Reality will defeat area gangs
Published 8:59 pm Wednesday, March 2, 2011
No one in Selma is naive enough to believe that our hometown, our city does not have a gang problem. We do, and far too often their presence appears on the front pages of this very newspaper.
When these gangs, these parasites on our community, wage war on one another or simply feel like flexing their muscle, people are hurt, crimes are committed and a little bit of our city’s beauty is tarnished.
In an area where there is high unemployment, such as Selma and Dallas County, it is easy for gangs to recruit. They promise money for selling drugs and committing crimes. They provide a sense of belonging and an opportunity to be part of a team or organization.
What they fail to tell those they recruit is that there are few long-term benefits to being part of a gang other than the potential for arrests, convictions and jail time. They fail to mention the risk of death and very few families are built around a stable career in a gang.
This week, former gang members from throughout the United States converged on Selma to share with some of our city’s youth just what being in gangs is all about. They told stories of spending time in jail. Losing friends to gunfire and seeing families torn apart.
These former convicts, citizens who have turned their lives around, came to our city to help us solve our problems and to help us win our war on gangs. And, we can’t thank them enough. These messages of reality are, in the long term, the best weapon we have against those who would rather tear our city down than build it up.