By Jim Genaro

If children are going to stay away from drugs and gang violence, parents and other adults in the African-American community need to take a more active role in their lives, according to several participants at a forum on gang violence last Thusday afternoon.

About 30 people attended the citizens’ meeting at the Tried Stone Missionary Baptist Church, which was held in response to several recent gang-related incidents.

The most recent of these was the shooting last week of three children outside a 13-year-old’s birthday party in Montford.

The meeting took place at the same time as a gathering of local clergy and select law-enforcement officers in the church’s sanctuary. That meeting, which had initially been billed as a “community meeting” about gang violence, was closed to the public and the media.

At the citizens’ forum, retired police officer Walt Robertson said that gang violence is not a new phenomenon in Asheville.

Robertson said that he had tried to raise concerns about gangs 20 years ago, but that many police officers then did not understand the problem.

“We need to understand what we’re dealing with,” he told the forum. That includes understanding the meanings of various gang-related graffiti tags and symbols.

The key to fighting the problem, he said, is for citizens to get involved and informed.

“If you blame anybody, blame yourself,” Robertson said. “How many times have you seen something and not said anything?”

Bob Smith also emphasized the importance of community involvement.

“They’re all our children, and they will all sink or fly together,” he said.

Robert White, who said he has a son in prison, reminded the participants that “we’re talking about gang members, but before they were gang members they were children.”

White stressed the importance of parents’ ­— and especially fathers’ ­— participation in their children’s lives.

He noted that in traditional African communities, young men were taken out by their fathers at puberty and “taught how to be a man.”

“We don’t do that anymore,” White said. “We need to start taking these kids through initiation rites.”

W. LaVone Griffin, an employee of the Asheville Parks and Recreation Department, said that the city provides $30,000 a year in programming alone for activities to get kids off the streets.

The problem, he said, is that parents aren’t involved enough in their children’s lives to take them to such programs.
“Kids come if parents support it,” he said. “It’s hard for me to go to City Council and say I need another $30,000 if I don’t have people coming.”

City Council candidate Dee Williams said that a lack of resources in the African-American community contributes to the problem.

“We all look good, but most of us are one step away from public housing — if we’re not already there,” she said of the people assembled. “We cower when it comes to speaking to power about our economic realities.”

Many speakers urged action in the wake of gang violence.

“We should make this gang incident the best thing that ever happened to us,” Griffin said. “Our biggest job is cleaning up our own mess.”