Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

China Keitetsi: It is important question because for so many kids, they think it's cool to be a gangster or to kill. I can tell you that it's not cool to kill. I know many child soldiers. I know I was myself one from a child soldier and when you get to know the other side of life; the other side of life where there is no killing; the other side of life where there is no blood seen by your eyes. When you get to know the beauty of being down to earth and not do such things because you want to be cool, it's a beautiful life. I think we have to teach them to know, to let them know that there is a life without violence. And to teach them that everything they can achieve, what they think they can achieve with violence, they can achieve without violence. I think the most important is we have to be very concerned and put enough money, enough funding, so that you rehabilitate them; give them three years, give them two years, but make sure they are living okay so that they get to learn, to think over. And maybe if it's possible, because sometimes it could be very difficult for someone to leave the gang and still living in the same city, maybe he was afraid they would come and kill him. If we have enough resources, we could take this very person to another city, to another state, so that it’s away from his group and rebuild him as a new person.

by China Keitetsi

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Constantin von Barloewen: The violence in the cities, the violence in the conflicts of the suburbs, in the "banlieus" in France during the last months, as well as in England, in the cities, the violence in the USA is a question of misguided urbanization, of the non-integration of ethnical and religious minorities in the whole social political process, in the working life. Urbanization nowadays is a very complex field, and the problems there cannot be solved by governmental violence. It resembles a volcano which is covered and will break open in another place. Like a spring or well where you can only hold back the water artificially, but a few hundred feet further on it will bubble back to the surface anyway. A misguided urbanization of non-human ways, without any green sectors, a urbanization that is only controlled by the wish to maximize the profits in architecture which has been carried out in the western industrialized cities for a long time. These are the conditions for urban violence. Only if there is a way of urbanization under human aspects it will improve. I think of Frey Otto (?) e.g. who has now deservedly won the price "prior imperiale" (?). He has always tried to practice a human architecture, no abstract or technical architecture of high achievements, but an architecture under human aspects. As well e.g. Oskar Niemeier, with his urban planning in South America, or Roberto Bolemarx, the great landscape and garden architect, has tried in all his forms of landscape and garden projects to give cities a human face to avoid the inner violence. Problems in urbanization are nowadays often unsolved because the green sector as a balance, as the lung in an urbanized world is not considered enough.

by Constantin von Barloewen

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Cornel West: Gang violence is rooted in lack of opportunities regarding quality education and lack of opportunity regarding job with a living wage, lack of love in too many other families and the lack of cohesion in too many other communities. There’s a structural and institutional dimension that is fundamental that has to do with the war priorities of a society that’s willing to spend more time and more money and resources on prisons than on education. There’s a structural and institutional dimension that has to do with refusing to create jobs with a living wage, for the lower echelons of the labor force. And, as an individual and personal dimension it has to do – it’s too much self-hatred, too much self-violations, not enough love and respect in families, not enough love and respect in neighborhoods. The structural and the institutional dimensions and the personal and individual dimensions go hand in hand; and we wipe out gang violence to a significant degree when we provide those high quality jobs, high quality education, high quality healthcare and also enable families and communities to hang together in such a way that moral love and self-respect and self-regard become available to people, especially young precious poor people.

by Cornel West

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Dedi Baron: Answertext will be available soon.

by Dedi Baron

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas: For me gang violence is just symptoms of a deeper problem. What I mean is there is a need to root out the cause of gang violence, and by rooting out the problem, we provide a proper intervention based on the roots - respond to the problem based on the roots. And, if the roots of the problems are in the lack of access to education by the youth, then perhaps it would be necessary to make alternative solutions by providing - encouraging the youth to go back to school. In this way, gang violence will be minimized. But, most importantly, I think we should bear in mind that gang violence is just a symptoms of a deeper problem. I think we should consider all that. And, if we know the root causes as I said of the gang problem - the deeper problem, that’s the time we can design strategies of trying to solve in such a way that gang violence may be minimized or better if it’s terminated because one of the reasons why there is gang violence is there are lots of youth who are not in school who are being attracted in the streets and maybe perhaps more efforts from the social services program of its government should be invested on those kind of problem intervention. And, that’s the only way to respond to the problems according to its needs.

by Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Dritëro Kasapi: Hi, Stephanie. I feel that young people engaging in gang violence don’t engage in it because they don’t place importance to education. I think they never had a chance to consider education as a possibility, as an alternative because of the lack of access to education. I think it is creating education accessible to everyone is really important in fighting gang violence. But an education that actually takes each individual seriously, is aware of the background of each person, takes that into account and creates the journey in the education system. It's creating from the circumstances and possibilities and the background of each individual, rather than seeing the education as something that is just offered to collective of young people, regardless of who they are. I think that a lot of young people can’t relate to that kind of educational system. They feel that they don’t belong there. So I think, first, make it accessible and then second, a reform in how the education system is built, and the basis of this reform is not to see the education as something that is directed generally to young people but actually an education that is built and constructed around the individual, and I think that will lead to, in long term, to drastic decrease of gang violence and other kinds of delinquency.

by Dritëro Kasapi

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Eliane Potiguara: I wonder how to be happy in this confusion, this violence, hatred, this rage? How to tackle all this, how to help people to stay happy, because we only have one life to live? I keep asking myself: "Oh my creator, oh mighty cosmic power, oh my ancestors, oh my family members birds, oh my family members stone, forrest, animal. How can we stand this violence? How can we maintain our spirit, our light, our spirituality?" We have a mission on this planet, we have a road to follow, we are people who should contribute to society. So, how to maintain this tranquility, this peace, this internal harmony so that we do not become ill, even physical ill? How to spare us this feeling of hatred, of rage for nothing and nobody? Do not even hate your enemy. In my vision, as a being of light as I'm considering myself, a person that has the ability to transform society, that's how I see myself and I feel that I have to find a way to bring peace, love and light for that people who can't feel that strength and not let flow negative energy to humanity. We all have an individual social responsibility in the first place to pass on that strength and the light tothe people with whom we work. I feel myself very responsible, my creator gave me this mission on Earth to help the society, the community, to help those who don't know that feelings. I see that those countries are being discriminated, so they take their arms and they shoot, they want to dominate, we have to help this people for that they don't become terrorists, because terrorism is a very bad thing. If wars are being fought with wars, the war will remain. We cannot fight violence with violence.

by Eliane Potiguara

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Eliot Weinberger: Well, I think that you help to eliminate gang violence by, of course, by changing the causes of gang violence, which is poverty, which is the lack of decent housing in the inner cities, which is the lack of economic opportunity in the inner cities. As I am sure you know, we have the situation in the United States where a young black male is much more likely to go to prison than to go to college. So, I think that the gang violence disappears with economic prosperity. If you look at New York City in the 19th century, who were the gangs, the gangs were the Irish, there were Jewish gangs, Italian gangs and so forth. And these are no longer groups that are associated with gang violence because obviously as the wealth of these groups increased, as they moved out of the ghetto, out of poverty, then gang violence ceased to exist. So, I think that the problem is not gang violence, the problem is poverty, and we start having to have decent jobs for people and decent housing for people, and this is where the money has got to go.

by Eliot Weinberger

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Elisabet Sahtouris: This is a very interesting question, how to stop gang violence. I remember some years back when I was visiting one of the very affluent California coastal towns and a lady said to me, “I wonder if you can help with a new problem we have in our town.” And she said, “We have suddenly gangs that are violent and that are thieving and we don’t know what to do, we’ve never had this kind of a problem in our town. And we have no idea how to tackle it. Can you give us some advice?” And off the top of my head I said I think that’s a piece of cake, and really easy problem to solve. She said, “Really? How can we do it?” So I said just have one of your wealthy families invite one gang member each, have a group, as many wealthy families as there are gang members since you seem to know who they are, invite one each to dinner once a week and at the table treat them like family. Ask them what their needs are, their unmet needs. Ask them how you can help them fulfill those needs. And really be concerned in that young person’s life and actively support them in doing what they are most talented to do, what they would like to do with their lives. I think you will see the problem evaporate. And I would say basically this is the same thing. If every young person were cared for, nurtured and helped by their society to meet their real needs, I don’t believe we would have gangs, violent gangs, gang warfare, the problems of that kind. I was a criminal justice planner for juveniles in the state of Massachusetts back in the early 70s. And I outfitted Harvard students with tape recorders to go and interview juvenile delinquents on street corners to ask them how their society had failed to meet their needs. It didn’t make my colleagues very happy that I was doing this but I was convinced already at that time that the solutions lie in exactly what I’m talking about. If we meet all young people’s needs they’re not going to be attacking each other or the other parts, the other members of their society.

by Elisabet Sahtouris

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Ervin Laszlo: The answer to that is to create better conditions for young people to live in the inner cities. There is a great deal of depravation, injustice and frustration, motivating violence. Violence, gang violence is a symptom, is an effect. It’s not the cause. You have to wipe off discrimination and help to create better conditions for living and working in inner cities and better opportunities for education. At the same time, you have to make education itself more relevant and more meaningful to the people who live in the inner cities.

