The Oxnard Journal

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04 - 04 - 04

This Tuesday's City Council Meeting will be one to watch and one to attend. Show starts at 7pm Tuesday 06 April.

Reminder: if you have Dish TV then you are missing out on some good television by not having regularly televised Oxnard City Council and City Channel coverage...so if you can't watch at home - you can watch in person.

Then on Wednesday night @ 7pm - more good TV as the Inter-Neighborhood City Council meets. A special presentation will be given by OxPD on the proposed Gang Injunction. There may also be, for your viewing pleasure
a coup d'etat against the Chair of the INCF with a recall vote - so the meeting will be an important one.

The Editor of the Oxnard Journal has extended an open invitation to residents and yes, gang members from
La Colonia to come toboth the City Council and INCF meetings to tell leadership what you told me. Get the message out so that the City knows what's up and what's not up. On Wednesday at the Inter Neighborhood Council Forum meeting the message will reach the heads of the Neighborhoods so they will know that civil rights are what are being affected by this injunction. It affects more than just gangs.

General 'street beat' has word ^u_p that this 'injunction' thing was NOT presented to the neighborhoods affected, nor was anyone given warning --- Just "BOOM" here is the proposal. Gang members feel that many of the wrong kids will be targeted by the Police based purely on their attire. Things have been moderately controlled and quiet.

The efforts of people such as Dolly Villa and the 50+ gang and non-gang kids who lent a hand at this past weekend's car wash demonstrate with the right approach, good results can come.

¿Where do our youths go? --- downtown Boys and Girls Club - Nope ! That gig's been closed since Jan 2003 -- and with empty promises to reopen it, it seems like a bleak and broken promise to the central heart of Oxnard.
Parks - No - and with the City coming down hard on the car wash about using Del Sol Park - the People's park - well - fact:::: Dolly was given insufficient notice by the City how to to conduct this peaceful action. So with parks off the list and places for kids to hang and play extremely minimal and latch key kids and both parents busting tail to pay their utilities and housing costs - what more is there - especially in La Colonia ??? --- There's zippo for the kids of Oxnard to do and most of the time Zippo^® gets something to do -- and. . . . .

Oxnard would be well advised to tread carefully into this injunction. No one knows yet what can really happen and should we experiment with the summer coming?

People want to know what happens to all of Oxnard's city money - enough for a movie theater and parking structure, but nothing for La Colonia. Sounds like a winning formula.

These gang members are our neighbors.

These gang members are the kids of families that time and the rest of world gave up on. Their lives are harder and their choices fewer than the rest of us. We need to give our kids more options, not less. What we don't need to do is create an aura of fear and repression within this 6.66-mile zone of defiance.

As more is presented about the injunction and more facts about what the City and its Police Department propose to do, this time before the judge rules Yea or Nay over this proposal gives us some breathing room and some time to seek alternate methods to create peace within Oxnard.

For a history of gang injunctions - Visit this website.

Until then --- Pray for peace in our City and pray that our gangs will keep chillin' as they have been and that this injunction will not exacerbate an already volatile situation.