WEAPONS OF WAR:
HOW THE GOVERNMENT VIEWS OUR KIDS


Doug Schauer spent his wedding night at the Blue Lantern Inn in Dana Point. It seemed like a nice enough place, a stopover on the way to more exotic ports. That was three years ago. Now Schauer, 28, and his wife, Kelly, are expecting their first child. And Schauer, the new Community Service Programs gang prevention specialist assigned to San Juan Capistrano and Dana Point, is seeing the area a little differently.

"I'm finding there's definitely a lot more going on here than you would think just driving by," Schauer said recently after a month on the job. He's run across the San Juan Capistrano gang members, a pocket of white supremacists in Dana Point, a 14-year-old boy with three girlfriends who never comes home. It's Schauer's job to try and get the kids to see the error in their ways. Community Service Programs is funded by the cities and works with schools and the Sheriff's Department to keep kids out of gangs -- and out of trouble.

Schauer replaces Jesse Gutierrez, who left to pursue a teaching career. Schauer spends four days a week at Marco Forster middle school, San Juan Elementary, R.H. Dana and Dana Hills High. He's also on call for Capistrano Valley high, when administrators there think he can help. It's difficult work, Schauer said. "Some of the kids are at the point of getting expelled, so school gives them to us as a last resort," he said. "Some have a 'I don't care' attitude, but if you get down deep, they do care."

"They've had enough of everyone telling them what to do; I listen and try to help them decide what their goals are and how to accomplish them, then take responsibility for their own decisions." Fair skinned and red haired, it's easy to think Schauer is miscast in his role. At a Dana Point coffee shop one evening, he laughed at the suggestion. Schauer spent the first 16 years of his life in Colombia; his Spanish is as sharp as his looks deceiving. And he's worked similar jobs in Chicago and northern Orange County, so he's well prepared for the challenges of San Juan and Dana Point.

Aside from counseling the children, Schauer and his organization work closely with Sheriff's deputies and community leaders to organize fishing trips, community clean-ups and other outings to allow the kids to have positive interaction with authorities and feel part of their community. He started a basketball league for youth in Chicago; he might try something similar here. "We're coming at (the gang problem) from a couple of different angles," Schauer said. "Diverting kids before they have the opportunity to get into the gang life and get a criminal record seems to give us the best chance."

SOURCE: This article is by author Jonathon Volzke of the Dana Point News, 6 November, 1997 edition. This article is reprinted here because it is in the public interest.

(Editor's Comments: The underlying theme of Mr. Volzke's article seems to reveal the mindset that if the "authorities" engage the youth, such as by having them pick up trash like convicts along the roadside, that they will be experiencing "positive contact," that will influence them to avoid joining gangs. Did it ever occure to the "authorities" that these gangs are made up of our sons and daughters, and that they feel shut out of the community? A gang is the kind of surrogate family a youth might devise in the absence of adult supervision. The idea that gainful employment as a vendor of hamburgers in a paper hat is going to replace the lucrative income that can be had selling contraband, is pitifully stupid. The bottom line is that "authorities" do not believe that they actually represent "the people," which includes the minor children of the community; instead they act as if they are entitled to command the people, using the ruse of "democracy," to cover the fact that they expect the obedience of citizens. Youths spend years in school, and upon graduation they cannot read or write or find their own country on a map. Every program of the police and the schools seems to be directed not at empowering the American people, or the people of Dana Point, but at subduing the inclination of human beings to seek independence. The gangs may be a violent misdirection of the energies of the young, but they are the result of the mismanagement and incompetence of the schools, and the outright preparation of the population for lifetimes as a labor resource. Only once the leadership admits its true cold-blooded intentions will any real changes ever take place. But of course, today the school district administrators are really not confessing to the parents of their students the real curriculum they are teaching, because at the core of it they are coercing the young to obey "authority" without question, and to accept a passive role in their own society. If the "authorities" were genuinely interested in getting at the causes of teenage dysfunction, they should spend more time listening to how teenagers feel, and less time backing them up against a wall "for their own good.")

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