http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/22/BAS113MCDM.DTL&tsp=1

http://missionlocal.org/2008/10/migra-matters-mission-residents-respond-amidst-ice-%E2%80%9Csurge%E2%80%9D/

we hear gunfire AT LEAST once a week. usually middle of the night…but sometimes at like 7 or 8 or 9pm.

am i the only one?

trying to figure out “what happened?” is easy: gangbanger kids are shooting at one another (or, sometimes, shooting at innocent bystanders, usually by mistake). big fucking mystery.

these kids are poor, without a good outlet for learning or self expression, under constant pressure – the whole community – that they’re doing something wrong just because they’re brown people, without a connection to the greater SF community, without a voice in city politics (other than bullshit “progressive” politicians doing as much harm as good), without consistent role models, without economic opportunity, without something to which they can belong, without something of which they can be proud…it’s a fucking bleak situation for most of these kids.

they’re in the thug life with little better to apply themselves to, their turf is being shrunk by evil gentrifyers (like me), the economy sucks, the gang war has been going on for decades, the MS are trying to take over the whole hood….

and they blast away at one another as a way of fucking life. most of em are under 20 from what i understand. kids.

(that said, my understanding is that this is primarily based around the drug trade….so past finding a more productive & achievement-oriented road for these kids to walk down, making after-school programs real and funneling resources to programs that actually help these kids and their families, opposed to building a thieving cottage industry on their misfortune…dropping the fucking hammer on drug-mart cesspools like 16th & Mission might be a good step).

overall: scary, sad, frustrating, unnecessary, unsafe.

if every gunshot made the news as something that “happened”….it could have its own daily column in the Chronicle

not that they’d actually publish it, because NO ONE GIVES A FUCK ABOUT THE MISSION.