If you can turn 25% of a group in your favor,
the whole group will tip over.
Returning to the Rehab Crew, now confronting the three police officers, we were working on the good 20% to influence the 60% and neutralize the negative 20%. We did so by working with Tiny, one of the 20% positive, whose sense of humor began to make its way into the conversation. And Bobby who gave an intellectual twist to most of his comments. By the time the “I” became a “we”, we had everybody get up to show how to safely set up a ladder on a slippery surface to install a light, plus do other physical and mental challenges to secure a home each was working on. At the end, chairs forming a circle, kids and officers calling each other by their names, the ice was broken, and acceptance was flowing where none was before. Always prevent the negative kids colluding with the negative police. A bad cop identifying with a sharp bad Barrio kid develops illicit connections, if the officers do not prevent that from happening, then your community will take a turn for the worse.
The 20/60/20 Theory can be used against you. Evil people will recruit 2% of the worst 20% to dominate them to influence 60% and marginalize the 20% good. Now you see how it works. Violent demonstrations in TV are achieved this way.
We had gone block by block, for full community support in code enforcement and safety. Start with the 20% (board members,) add 60% normal, so as to neutralize the more negative 20%, a dynamite formula. Now we with the core youth, the leadership of tomorrow, and the most troublesome age. Astounding results! A very potent tool was opening doors for positive communication between kids and cops, where before we had anger, mistrust, and resentment, now the most difficult age group was also responsible for neighborhood protection, and not as vigilantes.
With this Neighborhood Watch Program, the community took control and responsibility for the safety of its own environment.
Welfare and police protection competes for tax dollars. Either relinquishing control by receiving a welfare handout check or save on need for taxes by honest work and collectively working on your individual safety. Beware when the message turns to ‘less police, and more social workers, more taxes, less safety.’
Our programs complimented each other; same direction, same goals, same Family, Pride, and Hands, all based on the individual self-fulfillments and sharing the power. The Barrio was no longer to be considered a bad neighborhood. We were already winning, but much more to be done, like weaving several stronger fabrics together and cure deficits. Ray made a good point when he said, “If people lose the incentive to work, they will vote for politicians who advocate more hand-outs, promoting the addictive circle to dependency. I call this ‘the government-deplorable cycle’”. Now I knew where that name came from! Increasing dependency on others promotes the culture of poverty pimps, which are those who make a good living by keeping the rest dependent, convincing them of their inferiority by emphasizing their role as victims, which promises to bring in more easy money. The poverty pimp competes with the corruption in the private sector where some abuses the low-level wage earners. Both are leeches. Who is worse? The poverty pimps are the worst, because they use tax money from the government monopoly to fuel their scam. Can you imagine what will happen the day when the generations of children growing in families accustomed to dependency on government welfare, adding to that the increase of members of the elderly population needing Medicaid, more government workers, the increasing number of government unions and employees who can’t get fired, the larger number of nonprofits funded by government grants, and all those who get free stuff; what happens when that reaches more than 51% of the voting population and they vote themselves welfare handouts into perpetuity? No one will work for someone who is poorer than they are, so everyone under the Government Deplorable Cycle will promote voting for he who offers to give even more. Too many social government programs drain a nation rather than provide hope for a better world they promised to be. Add politicians collectively increasing their own and family perks. The weight is shifting to the other end where the more social programs there are, the more jobs in running those programs, emphasizing increasing the number of poor people, so they can keep their jobs and increase their budgets.
Poverty has become one of the mayor economic engines in the world without results in diminishing it.
“To prevent this kamikaze spiral, we must make changes starting today. If government social programs fatten up the Deplorable Cycle of Bureaucracies, it also creates industries that feed from the same; health care, political careers, and the few non-for-profits who are regrettably snared on the morally corrupted side of government funding.” Ray stopped for air, so I jumped in. “I agree, and I will add a danger creeping in, the government using the excuse of the ‘common good’, ‘the collective’, to decree what should be personal decisions. The unwritten agenda is to remove decision-making from citizens and parents and have the government agencies assume that role for the collective. Someone said once that it takes a village to raise a child. NO, IT DOES NOT! It takes a family to raise a child, responsibility stay with parents. Schools are important, but can’t replace parents. The community role is to keep peace among adults, not raise the child.
The role of a village continues with education, volunteerism, employment opportunities, the arts, and a family culture that leads to individuals using peer pressure in a positive way, including looking after the infirm and the disable. The community doesn’t form the child. The child grows to form the community. No reversal of thinking on this one. Listen to what John F. Kennedy said; “Don’t ask what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Think twice, more money will not fix our education, only good education will fix education. Only getting rid of public Teachers Unions from public schools will be a first step to fix education. Self-perpetuating unions are for protecting teachers, not students, and for funding political campaigns. They have no place in government employment, students are not the beneficiaries. Unions have done nothing to equalize the quality of teachers across all public schools. The worse the school the more money politicians ask for, a Political Deplorable Cycle. Parents first, then good schools for a positive trickle-up education. Let parents decide what school their children go to.
“Culture is sometimes delegated to a secondary role. With a poverty environment full of cruelty and corruption, no father in the home, slums and ghettos are your day-to-day environment, not your culture. For culture to improve results, you must improve the economic environment.
Today our social environment is in more danger than our ecological environment.
“A sound family, sound culture, and religion are the three strongest bases to improve society and raise future citizens who will elect the government.
This observation comes from close scrutiny of historical relevance and much experience, others will argue contrary but without any proof of valid result.
The government is not equipped to teach those who will elect the government,
nor is a village, nor Sharia Law which is not a religion, but a government.”
Then Ray hit me on the head with my own words, “Stop fixating on the negative bad environments. Look at where you want to go. Teaching control of your own neighborhood safety is a gigantic step in the right direction, well done! Now where do we want to go next?”
“You are right. Be positive. Promote ‘Be All You Can Be’.”