A generous helping of Tavis Smiley (an anti-oxidant :^) would do good among evangelicals who follow the broader cultural give and take.

Jan and I lived in Rudy’s hood for years and engaged with the gangs there. Our kids got their educations in those Pasadena public schools and my daughter went on to Stanford from John Muir High, which is about to be taken over by the state of California partly because of the increase in gang activity that Rudy mentions in his article. Jan taught for years in the Pasadena School District.

I’m all in re interventions and preventions or any other ventions.

Evangelicals have a genius for focusing on individuals, especially when we’re trying to save them :^)

But I think dealing with gangs will take changing whole educational systems and how they get funded. And also prophetically challenging entrenched class prejudices that play themselves out in current national and local politics.

Following the money and the lack of money won’t explain everything, but it explains a lot.

As long as conservative Christians keep embracing social and economic Darwinism—while ironically rejecting biological Darwinism–we won’t have anything practical and useful to contribute to the fight against gangs in the US or poverty overseas beyond the witness of some courageous individuals.