by Ervin Laszlo

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Esther Mwaura-Muiru: Again, we must interrogate what are the values that we are holding ourself as a society as we bring our children up. I grew up in a community in a setup where everybody in my neighborhood cared about me. The women in the neighborhood knew I would stay at the top. Everybody cared about me. But if now we live in a society where we do not care about each other, that our strength is derived by oppressing others, for me, I think that’s a problem, that we’ve denied opportunities to young people, and only those ones who have wealth, those who are rich, who are privileged, can get opportunities. And so the dehumanization of poverty, the children, the pressure to compete, the pressure to catch up, is so, so in our young people. And they resort to violence, not because they want it. They do not want it. At least, I know my son doesn’t want it. I know he doesn’t do that, not at least for now, and God forbid. But it’s because I come from a value that I know I must provide. I come from a family that believes that taking care of my son is a responsibility of the family. And we must start appreciating some of the traditional values that our communities held, that everybody mattered, and that we shared what we did have, so that some people don’t feel that they don’t have, and that they must, by any, any form, access it. And I think we must provide. We must teach our children the values. We do not have to teach them to go to school so that they can get education, so that they can become the biggest of the professors. But I think we must teach them on how that everybody matters around them. So our education system, I feel, doesn’t teach people to take care of each other, and that’s what we’ve failed. And we must really, again, interrogate the values, the basic values that we have for our own existence and the existence of the others, so that we embrace the needs, the choices, the environment the young people are living in. And it’s a pity that we do not seriously appreciate that they are [audio end]

by Esther Mwaura-Muiru

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Fernando Solanas: Well. I think that the question is very clear. Young people are there were social violence and escapes throught violence are, where the cities have bad access to work, to education, to knowledge. The biggest parts of our countries are suffering from this situation. And the biggest victims of this unemloyment are the young people. But how is it possible that in the blooming age of life which is the adolescence and which young people experience, when all passions of being, learning, realizing oneself, becoming independent, being free, having families are experienced, how is it then possible that we take them away the possibility of work, of knowledge and of the realization of their vocations. The remaining escape is violence and drugs. And there is created the business of drugs. We cannot stop talking about the business of drugs. The business of drugs is actually moving around the world 800 thousand million dollars. And the main country which is consuming drugs are the United States, and Europe is following. But there are not any arrested people of the big drug distributors in the United States. Drugs are a big business. The national banks, the big American and European banks don’t want to relinquish to this enormous movement of 800 thousand millon dollars. So they are part of the business of drugs and the victims are the young people, the internationl bank and the big international business of drugs which has its main nucleus in the United States and in the richest countries of Europe: England, Spain, Netherlands, France. – But our countries are also responsable [].

by Fernando Solanas

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Fred Matser: Children go to the street, youngsters go to the street when they don't feel welcome at home, they don't feel love at home often because of many issues playing at home where perhaps parents have been exposed to violence, have been exposed to ignorance, have been exposed to difficult circumstances. So, I would very strongly say that if, in the family structures, we can welcome back our children at home and teach them at home the loving values, the ethical values of respect, of coexistence, of loving one another that helps them from not going to the street, not being violent. Education in that respect, loving education at schools, where the teachers really involve themselves with the children, where they do the same, teach values could help tremendously. And at that point, of course, we are quite challenged, I mean, with the media, Internet, TV, where we see many things that are dysfunctional. We see wars, we see a lot of violence, we see commercials only promoting consumerism. It's difficult for a child when he is in the street to really be rooted in values. So, if we could promote family values in a functional way, if we could create better educational systems and really motivate the teachers, we could indeed contribute to the not going in the streets of the children, and get them magnetized by things that inspire them, that they can do. So, give them the feeling that they are welcome and that they can develop their own talents and that they can bloom and really develop up to their fullest potential.

by Fred Matser

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Galsan Tschinag: To achieve this we would have to change the political guidelines world wide. If all governments would stop with their criminal violence against other countries and peoples, which they practice on a governmental scale, it would be very easy to put the few young persons prowling around back on the straight and narrow because they are imitating the governments. They copy their governments.

