Community Harassment

Several days ago, two of my adult children were subjected to a large group of local young people running back and forth repeatedly in front of our house for some time while I was at work.  These young people were accompanied by the adult female in the vehicle shown here, and she appeared to be in charge of the harassment.

My children said that some of the joggers came down and trespassed on our property, despite being repeatedly asked to leave.  One even came and rang our doorbell, and he refused to leave even when informed that my children intended to call the police.  After about five minutes, he did eventually leave, but my offspring who owns the Kia Rio shown parked in front of our house said they were afraid some of the joggers who were hanging around the vehicle would damage it, since this vehicle has been "keyed" before.

It upsets me that my kids were targeted and frightened like this while I was gone.  But it bothers me considerably more that adults in our community who are in positions of leadership with local young people would deliberately teach them to commit criminal acts like harassment, organized stalking, trespassing, and more (see my earlier post titled "Sabotage", for example).  Many of the youths seen jogging back and forth in front of our house (and note that they are going nowhere else but repeatedly back and forth in front of our house!) in my offspring's video below are clad in jogging attire that appear to represent organized sports teams at our local high school.  And a previous post here from quite a while ago details a very similar incident, confirming that the community harassment of us is both ongoing and of long duration.

Far more disturbing is the fact that my children and I have been the victims of these kinds of incidents and far worse for over 13 years now.  The questions of why and how an entire community's reasons and behaviors can become so warped and sick that their members consider these sorts of criminal behaviors both normal and pleasurable are addressed in an earlier post of mine titled "Why They Do It" and also in Medawar's post here titled "Empire Builders".

For more information on the subject of community harassment, please see:

http://www.thehiddenevil.com/motivation.asp

Dumb City Or Dumb Officials?

This article came out in today's San Antonio paper. It's shocking but not at all surprising. However, it's not the City of San Antonio that's dumb; it's the officials that run it that are.

How can cities expect to turn out well-educated students when so little money is actually provided for this? School and college board members routinely take the precious tax dollars that are supposed to be used to educate our young people and find creative (and some not-so-creative, i.e. blatant) ways to funnel the funds to their friends instead. Texas Governor Rick Perry first used federal funds provided to Texas for education to instead pay down part of the state's debt. Then when the feds. demanded proof of this money's actually being used for education, Gov. Perry turned it down. Now Texas is facing a serious budget shortfall, which doesn't bode well for education here in the future.

The rampant organized crime in our area has many other adverse effects on the education of our young people. Bullying, gang stalking, and gang violence in our schools are so widespread and unchecked that students are afraid to come to school. Just yesterday, another article in the same newspaper told of rumors of impending violence related to Halloween so serious that scared parents are keeping their children home in droves, even in the Hill Country (Kerrville). Students are instructed to tell teachers, counselors, principals, or law enforcement when they are being subjected to these social ills, but when they do so, either nothing is done because officials fear being subjected to the same kinds of things, or the students discover that the people who are supposed to be helping them are actually active participants!

Teachers here face the same problems as students (if they are not participating, as many are) and fear becoming victims of the same kinds of acts students are being subjected to. How can we possibly expect them to teach properly under these conditions? And how can we expect to retain the best ones?--they quickly move on when they realize they have no support. Shockingly high percentages of the teachers that remain have criminal records and substance abuse problems, nothing is done about it (see my earlier post entitled "The Coach", for example), and our students suffer as a result.

In fact, one-third to one-half of our high school students drop out before graduating. Texas already has a shortage of trained workers. With the problem steadily getting worse, not better, it doesn't matter if we attract all the new jobs Gov. Perry is promising; we won't have the workers to fill them.

Our cities and communities here simply MUST start to realize the toll unchecked organized crime is taking on them and insist on its being prosecuted aggressively from the top down. If people don't start seeing the big picture and understanding how much this stuff is hurting them, our rapid downslide into "Third-Worldness" will continue. It's no accident that San Antonio and Las Vegas sit at the bottom of the education list--this can easily be predicted by their crime situations and statistics.

There's one more thing to consider here, and it may actually turn out to be the most important consideration of all: what if the government is deliberately trying to keep our young people as uneducated as possible in order to keep them from seeing, understanding, questioning, and protesting what their government is doing? If you think that sounds far-fetched, I suggest you carefully read the next post after this one, entitled "Empire Builders".

