Kids have a pretty simple reason for why they
want violence to end in Springfield: They just want to hang out
with friends in a safe environment. “For us not to be able to fellowship
with our friends is a shame,” says 12-year-old Katlyn Fields.
With an ongoing feud between two local gangs
and a string of shootings in recent weeks leading to beefed-up
security at the Boys City Basketball Tournament, lately Springfield
has felt like a balloon swelling with tension, ready to pop at any
moment. Monday’s “Stop the
Violence” motorcade and prayer vigil, though organized by
adults, will focus on Springfield’s youth, says the Rev. Lee E.
Fields Jr., pastor of Pleasant Grove Baptist Church. Participants will line up in cars at
Southeast High School at 5:30 p.m., after which the motorcade will
make its way through East Side neighborhoods. At 7 p.m., a prayer
and candlelight vigil will take place on the steps of the Capitol,
where speakers will denounce violence in Springfield. Young people participating in the march, some
of whom signed up to speak at the Capitol, say they signed on out
of an old-fashioned case of being sick and tired of being sick and
tired. “The violence has gone too far,” says
16-year-old Jimmie Treadwell Jr. “There’s a breaking point
where you say, ‘Enough is enough.’ ” Aside from day-to-day ’hood banging,
Fields says, the march will address other kinds of youth violence,
such as school bullying. Middle- and high-school students say that
fights are also a big problem. One sixth-grade student says that
her school has already had three discipline assemblies this year
when typically just one is held, at the beginning of the year. These skirmishes, however, are not worth
taking another person’s life, says Treadwell, who attributes
most of the conflicts to people “hating on each
other.” Seventeen-year-old Warren Johnson agrees,
asserting that insecure guys and girls are mainly looking to earn
reputations for being hard or tough. “There are other ways” to
distinguish oneself, however, says 11-year-old Briana Gaines.
“They can get good grades or get into sports.”
This article appears in Feb 2-8, 2006.