by Galsan Tschinag

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Geert Lovink: I am not very familiar with inner city and gang violence in the United States. It's a bit easy to say that a better access to education would solve the problem. But, yes, I do think that a lot would be done if there was going to be a martial plan for a much, much better educational system inside the United States. And I think it's well known that there has been an enormous disinvestment in the United States and this problem is exaggerating and with its enormous depth, it's quite unlikely that there will be major investments made for anytime soon inside the country. But, I would indeed urge a future government that would be in charge after George W. Bush to focus its efforts entirely on the levering of the circumstances of the overall population inside the United States itself and stop its global ambitions to be a world police, an effort that is failing anyway, and in fact comes to the costs of the United States citizens themselves, and in particularly, the poor working class, including those who live in impoverished inner city environments.

by Geert Lovink

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Giora Feidman: Yes, what we allow, why we allow to sell arms? I go to the streets even in California, and I pass through a shop. In the window it is full of kind of arms or knife or any kind of instruments that are used to damage humanity. First, we can stop this. It's forbidden to sell a arm; it's forbidden point. Yeah, it is a sport to kill an animal. Who told you that I am allowed to kill an animal? Well, I guess we can start from there. From somebody sold this arm or somebody put this product in some place, in other place even to steal this. Or even a child stole a weapon that their father, the family got in the home. Okay, I understand if you have a farm in a place that has dangerous and dangerous animals, one of the solution is to defense the cows, to defense yourself can be that you should have some kind of arms. But, yeah, the arms and violence is some - of course is connected, again and again and again. Education, how much the children want to imitate what they see in the television, what they see in this video they bring home, this fighting. Who win? This must be eradicated from the market. Sure, sure, we will help. How much, we don't know, but we can start from there.

by Giora Feidman

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Gladman Chibememe: Gang violence, what we need to do is to come up with the social programs that will insure that the youth or young people are kept busy, young people are able to really invest their time into meaningful work and meaningful business. In this case, it is important that we or whoever are responsible for making decision should make sure that their social service programs that allow the youth to be able to find meaning in their lives, and also to make sure that they invest these full investment in the education of the young. The investment should not only be targeted to academic field, or academic excellence. It should be divest development of skills, be it in sport, be it in craft, be it in anything, because everyone -- each one of us have got different skills, different talents and capacities. So, we need to catch them young, direct them, advice them, and mentor them, so that they will be able to think positively about themselves, think positively about their life, and think positively about how they can change their lives. As long as we don’t support them and help them to be able to see the vision, then we will continue to keep -- to have youth involved in gang-violence, and the killing of each other insists, because they don’t have anything to do. They resort in drugs, because they don’t have anything to do. They are embarrassed. They are helpless. So, in a way, we need to see sustainable programs that will ensure that the youth are integrated into the whole system; they become part of the development program. Not only can we talk about cities, youth in the cities, even in rural areas, like where I come from, we should integrate these youth into all development programs, so that they will be able to meaningfully enjoy their lives as members of the community.

by Gladman Chibememe

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Govindaswamy Hariramamurthi: How can we stop? I think we must find a way to get our youth to feel secure. The youth are unable to find expressions -- opportunities of expression of their creative energies. Youth in our respective societies must help to find a productive purpose of their lives. It must happen by an educational system which should help them to understand the consequence of their actions. Unless we as grown-up generations facilitate this process, I think it cannot be solved. The big cities have their own dimensions of creating a sense of insecurity in the minds of young. All of us are responsible in those cities for this. It cannot be solved in any other manner other than getting this in an interactive process being discussed in an interactive process to get the -- to engage the youth to look at alternative means [audio ends]

by Govindaswamy Hariramamurthi

Sep 9, 2006 12:45:00 PM cite

Hans-Peter Dürr: It is not only important to say education is more important than killing. Which education is more important? Education should be more than making knowledge available. To display results of science, to show how to handle knowledge to become more powerful, to become better than others, to stand competition better. That is not the education I mean. This is not a real alternative. A real alternative is adding knowledge of orientation to it. Knowledge of orientation is not refering to right or wrong but to the things, which connect people. To show them how they can get in contact. To show them how their picture of the world is only one specific perception of it, which might not be the same as that of others. Other might not have another orientation but they understand it differently. We should recognise this multitude of perceptions to arrive at possibilities to bridge the gap between us and other people who see the world differently. A process of learning means to become aware that my perception of the world is only one specific picture of reality which is adapted to my background, my sensibility, my past and my surroundings and which cannot be generalized for all. This does not mean that I have to give it up but that I am aware of the fact that my perception and pictures are different from those of others. Being aware of the differences makes me interested in learning to know others. To learn something from their perception.

by Hans-Peter Dürr