Many young black men in Oakland are killing and dying for respect

To enhance your reading pleasure, the management suggests that you peruse the following while listening to any rendition of "Cry Me A River"

"Along with the Christmas trees and family gatherings, there's another end-of-the-year ritual in Oakland - a candlelight vigil for the murdered.

The body count is woven into the civic consciousness here - a number chased by homicide inspectors, studied by criminologists, lamented in churches, reported by journalists. Every mayor leaves City Hall on broken promises to quell the violence, and the killings continue. An additional 115 have been killed this year, putting Oakland on pace for another gruesome record.

In the last five years, 557 people were slain on the city's streets, making Oakland the state's second-most murderous city, behind Compton.

Most victims are young, black men who are dying in forgotten neighborhoods of East and West Oakland.

A handful of their killers, speaking from prison, describe an environment where violence is so woven into the culture that murder has become a symbol of manhood.

The inmates say the only difference between these neighborhoods and prison is the absence of walls. The same hierarchies apply - the meanest rise to the top. It's a survival skill that ensures ownership of drug corners, a sense of self-worth, female attention and protection from attack.

Experts fear that the neighborhoods are only getting more violent. There are entire blocks without a single two-parent family, where drug dealers have become the predominant male role models, and children fend for themselves in crowded, chaotic homes where they are routinely exposed to drugs, sex and guns.

Criminal families are on their third and fourth generations. Grandparents - the ones who have historically stepped in to help raise fatherless boys and instill a sense of right and wrong - are dying off.

Back in the 1980s, drug dealers who first brought crack cocaine to Oakland used to hide their activities from their parents because it was shameful, but now it's a full-blown family business, said Michelle Gandy, a private investigator who interviews murder defendants for Alameda County court-appointed criminal defense attorneys.

"The kids today recognize that their parents are in it, too, so there's this hopelessness," she said."

We can therefore expect the situation to worsen dramatically as the older generations pass, and to combat such lawlessness the liberal politicians do what?

You got it. They make it harder for LAWFUL citizens to exercise their rights.

Can't make this shit up. The more laws, the more lawlessness. Were I to be just a tad more cynical I'd believe that they WANT young black men to settle the problem in-house as it were, by simply killing the race off once and for all.

Thanks to The War on Guns