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.")