everyone is part of a little army

Ali jami

What is the thing you hear about most on the news? I don’t mean specific things, I mean, as an overall, what acts to you hear about on the news? I’ll give you a second to think... got it yet? Alright, it’s violence. It may not be like that in Iran, but over here in England, there’s always someone stabbing someone, or someone getting shot or someone else got killed in Iraq. This is what my article is about; it’s about violence in teenagers. I don’t know if you’ve heard but our rates of violence amongst youths are increasing and not steadily, in the past couple months it has shot up and that’s only in the news. I myself know many murders that have gone unheard of and this is what I’m going to cover today.

Violence is the act of aggression and abuse which are intended to harm someone else. It seems obvious that the youth would go towards violence these days; violence is senselessly glorified in the media, by Hollywood, by music etc. but enough of that. Let’s talk about violence for teens, it seems to be more and more accepted these days by teens. I remember when I first started secondary school that most of us frowned upon it but now, 3 years on it seems so much more acceptable to sort something out with your fists. It seems actually to be the only way of getting to some people, words don’t penetrate them and neither do threats so to put them in place you’re forced to hit them.

In my opinion, it’s natural really. We humans come from very violent backgrounds, just look at the past 5000 years of our existence, countless wars, a huge number of people slaughtered and that’s how it seems to work. Everyone will receive a beating at least once in their lives, it toughens you up, and it makes you stand up for yourself. People though are still afraid of fighting a lot of people in my school and outside of school are more than happy to just to lie down and take the abuse, just so they won’t provoke an attack which is very understandable and I’ll explain why later. There seems to be only a handful of people that are willing to fight, and these are the people with a huge amount of back-up. This brings me onto my next point.

These days it seems everyone is part of a little army; you can’t hit someone without having loads of other people from their little gang on your case. Which is why the majority of people would rather take the abuse of people than hit them and then later on be dragged into a dark alleyway and beaten up ruthlessly, that’s how it is these days. There are no longer any one-on-one fights. When you provoke something in London, you best have a bunch of friends willing to hold your back and fight alongside you because if you don’t, these people will beat you up. The severity of the attack itself depends on what kind of people you’re messing with. I live in Barnet, which is situated in North London; the very North of London, it’s a suburb area but the teens act as if they are at war. These people have nothing to fight for, or rebel against. They preach the message that they are “gangsta” but they aren’t, they live in nice houses, they have the latest technology, the newest clothes but yet they carry this ghetto mentality that people from actual ghettos have a right to have. These people needlessly fight each other, maybe it’s because they’re bored, maybe it’s because they think that if they do so, they’ll be seen as the hardest guy or maybe it’s just to stand they’re ground. I don’t know to be honest; I don’t understand these people who just fight for the hell of it. So the severity of the attacks in Barnet aren’t very severe, they’ll probably beat you up, but they won’t kill you, now I’m going to walk you through the people and the areas of people that will kill you.

London doesn’t have many ghettos, but areas that could be considered as ghettos are areas such as Hackney and Brixton. Over the last couple of months, the murder rate as skyrocketed in those two areas, especially Hackney and it’s surrounding areas. These murders are very gang-related. Just like Barnet and basically all throughout London there are little groups, little groups of friends that’ll hold each others back if another of their friends is in a fight but in Hackney there are proper gangs. Gangs that kill members of other gangs and then the other gang attacks the gang who done the killing and kills the person who did it and then the first gang kills another members of the other gang, do you see a pattern emerging? This is how it is.

Gangs are also becoming more heavily equipped. It started from just fists, possibly a plank of wood or a baseball bat, but it’s usually just fists in the little groups throughout London, the proper gangs are packing baseball bats and knives and lately a lot of them are packing guns as well and these people unlike people from my area are not afraid to use these weapons, why? Because they have absolutely nothing to lose, I’ll walk you through the situation of the average murderous teen in London, we’ll call this character Joe.

