AMNESTY CAN ONLY HAPPEN WHEN WE CREATE PLACES OF REFUGE IN OUR COMMUNITY FOR OUR HURTING BOYS

By Darron Hilaire Jr. – Youth Advocate & Mentor

We’re beginning a new week with a record-breaking murder report.

Here are some of my latest thoughts on the matter at hand.

I don’t agree that things are “out of hand”, as I’ve heard it said in many instances.

I think we are still dealing with a fairly young (relatively 10-year-old) issue.

I do agree that things are VERY BAD, but I also believe that intervention is still very much within our reach as a country – this context is very important.

When we are dealing with something bigger than us or foreign to us, it always seems “out of hand”. TCI’s crime and gun violence rampage are foreign issues. Just over ten years ago, all of this was unheard of in our little paradisiacal island.

Let me put it in a different context.

Mothers, for instance, who are not accustomed to disciplining boys or raising boys might say a boy is “out of hand” because, well, she doesn’t understand the nature of boys.

She will call his father and say, “Come deal with this boy of yours”, and the father would walk in, and it seems almost automatic to him how he dismantles the situation.

And, it is not automatic by any means, however, because he understands his own boyish nature, he doesn’t deal with the issue from the same extreme vantage point as the mother.

In an ideal situation, a healthy situation, he deals with it from a place of understanding.

To make matters worse, he deals with it from a place of aggression and rage – and this too has its implications on how boys grow up to be angry and aggressive men.

Let this be a caution by itself, that if we take the position of operating out of understanding, we have a shot at intervention, but if we take the position of operation out of aggression and rage, we will only further exacerbate the situation.

And this is what I believe we are doing – operating from a place of extreme.

On another note, I think the notices calling for a voluntary turnover of guns, a “gun amnesty”, as we’ve put it, is rather absurd.

I, on the other hand, am more concerned about what made these young men pick up the guns in the first place, rather than pressuring them to turn over their source of protection.

I think there are some questions we have to ask here – although, hypothetically for now, until we can come face to face with some of the offenders.

1. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU FELT PROTECTED?
2. WHO OR WHAT ROBBED YOU OF YOUR SENSE OF SECURITY?

As simple as those questions sound, I think it humanizes the situation – which is something we have to start to do. These are human beings. These are boys or young men, rather. These are someone’s children, someone’s brother, someone’s friends.

These are not faceless, nameless, soul-less, and body-less people. These are boys/young men with bodies, faces, names, souls, human needs, and families.

And my hunch is that sometimes when we don’t feel protected, we feel tempted to take protection into our own hands.

That is easy for us to picture as a people, because the reason we are crying out for the powers that be to take an intervention if we’re honest, is not because we care so much about these young men and their lives and their families, we are concerned about our own protection.

It is our sense of helplessness that is driving us to apply pressure, not always our sense of compassion. That in itself says a lot.

Because, helplessness will drive us to make cowardice recommendations to have these young men eliminated from the society as if they never belonged here, as if their lives never mattered; but compassion will beckon us towards curiosity, care, and courage.

I think when we put it that way, that is a feeling that all of us can resonate with.

I think when we think about it that way, we can start to devise strategies for conscious intervention and stop reducing everything to tactical force.

YOU CAN NOT HEAL TRAUMA WITH MORE TRAUMA.

The tactical force will help with rounding up, YES, but it will not help with soul healing, transformation, and rehabilitation. It will not help with creating a place of refuge for the kind of amnesty to happen.

Amnesty doesn’t just happen.

In fact, AMNESTY WILL NEVER HAPPEN IN A COUNTRY WHERE VICTIMS AND OFFENDERS DON’T FEEL LIKE THEY CAN BE PROTECTED BY THE SYSTEMS THAT ARE DESIGNED TO PROTECT THEM.

We can call for it all we want.

We can even pray for it; it will not come.

If there is corruption in the systems that are designed for our protection, there will be no amnesty – there will only be more outrage and more young men externalizing their pain by taking it out on the society that never protected them.

When we learn how to create safe places for our children, our young men, to take our wounds to, only then can we create and encourage systems of amnesty.