Making Peace

I happen to be the guest speaker this week on WonderCafe.ca (how the heck did I get this gig?). It's a revision of the article I wrote a couple of years ago for the Washington Post about Donis Arias, who I knew from my work with D.C. Barrios Unidos. He was killed in 2003.

If you're interested...

Pre-dawn raids by Toronto police last week led to the arrest of more than 60 people alleged to be involved with the Driftwood Crypts street gang. “Project Kryptic” also took dozens of firearms and more than $1 million worth of illegal drugs off the streets.

But will the raids make the communities where they occurred any safer?

Massive anti-gang sweeps can be effective in the rapid dismantling of a gang’s organizational structure and in the seizing of weapons. These raids may stop the violence for a period of time.

Yet sweeping raids such as “Project Kryptic” also have the unintended effect of labelling everyone caught up in them as a criminal, whether they are in fact guilty of a crime or just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And for some young people, the “wrong place at the wrong time” just happens to be the neighbourhood where they and their family live.

Labels don’t work for any of us. Human beings are never as simple as that. And they work even less when you’re a young person struggling to find your identity in a neighbourhood filled with gangs, poverty, and violence.

Donis Arias was one young person who wasn’t easy to label.

Read more here...

[photo from http://www.barriosunidosinc.org/]