Straght Outta...

Compton turned out to be our team’s destination for the rest of the week. We were assigned to work for the Salvation Army there. Captain Martin Ross directed us and he and his family are amazing people. A graduate of UC Berkley, he moved to Compton to pastor and help build the Salvation Army’s presence there. They do so much work; I was fully amazed at the spectrum of their involvement in that troubled community.
While not quite as bad as its reputation would suggest, Compton does have a disproportionate share of problems…particularly related to violent crime and gangs. I picked up the Los Angeles Times today to read that the city’s (Compton is a separate city from Los Angeles) murder rate had drastically increased in the past year. We were visited on Friday by two Los Angeles County Sheriff Officers who explained the city’s plight, so I was not at all surprised to read it in the times…A fascinating aspect of this project is learning so much about Los Angeles, from so many different angles. Most people would be afraid to visit the areas in which we will continue to work. That is a shame, there is so much that can be learned there. I was thrilled to hear an explanation of the L.A. riots from an African-American lady who was there when it happened, and from a completely different view than I have heard every other explanation (I will likely write about this at some point).
The kids were at once frustrating and lovable. Inner City kids face so many obstacles and have so much working against them…but they are still kids…Very different kids...kids who are forced into adult situations before they are even close to ready. One of their day camp activities was writing letters to solders. Most of those letters focused on the aspect of killing…advice on what guns and bullets to use, admonishments to kill as many of their enemies as possible. Very different than the content that you would likely see from similar letters written by their peers in Austin or Tucson. The mentality they are raised in is one of, essentially, guerrilla warfare…Gangs, guns and drugs. One kid, probably less than ten years old, asked a solider if they “use the same bullets as the bad people on the street”. It is not a hopeless situation for them, but many have to look really hard to find those traces of hope.
The Salvation Army attempts to orient them to find it. Sharing with them, doing all they can to reverse the affects that drugs, violent and severely broken homes have unleashed upon the youth there. On Thursday…I saw those signs of hope. We took the kids to a roller rink in Cerritos. The kids had fun; they didn’t have to worry about anything. They laughed; smiled, played…they were kids. All of the work, the painting, the boring hours in the fireworks stand, the five trips to Home Depot in three days, the difficult attempts at managing a couple dozen unruly kids who have little in the way of positive guidance in their lives…all of it was worth it when I saw those smiles, and saw hope.