| Excerpts from CHAPTER 1 - A Fiery Wake-up Call | ||
"Most of us here don't care about these kids as long as they shoot each other." The fear and anger infecting this mother's heart were paralyzing my city of 386,000 in 1992. Shocked by gang ruthlessness as the major cause of 87 homicides, and terrified of home invasions on dark streets, Fresno was in a freefall to hopelessness. Night after night on the evening news and day after day in our newspaper, gang violence was killing our children. Senseless arguments over turf or colors or drugs were erupting into automatic weapon's fire crackling through neighborhoods. Our police were outgunned and undermanned, so the calls for law and order were impotent to effect change. California was building prisons faster than ever, but not fast enough to make our streets any safer. With 14,400 vehicles stolen in 1992, Fresno had also earned national notoriety as the car-theft capital of California, second only to Newark, New Jersey in vehicles stolen per capita. So it came as no surprise to Fresnans that our city was ranked No. 277 out of 277 in a national survey of desirable places to live. That was the way we felt: ranking last was well deserved. From watching television and reading our daily newspaper, the Fresno Bee, we had come to believe that our city was substandard and that gang members, who were either crazy or irretrievably evil, were a major cause. Why do they do these terrible things? Why can't the police control them? Where are their parents? What are the schools doing? Will my car be where I parked it? These questions kept demanding answers, but we didn't have any... Serving the mostly older congregation of the Calvary Presbyterian Church, located in a changing Fresno neighborhood, was Pastor John DeSanto, who felt called by the Lord to start a youth group of neighborhood kids. A Coffee Cup Ministry was started to reach out to the continuation school located across the street. From the youth met there... the Calvary Vocational Placement Program was begun one month before the Los Angeles riots. The basis of the program appeared to be unique: If you were going to form a youth group of street kids, you had to also prepare them for, and find them jobs. Otherwise, they would never leave the gang lifestyle, the only source of income they knew. ...it wasn't until a hot August day that I was introduced to three gang members in the program. For the price of a pizza lunch, I began learning from José, Ricky, and Pe about the Other America. Pe is on our staff today and has taken over 175 other gang members off the streets of Fresno in the last six years... ...when I asked the group, "Why do you people join gangs," José replied, "I and my friends joined a gang for spending money." He wanted money for a hamburger, a video or a T-shirt. Too young for a job, and with no allowance or money for doing extra chores, José didn't see any legitimate ways to earn it. To sell some drugs or steal a car stereo appreared to be the only way in his neighborhood for a poor 14-year-old to get some cash. "And everybody needs money to live, " he said. But where were his parents? Why didn't they help out? When I asked him about his mother, I was stunned to hear, "I don't know who my mother is. She lives somewhere here in Fresno, but I've never met her." Only later, brought home to me by the hepatitis death of his 39-year-old aunt, did I realize that José's mother preferred drugs to her son. Drugs were his father's problem, too, José said. "He's been in and out of jail for drug possession and sales all my life. In fact he's getting out from a one-year jail term tomorrow." When asked if his father had any work skills, José replied, "I don't know of any." Several months later I found out that José had had a stepmother who was raped and murdered by his uncle, who now is serving 25 years to life in state prison. José lived with his 70-year-old grandmother, who was receiving welfare for caring for him. As I drove away from this heart-stretching lunch, I began to pray and I began to cry. Not one to cry easily, I asked myself why I was choking on my tears. José's story and what little the others said were sad enough, but as I examined my feelings, that was not why I was crying. Instead I was surprised by rage. I was crying because I was furious. If I were raised in the "family" José was raised in, I would be so hurt, so angry that I would want to kill everyone in sight! What ordained that my soul should enter this world in a family of two people who loved me, stayed together, gave me hope and a future including graduate school, and taught me about Jesus and his love, and what ordained that José's soul should arrive in that hellhole devoid of all hope that he has to call a family? I was angry and crying over the unfairness of it all. Thoughts of my mother's suffering by oppression and poverty and of my father's exhortations to improve this world flashed through my mind. Jesus' invitation to the children to come to him and his dire warning if we lead them astray were convicting me. From what I experienced at lunch, I knew that these kids don't stand a chance of coming to Jesus or even finding a meaningful life unless someone gives it to them. Somebody has to do something! These young men have no decent role model of what it means to be a man and so they go to the streets to learn from other abandoned and abused youth. It is the blind teaching the lame to see, and the lame teaching the blind to walk. Most of all, I knew that my Jesus wouldn't just let them bump and stumble. Could I? These kids had helplessness and hopelessness written all over them. But Another inspired hope among the destitute almost 2000 years ago. As God planned it, my devotional reading that August had brought me to this passage from Isaiah the prophet: |
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Isaiah 61:1-3 |
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