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Last Friday, when most of their friends were hanging out somewhere enjoying the Caesar Chavez holiday break from school, a group of mostly Latino Oakland middle school students were sitting in a classroom at Havenscourt Middle, taking in lessons. The subject? Gang Awareness. The teachers: high school students from an East Oakland youth advocacy group called Teens on Target (TNT) sponsored by the Youth Alive! anti-violence, youth leadership organization. 

The hope was that the middle school students would be more likely listen to an anti-gang message coming from fellow students only a few years older than they would from teachers or other adults. 

It was difficult to determine how successfully the message got through. Most of the issues were presented in black-and-white, right-and-wrong tones, with an emphasis on reinforcing the message over and over, by rote. In an adult crowd, it would have quickly grown boring. But perhaps this is the best way to present things to middle school students, giving them information in healthy overdose, so that it will be available later on when the students come across situations in the street, or when they grow old enough to be able to make independent evaluations. 

Again and again, the message was that while gangs may have some positive aspects, joining them leads irrevocably on a downward path. 

“I had a friend who I went with to last year’s Caesar Chavez celebration,” one workshop leader said. “He was dancing around. He was cool. Then he got shot. This year, on Caesar Chavez Day, he was in a wheelchair. He couldn’t do nothing. It’s crazy out there.” 

And Danny, a teacher and adult coordinator with TNT and an Oakland Tech graduate, talked about his background “banging” in the streets of Oakland. “A lot of the gangs started out righteous, but then they turn out all bad,” he said. “They used to unite the community, but now they only divide us.” Talking about how the gangs get youth in trouble but their families end up having to bail them out, Danny said, “it takes only 33 cents to buy a bullet, but if you get shot with it, it costs $40,000 for the hospital to take it out. Who do you think is going to pay for that? Your gang homies? No, it’s your family who is going to pay.” 

The only issue Danny wouldn’t discuss is what gang he used to bang with. Asked by a student, he said, “I don’t get into that.” 

Writing on the blackboard, workshop leaders asked their younger counterparts to call out positive aspects of gang membership, with answers ranging from money and access to drugs and ladies. On the opposite side of the blackboard, the TNT students then wrote down a list of negative results of gang membership, drawing lines from the second list to the first to show how the bad things negated the good. 

“If you get jumped, they’ll take your guns, and your money, and your drugs, so you won’t have any of that,” one of the TNT workshop leaders explained. “And if you’re a guy and you get put in jail, there go the ladies, ‘cause you won’t have any ladies when you’re in jail. And death cancels out everything.” 

TNT leaders also asked the middle school students to call out descriptions of first gang members and then teachers, showing how each group is stereotyped. 

The TNT anti-gang workshop was part of an all-day “Si Se Puede! Peace And Unity in Our Barrios” event at the East Oakland Middle School sponsored by Por La Paz Network, a coalition of individuals and organizations organized to stop youth violence in Oakland’s Latino community (“si se puede,” one of the slogans of Chavez’ United Farmworkers organization, roughly translates to “yes, we can”). Billed as a peace summit, the event held separate hour-long workshop sessions all day for parents and students. Parent sessions focused on such topics as Promoting The Inclusiveness of Men in the Prevention of Community Violence, Immigration Options, Children and Sexuality, and the Juvenile Probation Process. Youth workshops were held on such topics as Making Graffiti Political, The True Essence of Hip Hop, STDs and STD Prevention, and Parents Have My Back (“an honest conversation about our relationship with our parents”). At lunch, participants sat on the lawn at Havenscourt’s inner circle and listened to local Latino rap and hip hop groups spit and sing out anti-violence and community pride messages. 

More than 200 people participated. 

Event organizers said that much of the coordination of the day’s activities was done by the youth themselves. 

Angela Gallegos-Castillo, one of the adult coordinators of the event and recently hired as assistant to the Berkeley city manager, said the Por La Paz Network is a loosely based coalition made up of more than 15 community-based organizations, representatives from county and city governments, and the Latino Advisory Committee on Crime, an advisory group to the Oakland Police Department. Working under the overall coordination of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, the group is being funded in part by a five-year grant from the Centers for Disease Control. 

“The purpose of the network is to develop a continuing conversation around violence prevention in Oakland in the Latino community,” Gallegos-Castillo said. “We’re developing a cadre of parents and youth to provide community leadership and to take action against violence that can be sustained over the long run.” 

She said that the group was not merely providing an anti-violence message, but was looking to build positive community development as well.