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off-kilter
It began with a girl
with my swiss cheese memory, i couldn't remember if it was a gang here in chicago or manila or los angeles that it all started. but they said it all began with a girl.
two guys wanted this girl. they both belonged to rival street gangs. one got ballistic when he learned the girl chose the other guy, and fired the first shot. after that, street violence, drive-bys, and all that urban violence became history.
history repeated itself with another school shooting feb. 7, on the steps of roosevelt high school on kimball and wilson streets in chicago. two boys from schurz high school and a girl from roosevelt were shot. two more boys, probably from roosevelt, are in custody for questioning. the hospitals said the injuries of the three teenagers who were shot are not life-threatening.
roosevelt high school is two blocks from where i live. i had just spoken with other 16-year-olds last weekend during our monthly praisefest at st. catherine laboure church in the suburb of westmont. i asked about their new year's resolutions and what yfc meant to them.
we're not saying that feb. 7's shooting is the start of another gang war. the three 16-year-olds could be mere bystanders. then again, it could very well be the start of a gang war.
and then again, the fight prolly didn't happen because of the girl. it could have been caused by several of several things, and we don't know what they are. (girls soon also formed their own gangs. unlike the male gangs, you can quit a girl gang -- when you become pregnant.)
ahh well -- there's never an idle day in the city. u used to throw severe words against each other, and that would be a major fight in high school already. this incident -- minor compared to many other similar school shootings -- shows us how much more work we as CFC-Youth for Christ need to do. five teenagers got hurt because of preventable violence had the shooter -- at large as of this posting -- had peace instead of violence in his or her mind. perhaps you may even already know someone like the shooter.
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