Thursday, July 10, 2014

Making The Important Stories Go Viral

At some point we have to care enough to start a conversation and force it to go viral.

Viral might be the word of the 21st century. I was so passionate about a news story I had read approximately 24 hours ago, that I started messaging male bloggers. The story pertained to how several teenage boys felt the need to bash a 16 year old girl after they'd already allegedly raped her and put naked photos of her passed out on the floor online for the world to see.

See, I could have sent messages to every woman I can think of, but everyone knows teenage boys don't respect what women have to say. They respect the men that they look up to, so my goal was to start reaching out to the respectable men. I'm not finished reaching out yet. However, one man I spoke with said he wasn't that comfortable with the subject. He absolutely did not want to write on it. He's done some mentoring and has realized a lot of the youth just don't care. If you look on twitter right now you'll realize a lot of the youth don't care.

I don't care about the youth that don't care. I don't care about the ones who will ignore all the signs and eventually end up on a sidewalk in handcuffs getting read their rights by the cops they think are discriminating against them. They aren't my concern. It's the ones who can still be guided down the right path. It's the children that are still willing to stop and listen when someone is motivating them to do right.

What if the boys didn't actually rape the girl? They still put her nude photos online. That is still child pornography. Child pornography is still a federal charge that can ruin a person's life in an instant. A 15 year old could catch that message and avoid making the same mistake others before him (or her) have made. I heard that there was a similar case to this last month in Ohio, but upon searching for the story I found something crazier.

Apparently Cleveland has a gang problem and the system out there is definitely trying to clean it up. This took place in Cuyahoga County. For instance June 10th, 2014 prosecutors filed 437 gang related charges against 43 juveniles sitting in a detention center. The boys were in a detention center, which means they already had issues that lead to that point. However, they were committing crimes while inside of it. The goal of pressing charges was to get them up out of there and tried as adults. Now what type of adults are we to not warn children of what could happen to them if they continue down the wrong paths?

So we all know what is going on in Chicago right now. These young adults and teens are killing just to be killing. Who is teaching them that this is right? Who is teaching them that their lives are as valuable as the lives that they take away? They become nothing once they pull that trigger, but we need to start speaking up. Let's not wait until the next child kills. Let's not wait until the next young adult is being hauled in by the cops or the next teen catches a federal charge because he thought it was funny to get his classmate he called cute naked and post her nude body all over the internet. I'm challenging you to write about this topic.

Don't pretend it away because it's no one in your family. It could be your family member if you keep quiet.

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Lashuntrice

Lashuntrice