In some cities you see kids being walked or driven to school; a tire swing boxed in a white picket fence. In the local newspaper you see a house listing: “Beautiful 3 story home! Safe neighborhood, great school district, close community!” In other cities, some are not so lucky; kids are struggling to get to school or daycare safely; a suffering school district and gang ridden streets make this town hard to thrive in. Nowadays, people neglect to realize how slums across the country are suffering now more than ever. The number of those living in poverty in America “nearly doubled between 2000 and 2013, to 13.8 million from 7.2 million” and continues to rise today (Semuels 2015). The question is this: How can we help our ghettos get to a safe and healthy state and keep the progress consistent? Through education, community togetherness, assisted help, and law reform, ghettos will begin to heal and living conditions will elevate.
The most important elements to a prospering town is education for the people, especially the youth. Studies show that “child poverty adversely affects student achievements” and “increases in child poverty rates during the last 10 years translated into reductions in average test scores” (Ladd 2012). One way to help kids in ghettos receive proper education would to initiate educational reform policies. For example, “macro-economic policies designed to reduce unemployment, cash assistance programs for poor families, tax credits for low-wage workers” would help create proper educational groundings to let the youth grow up with the knowledge and skills necessary to grow (Ladd 2012). If these young kids gain the right to education, not only will their minds grow, but so will the community. But one thing standing in the way of kids and their education is gang violence.
Thousands of young adults join gangs to fit it, to gain protection, and to make drug money. A first step to ending this youth violence trend would be to heighten law enforcement as mentioned in the paragraph above. Next, South Side Chicago would need to provide special programs to the youth designed to educate them about gang violence and how to get out of a gang or avoid them. The “Youth Promise Act” to be funded. This act would
Post the economic crisis in America and the recession during the years of 2008 and 2009, the country saw a great increase in poverty and worsening of living conditions of Americans. Currently, almost 50 million of fellow Americans are living in extremely bad conditions under the poverty line which means earning less than $11490 for a single person or $23550 for a family of four people. That’s about 1 in every 6 people in this country are living under poverty. A person living in this country on minimum wage which is $7.25 an hour also cannot pull himself out of poverty even after working 40 hours a week.
In low income areas and large cities, gang violence is a major problem. Gang violence in Chicago is reaching alarming proportions. Day by day they are increasing rapidly. None of the solutions work effectively to eliminate gangs. However police departments and other government officials are trying their best to provide the same security as other areas in chicago. Thousands of innocent people are dying each year from these ill mannered thugs. In today’s societies gang activity is everywhere, whether it includes violence, drugs, death or any illegal activity. There are several aspects which are causing these violent activities. In past years the police department and the mayor designed different strategies to stop this violence. From my perspective better education and scholarships are the only way to reduce gangs and other illegal activities.
In society today, there is a major problem We live in a society where gangs are taking over our neighborhoods in numbers. It is the responsibility of the individuals to part take in getting their neighborhoods back under control. Gangs are becoming a growing problem in American society. More young people are turning to gangs to solve problems in their lives or for acceptance. When youths join gangs, they drop all their social activities with school, family, and friends. However, individuals ruin their lives, and the chances of them having a decent education, and a successful life by getting involved in gang activity.
The streets of Philadelphia are rapidly becoming a home to violent acts and random homicides. Innocent lives are taken every day due to the strong presence of gangs, and the streets are run by unruly groups of fearless young adults. Gang violence in Philadelphia is a major issue, and the citizens will never be safe until gang prevention occurs. Gang prevention is not a simple task, but with the right resources available, it is possible. Gang violence is a problem that will contribute to the collapse of Philadelphia, and it has yet to be solved throughout many generations. With gang violence on the rise, the best solution to gang violence is to educate the youth and parents about gangs and use family support to prevent the creation of gang
The correlation between gangs and drugs has always been an issue for the United States government. Major cities often overlooked the problem of youth gang violence, thinking it was only a 1960’s trend. Sixty years later, gangs and drugs continue to be a problem, but in an increasing number within urban, suburban and rural areas in the United States. People may characterize this problem with words such as violence, increase drug activity, and delinquencies, but not many seem to see the bigger picture. Lack of interaction, collaboration, and strategies from law enforcement, youth centers, businesses, churches, and political icons are increasing gang violence and drug related offenses in major cities. In such cities as Chicago, minority groups are the most vulnerable to joining a gang, which then leads to an involvement with drugs; they are faced with barriers – lack of family support, poverty, segregation, unemployment, etc. An incident that happened in Chicago history is the closing of the Cabrini-Green Project, where people involved with gangs had to find a new home, scattering gang-members throughout the city, and eventually leading to their spread and growth.
According to the Chicago Police Report’s CompStat within the year of 2014, there were 407 murders citywide. Chicago, Illinois is one of the United States biggest cities, with one of the highest crime rates. Chicago is also known for their large amount of gangs including, youth gangs within the city. According to the Chicago Police Department, they defined by their department, a gang is, “An organized group with a recognized leader whose activities are either criminal or, at the very least, threatening to the community” (Chicago Police Department, 2014, para.1). Chicago has one of the highest population of gang’s members in the city with about 150,000 gang members. If a city has an extreme number of gangs, then youth members just come with its nature. According to the National Forum of Youth Violence there were 1,109 young kids that had been being shot. Out of the 1,109 kids, 216 of them resulted in losing a life (Emanuel, 2010 p. 10). If we were to have more recognition towards this issue, then we would see a major decrease in youth gangs along with the violence that comes with the gang lifestyle.
