We must focus on prevention

Focus on Prevention

As I was speaking to a group of sophomores to seniors in high school we came upon a conversation:

Nonviolence is never going to happen because it’s not a reality.

When I asked why this was, they explained that if someone hits you-you’re going to hit them back. If you see someone hit someone you care about, you’re going to want to hit them back. Hence violence begets violence and violence will never end. They went on to cite examples – holocaust, bombing of pearl harbor, slavery and the civil war, gangs, street fights, and they even had a number of Halo and Gears of War examples.

The glaring obvious focus was at the point where violence occurs. Why do we deal with that part?

Prevention! Prevention! Prevention!

If we are living in the world of prevention, then we would never be at these situations. We would never be where the violence is going on. We would have prevented it before that.

WWII – preventable if we began speaking to leaders when Hitler was running a Pro-german gang which was part of the National Socialist Party in Germany. Preventable by not ending WWI like it did. Everyone just wanted the war over….but nobody told the Germans that it was all their fault and they were wrong. We just ended the war and punished them.  Punished them into poverty and inflation and destruction. These kinds of punishment and violence will only result in war and violence.

Slavery was preventable when the slave ships first decided to come on over to the Americas. We could have said no! Slavery was further ok’d when the continental congress decided that it was ok and created the 3/5 compromise. When the United States has officially won the American Revolution, they began talking about creating this country. One of the biggest debates and problems was slavery. They decided to ignore it, because too many people were upset about it. If we would have dealt with this problem then…we wouldn’t have had jim crow, equality debates, etc.…it would never have been an issue.

Gangs are preventable as long as you understand that Gangs are families for people who truly have no other essence of belonging. There are needs that every member has that is not being met by any other part of society except the gang family. Give the members what they need, and the gangs won’t be needed. However, now we have gone so much farther than that.

The gangs are examples of how we as a society have let the youth down.

Violence is preventable but it needs to be dealt with way before it starts.

We have to recreate the way babies are raised and reinvent what it is to be a parent.

Stop all violent messages we give to children under the age of 3.

Stop the violent ways we deal with people everyday.

Stop the violence we see on screens (TV,movie, phone, computer,pad, etc) everyday.

Stop the violence we show everywhere and to everyone!

Every single one of these lines is a cause you can take up. Everyone of these is a problem we are working to end.

Every single one of these is an opportunity for our society.

chad herman motivatingforpositivechange.com