I say we all pray for the kids everyday. I believe in Peace. We are all one. Jesus would want us all to have activities that are contructive to expressing Thy Father's Will of Harmony and Order on His Sacred Land.

All our young ones have special talents and gifts. The Young ones were given this world, they didn't make it. Until Christ comes back, we all have got to love this great land and all of it's Beautiful People. I Love All Yall. I Believe in White, Red and Blue Power. God Bless This Beautiful Country. The USA. It is a beautiful Place, Y'all have been very kind to me. I Love America. God Bless Green Power.

I've recently done some studies on juvenile crime. Among the research that I did on statistics of juvenile crime and "codes of the street," was a very special non-fiction book that described lives of incarcerated juveniles in East LA. Once given a voice through writing, these juveniles in the book discussed and shared stories of their lives when they were in the "outs," of the people in their gangs who were supposed to be their "brothers," and about the crimes they committed that lead them to the correctional facility. These juveniles also talked about kind of lives they wish they lead, and the paths they wish they took instead of the paths that took them to jail. It was quite an inspiring book, one that made me believe that most anyone can be rehabilitated to correct their course in life, and one that made me realize that the justice system nowadays is really about harsher punishments regardless of age. So, if you know of anyone who is thinking about or has already taken that long painful path and has second thoughts on it, please have them read "True Notebooks" by Mark Salzman and to reconsider their choices in life. You may be saving their life, and probably yours.

I went to school with Alex, before I was expelled I had talked to and hung out with him once. After being away from the area for a while I came back to hearing about his death. After talking to some friends they told me they knew through other people who the murderer was and that the police required them to tell what they knew. But they didn't, for whatever reason they didn't this made me mad. It makes sense looking for belonging and "respect" but these are the wrong ways to go about it. Since then I've met many other people in gangs or associated with people who have been in or still are in gangs and it makes me sad. Gangs don't bring anything good to our area, it makes it less pleasurable to live here and all in all it's a joke. Even originators of gangs "Stanley Tookie Williams" are doing what they can to abolish what they created, unfortunatly it's not that simple. It's "cool" it's "respect" it's something other than growing up. I compair the gang mentality with Peter Pan and Nevernever land. These people don't want to grow up, they think and say they are, but they're just keeping that school bully mentality and spreading it to a neighborhood, city level. Then people ask, what can you do about it, well the solution seems to be to join a gang. Either that or work hard at school and other things that seem to not be cool, important, and aren't easy. I am glad that mountain view police are participating in programs that involve teenagers doing interesting thing with the city that keep them out of trouble. But it's not easy when your world is surrounded by this disease. If it's not red, it's blue, if it's not blue it's red, and if you're neither your a victim. And what do these gangs bring to our areas, violence, death, drugs, prostitution, and in many cases teenagers having children (not only because of gangs, but more frequently in gangs) I only wish there was a better solution than just following the procedures and waiting for something to happen before the police do anything. Which is what they have to do because every person is innocent until they break the law. I've noticed as traveling up and down California newspapers in different cities reporting lower tolerance levels and even doing raids of potential and actual gang hangouts and houses of people involved and I wish we could bring that to this area. I wish they cracked down and instead of ticketing people for rollerblading in a downtown area or skating on a sidewalk that is posted not to be skated on I firmly believe that the police should be out looking for these people. It's sad because I witness and know of places that are gang hangouts and there is nothing that the police around here can or will do without some action to react to. They can watch, but they can't invade. Yet the way I see it is if they invaded and convicted these people of their crimes, or just confiscated their weapons and drugs and whatever they can find then watch these people more closely then they could prevent alot of what is happening. Now I don't want to portray this area as a bad environment because in comparison places like East Palo Alto and some parts of Sunnyvale and San Jose are alot worse, but why is it so hard to prevent much of this happening at all. I don't understand how alot of this stuff is still going on when police and the government are placed here for our protection and to prevent these things from happening. Now I am just a citizen and resident of this area, I do my bese to keep my life in check and be a caring human being but there really isn't much i can do other than report what i see and cross my fingers hoping that something will change. Something will prevent the graffiti of marking territory, something will happent to get rid of the violence, something will happen other than these people killing themselves off. It's all to sad that it has to be this way.

A book i recomend is Autobiography of an LA Gang Member by Sanyika Shakur aka Killer Kody or Monster. One of my highschool teachers had me read it and do a report for him as a special assignment because he could tell that it was the type of thing i care about. Maybe one day we as humans will realize there is a higher reasoning other than fighting and all come to agree on it. But until then we can only do our best to influence those around ourselves.