Prevent Gang Violence

Posted by Samuel Friedman in English 1 · Giknis · D Band on Friday, May 18, 2018 at 11:26 pm

In post #1, I talked about about how gang violence is affecting individual neighborhoods and how it is a burden on our society. I also did some research on those topics and talked about it in the blog post. In post #2, I reached out to someone who is dealing with gang violence first hand and interviewed them. I analyzed what they said and elaborate it throughout my post. However, In post #3 I did something that will hopefully cause change to occur. For post #3 I constructed a website that informs the public on what a dangerous thing gang violence, how to protect yourself, what to do and not do, how to act in a gang violence related situation, how they can help, etc...

youth.gov logo

During my research I came across many helpful websites, but one website that really had great solutions to the easily fixable problems of gang violence was made by an organization called youth.gov. They believe that the roots of gang violence issues is the youth members. A quote from them is “To prevent youth from joining gangs, communities must strengthen families and schools, improve community supervision, train teachers and parents to manage disruptive youth, and teach students interpersonal skills.” I personally agree with their methods because the decision to be in a gang comes at a young age and it is important to stay on a good path throughout your whole adolescence. I also really like this website because their intentions and mine are the same. We both have similar goals to prevent gang violence from harming our society and children.

LAPD police badge

In addition to researching youth.gov, I did research about the Los Angeles Police Department. There goal is to protect us from gang violence and life threatening danger. On their site, it was really helpful that they made a list of what regular everyday citizens can do to help stop gang violence. Four items on the list are “Set up a Neighborhood Watch or a community patrol, working with police”, “Make sure that all the youth in the neighborhood have positive ways to spend their spare time, through organized recreation, tutoring programs, part-time work, and volunteer opportunities.”, “Clean up the neighborhood! Involve everyone - teens, children, senior citizens. Graffiti, litter, abandoned cars, and run-down buildings tell criminals that you don't care about where you live or each other. Call the local public works department and ask for help in cleaning up.”, and “Clean up the neighborhood! Involve everyone - teens, children, senior citizens. Graffiti, litter, abandoned cars, and run-down buildings tell criminals that you don't care about where you live or each other. Call the local public works department and ask for help in cleaning up.” I chose these four in particular because once completed they can actually produce real change. I also chose this because I also had a list of what citizens can do in my website.

Me making my website.

After researching about others whose goals are to stop gang violence and what their methods are in doing so, I decided to share my opinion and inform the public on my methods of stopping gang violence. That is why I wanted to do a website because I feel as though it is the best way to learn a lot of information in a convenient way. The important part is that the public gets the information. My experience creating this website was mostly good but at some times a little frustrating. There were times when I did not know what to put on my website in order to keep it relevant and well explained. I was effective in making a change because I got my information out into the world. I obviously can’t force anyone to do something, but I think that it is really important to have the option to inform yourself of potential danger.

Reflecting on this project now, I felt good doing it. I have felt a larger connection to this project since I have been working on it for so long. I have witnessed my knowledge and ideas for this project grow and change through the past few months. This project has let me learn about myself that if I devote a lot of time to a topic, it grows and improves so greatly. What I feel like I could have done better was the my planning out. My ideas were growing rampantly and if my schedule had a little more structure, then I could have saved a lot of more time. What still needs to happen to fulfill a change is that my website needs to be viewed and used by a lot of people and it needs to spread awareness. In conclusion, my agent of change was a successful product of my first two posts.