Joe was brought up in Hackney; his parents were honest and hard working people. They tried to give Joe a good as possible start in life. Joe went to primary school and he was fine, not above average but not below average. His parents were happy that their son was doing well in an area where most kids are off the rails but then Joe advanced to secondary school the story completely changed. Joe got involved with the wrong crowd and started with small things, pushing and shoving people, threatening people, disturbing classes and just bullying other kids. Then it advanced to going out at mugging people, going out and randomly beating people up and then he soon finds out that he likes this lifestyle. He makes a nice amount of money mugging people. He drops out of school, abandons his parents and squats with his mates. Stuck in the ghetto mentality, soon he and his so-called “brothers” need money, so they get involved with drugs and they make a hotspot and sell small minor drugs and it makes a nice income and things progress this way and Joe continues to spiral down and get worse. Then one day, one of his “brothers” started picking on the wrong person and one thing led to another and he got stabbed and later died in hospital. Joe feels rage running through his veins and wants revenge. So he picks up a knife and stabs the person who killed his fellow “brother” and then someone else kills him and the revenge attack pattern emerges.

Stepping away from gang violence, let’s take a look at more common violence. I hit my friends all the time, whether it be a joke or if they said something or did something really offensive to me I would hit them but that’s hitting, I have never beaten anyone of my mates up. That’s just ridiculous, me and my mates are close, we hit each other because we have a philosophy of getting things out, whether that be by a physical approach or voicing our thoughts. We’re very close though and if something broke out, we would cover each other. I have many times for my friends but us as a group have never started anything, we only attack if we are attacked first, and I’ll tell you a story of one time.

My friend who I’ll call Mark for his anonymity and I was playing football on our football field like we always used to do at that time and we were laughing and joking with other friends. Then this boy walks up to Mark and randomly hits him in the ribs. I suddenly became alert and so did Mark. Mark then shoves this other boy and just tells him to go away. This other boy then smashes Mark in the face, Mark then falls to the floor. I see this and run up to this boy and hit him in the face which then knocked his tooth out. Mark then gets up and kicks the boy in the ribs and then me and him walk away from the scene.
Later that day the boy who provoked us comes up to me and Tom and says sorry, we also apologize and the next day were joking and laughing together.

I used to be quite the pacifist, but these days, you can’t survive being a pacifist. So from seeing events, hearing of events and such, I’ve become more adapted to violence. I don’t like fighting but this isn’t a perfect world, and sometimes you have to. Although there are times which I won’t get involved in, if there is a risk where I could get killed or seriously injured and don’t go anywhere near that vicinity. Me and my friends share this ideology and this is why we don’t look for trouble, because if you look for trouble, it won’t be long before it comes along and finds you. There are many stories I have; I’m going to share two more with you. These are tales of the repercussions of living a life of violence. An old friend of mine recently settled down and gave up the life of violence he once lived. He’s about 26 now and he has a kid and his life is good but back in his prime he used to be incredibly violent. He used to beat people with bricks and his friends would have to drag him off unconscious people that he would continue to beat. Recently his past came back to haunt him and attacked him, an attack that severed a nerve in his foot. Now he cannot move his right foot, and has to drag it along with him. It saddens me to see it, even though he probably deserved it, it saddens me to see someone so strong become decrepit and weak but that’s how it is. What goes around comes around.

Another story is closer to me; a friend of mine had a relationship with his guy, who lived around Hackney. September last year, a rival gang stabbed and killed his best friend. Recently he got his revenge but not by conventional means, it wasn’t premeditated, he didn’t plan it. It just happened. He saw his best friends’ killer in the street. Grabbed him, dragged him into a corner and beat him to death. Immediately after he phoned his girlfriend, (one of my best friends) and told her about it and in a chilling tone said:

“I know what’s coming... I’m so sorry”

And that’s it for this article on violence. If you have any questions about this article or any other article, drop a line the comments or feel free to email me. I hope you enjoyed this article and learnt something.