JORDAN DAVIS (The Dunn Trial) - Is Your Child Next? Target Practice ...

Commentary & Thoughts By:  Barry Brown - The "Make A Way" Education Program

The Dunn Trial (Jordan Davis)

Is Your Child Next? Target Practice ...

Let me start with saying that this Dunn character & Zimmerman are dead wrong for murdering Jordan Davis and Trayvon Martin. Dunn & Zimmerman should 30 feet under the jail. That's my opinion, the horrific thing is that there are a lot of people that agree with Dunn and Zimmerman's action and believe they did act in self-defense. Ok, that's their opinion.

I want to address the idea that both of these young men could possibly still be alive if they were able to control their emotions and respect themselves enough to keep it moving instead of confronting, talking back and basically "bucking" at adults that were ready and willing to take their lives.

You see, I share with my daughters and any young people I get to speak with, that if they cannot control themselves, you give someone else the right to control you. There lies one of the biggest issues that our young people face on a daily basis, controlling their emotions.

Let me form an image in your mind as a parent & adult. You are not emphasizing education in your home. You do not discipline your child consistently and you actively attempt to be friends with your child instead of a parent. You reward your child with $100.00+ tennis shoes, but they are failing several classes if not all of them. Has a picture formed in your mind?

These are the same young people that believe it's ok to use profanity in front of adults or anybody for that matter. They believe it's ok to wait until the late bell rings and then go to class. And if anyone, including an adult, says something to them, that's a huge problem for the young person; because in their mind no one should restrict their actions or speech in any form or fashion. The problem with this way of thinking is that these young people are usually setting themselves up for jail or death.

With society moving closer and closer to an "everything goes" wild wild west throwback mentality, our young men and ladies of color are being set-up to be target practice. If we do not counter-act the societal woes that are being established along with the laws that are already on the books with better quality parenting with an emphasis of helping our children find their purposes in life as soon as possible; we are going to continue to get the short-end of the stick with our children being buried at early ages and hauled off to jail where they become 2014 slaves. The 13th Amendment did not totally abolish slavery. Read it for yourself. You may be surprised!

I will finish this blog with a story from one of my recent visits and work in a high school. The class was reading the updated version of Romeo & Juliet. It's called ... wait for it ... Romiette & Julio ... lol ... So first of all, I had to almost beg students to read out loud. They wanted to listen to the audio book. The interesting and sad part about getting the students to read out loud is that the smart students do not want to let the other students know that they are smart. It's amazing, I believe the opposite. I believe that the students that need to improve should be working diligently on improving attempting to learn from the smart students, but now a culture has started where the not so bright students pick on the students that are smart and putting forth effort. Call me crazy ... So during one of our discussions, the term "lame" came up, and the students told me that a lame person is someone that isn't popular. I asked them do they know what lame actually means? I had a student look the word up on their phone of course ... Lol ... and when they found out what it means not being able to move or use a part of your body; they just had blank stares on their faces. I shared with them the fact that they were wrong for picking on students that are putting forth an effort to learn and to improve because the actual lames in this scenario is them, because they are not using the most important part of their bodies, their brains!

It was a good learning experience for me and the students.

Parents, let's step our game up and choose to invest in our children so that we may stop this school to death and school to jail pipeline.

One Love!

Why are our young people so violent?

Thoughts By:  B. Brown (BREG)


On June 23, 2012 when my brother and his family were in town visiting, we went down to Underground Atlanta to get something to eat, checkout some vendors and hangout.

As we were preparing to leave, we saw a large gathering of young people coming together and then we saw two female teenagers begin to argue with each other and then of course a fight broke out.

Now, I understand that some fights are totally unavoidable, but the overwhelmingly majority of them are very avoidable, and we as adults have to teach our young people how to walk away from confrontations and live to see another day of life. When our young people fight in this day and time, they usually want to literally kill the other person because that's their mentality. So there's a high probability that someone may pull out a gun or a knife and end someone's life. As in the case of Bobby Tillman in Douglasville, GA, he got "stomped" to death by several male teenagers while over 70 people watched. What does that say about our mentalities and the value of life in general?

I don't know about you, but I am going to really start focusing on teaching my children about loving themselves and loving, respecting and caring about other people because if they love themselves and feel good about themselves, there's a great chance that they won't be so eager to end the life of another person because they value their own lives.

I have a speaking engagement coming up in August and I am going to highlight "Teen Violence" in my keynote address and challenge the young people and their parents alike to love themselves and to love others in spite of hard times and confrontations.

We can collectively stop the violence in our homes, communities and schools if we actively communicate with each other better, be honest with each other and love each other on a daily basis!

Yo, we can do it!!! Let's go ........!!!