This article describes a project in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood that is designed to reduce gang problems, including violence and illegal drug activity. The Little Village Gang Violence Reduction Project was a comprehensive, community wide program designed to reduce serious violence in Chicago’s gang-ridden Little Village neighborhood. The main goal of this project was to reduce the extremely high level of serious gang violence, first at the individual youth gang member level, and then at both the gang and community level. The project appeared to reduce arrests for violent crimes, serious violent crimes, and drug crimes, but did not have an effect on arrests for property crimes or total arrests.
In order prevent high crime rates in our urban neighborhood we must stop those who corrupt the minds of the youth. According to Gang Prevention: An Overview of Research and Programs by James C. Howell “the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (a nationally representative sample of 9,000 adolescents), 8 percent of the youth surveyed had belonged to a gang at some point between the ages of 12 and 17 (Snyder and Sickmund, 2006)” and “6,000 eighth graders conducted in 11 cities with known gang problems found that 9 percent were currently gang members and 17 percent said they had belonged to a gang at some point in their lives (Esbensen and Deschenes, 1998; Esbensen et al., 2010).” In other words, children from the ages 12 and 17, middle schoolers,
In order to come to a solution, an understanding of different aspects of the problem is required. Gangs are not a recent trend. “While they have existed in some verifiable form in the United States since the 19th century, the 1950’s showed the worst juvenile delinquency statistics the world had seen (Siegel and Welsh, 2011).” Major cities such as New York enacted curfews to help curb this issue, however at the time not many studies had been performed to realize the widespread activity and cause of such delinquency rates.
Urban planners and community actors must prioritize the agency of individuals and capitalize on existing social capital in order to achieve well-being for all members of a community. Today, some projects exhibit such community conscious practices that have seemingly positive effects on the community. The East Lake community in Atlanta, Georgia began large scale revitalization of a neighborhood previously known as “Little Vietnam,” due to obscene rates of violence and gang activity (East Lake Foundation). The community suffered from many common ailments of poverty-stricken neighborhoods: high crime rates, poor education systems, and lack of access to jobs. Under the leadership of a few key actors and the dedicated work of the East Lake Foundation,
The top one percent of the wealthiest people in the United States is not only getting wealthier and widening the gap between them and the middle class economically, but they are widening the gap in terms of health as well. The film “In Sickness and In Wealth” took a look at the correlation between economic inequality and the overall health of people. To do this the film looked at different economic classes in examples shown by the lives of individuals in Louisville, Kentucky.
Child poverty in America is often overlooked because compared to other nations and the majority of the population it is minimal; still, this epidemic affects over 14.5 million United States children and families. Martin Luther King Jr. once said “America is going to hell if we don’t use her vast resources to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life” and at the rate America is going, poverty becomes a bigger issue each day. Impoverishment includes risks of health, family instability, lack of employment, lack of education and lack of proper nutrition; poverty maters, and the shortage of worth given to this issue is enthralling. In the 2014 census, more than 15.5 million children in America were considered poor, with more than two thirds in working families with low income. Compelling data of the ample costs of poverty among children to our country 's economic well-being and shows that policies to reduce the poverty rate among children must be a central part of efforts to build a fit bargain for the 21st century. Although the cost is too high to make all families happy, children should be the most essential given that they are the future of our great nation. Policies such as: Ending Child Poverty Now and the children’s Defense Fund, are being implemented to formulate a better future and put an end, if not reduce, the effects this outbreak. Each year half of the poor population costs the nation trillions of dollars just
“White families are given the benefit of the doubt when allegations of abuse and neglect arise” and blacks do not get the benefit of the doubt ever… (Post 2). The article “The Truth About Child Abuse and Poverty” by Dawn Post talks about how the average person overlooks the contributing factor of racial biases and socioeconomics that determine which families get put under the child welfare program. There are more colored families in the foster care system than white families and Post touches on a few points on why that is. She states that whites are given too much leeway, which I completely agree with. Post and I both agree this needs to be thought about more and the system needs to be evened out. Clearing the biases and giving everyone
Poverty is a worldwide social issue that has affected many people in many different types of ways. It can be defined as the state of not having enough money to support the needs that you have. In the book “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck, the okies were treated really bad when they first arrived due to people seeing them as someone who just came to steal the things that people there already had. The term okie means scum, we can see how people were already making fun of them without them doing anything to them in the first place. As you can see, poverty played a role in the way that okies were treated when they first arrived, because they were migrants and everyone saw them as people who were going to end up doing bad things. Poverty
Poverty within humanity has been a pressing social issue for centuries. Historically, wars have been waged and governmental regimes toppled because of the clash between wealthy aristocracy and the poor working class. One of the most notable of this type of dispute is the French Revolution. The French Revolution sparked country across Europe and the world, giving rise to the formation of new political opinion of the poor. Famous authors and politicians during the time, like Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke, sparked an emergence of differing opinions from those commonly held prior to the revolution on the topics of human nature’s impact on poverty and original sin. In today’s day and age, this difference of opinion is still prevalent within