Update, 1/23/11:

Compare and Contrast

My youngest recently brought home a copy of the last high school newspaper of the school year. It contained two different pieces by two different student authors that addressed a number of significant local victims' issues, but each author discussed these issues in completely different ways and from a completely different viewpoint. I found the contrast both interesting and educational.

A little background is necessary first. Recently my youngest child came home very upset from an assembly that had been held at school. Apparently this assembly was some sort of anti-drugs and anti-alcohol program that's held every year, but the two-day affair that was put on last year was deemed excessive, and the event was scaled back considerably this time around. My youngest said a local woman had been asked to speak to the students as part of this assembly on very short notice (she was asked earlier that same morning) and had graciously agreed to do so. This woman and her husband lost their daughter tragically in an auto accident in Austin 12 years ago when the daughter's car was hit by a drunk driver. They have been strong and vocal supporters of MADD and other related organizations and causes throughout Central Texas ever since.

My youngest said the woman got up at the assembly and started talking very frankly about her daughter's life and death. Some of the woman's talk was graphic but no worse than what's in many movies, on t.v., in driver's ed. classes, or even in other student programs in our school (like "Shattered Dreams"). Because the subject of her daughter's death was very personal to her, the speaker became emotional at times. At some point, my youngest became aware that certain students and faculty members were mocking and making fun of the speaker.

About halfway through her presentation, faculty members suddenly stepped up to the speaker and told her she needed to leave. The woman protested that she hadn't finished or made her final points yet and became visibly distraught. My youngest felt extremely uncomfortable and embarrassed when faculty members insisted on escorting the still-protesting speaker off the stage.

The writer of the first student piece in question, a letter to the editor, apparently felt the same way my youngest did about the whole affair. She wrote that the school's treatment of the speaker had been disrespectful and appalling and that she'd been especially upset to learn the speaker had broken down in tears immediately after leaving because she believed her attempt to talk to the students had been to no avail. The writer ended her piece by assuring the speaker that she, for one, had been touched by her words and was grateful to her for taking the time to come. My youngest was glad to see they hadn't been the only person at the assembly who'd come away disturbed by the speaker's treatment. (Since then, another student has written a letter expressing similar sentiments that was published in the local community newspaper.)

The second piece for discussion from the same school paper is an end-of-year student opinion column entitled "A Hero To Save Us". In part, the author writes, "This year, our town has needed a superhero more than ever before. The losses we have experienced this year have surpassed any we could have ever pictured. We lost loved ones, we lost trust, we lost faith in whatever we had worked so hard to finally believe in. We lost." She goes on to say, "Where is the superhero we so desperately need to save us from that doom we're facing?"

Both of these student writings are about issues related to lives needlessly lost or ruined due to substance abuse, crime, and other related social ills within our community. Although done more indirectly than I would have liked, the first piece asks for personal soul-searching, more open dialog, and acceptance of personal responsibility for important issues of character here. The second piece directly expresses a wish that all the troubling societal ills destroying the community could simply be magically covered up and whisked away so that business-as-usual could return.

Ultimately, the first piece is about empathy for victims. I could not find much empathy at all in the second piece. If my youngest's description of what took place at the school assembly is any indication, I fear the second writer's approach is far more common in our community than that of the first writer. The pervasive lack of empathy here is being passed on from parents, teachers, and other community leaders to our young people with painful results for all, whether they realize it or not. I'm glad to see a few hopeful glimmers of something better someday.

Fair Game

The library of our local high school is currently being expanded by knocking down an outside wall and building farther outward into a grassy area. This much-needed expansion was supposed to include two new computer labs, one on each side of the expansion, that were fully equipped.

Recently, however, my youngest was told by a very reliable source at school that 1.3 million dollars have already been spent on this project and that the planned computer labs have had to be scrapped as a result. This seems outrageous in light of the amount of work being done. Local taxpayers should immediately demand a full accounting of the project from the school board.

Are our young people, our most precious resource, really to be the latest victims? Apparently everyone and everything are considered fair game. (Now consider carefully who is on the local school board and who is currently running for it.)