violence. Young people get involved with violence because they think it will make them feel better, but it doesn’t. Violence only makes your life more miserable. In order to decrease the size of youth violence, I could go to different schools and talk to the students about youth violence and how there are other ways to take stress off their mind. Young adults get into fights because they think nothing will go wrong and it doesn’t matter what they do to other people, but it does matter. Another approach I could make to stop youth violence is by giving a positive example to younger kids and show them not to be interested in violence.
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