Melody Young

There was a boy in this neighborhood who wanted my son to join a gang.

Our family doesn’t join gangs.

But one day the school called and said my son wasn’t in school so I went driving to look for him. I saw him at the park with that boy and he said, “[Your son’s] hanging out with me.” I told him that my son needs to pay me back for the three days of labor it took to bring him into this world and the payment is graduating high school.

We’re a package deal. If you want him you have to take me, too. And you don’t want to deal with me.

Sure enough he kept taking my son out of school. So what I did was I stood at the end of the block where he was selling drugs and told every person who walked by that those drugs had poison in them. It cost him thousands of dollars a day. He said he’d blow my head off and I told him good luck dealing with the police looking around here investigating my murder.

Finally he told me to take my son back and get the hell out of there. 

Five months later that kid came back and said, “I wish I had a mother like you. I’m envious that you’re a mom that would die for her child; that loves her child so much. I know I do wrong. I’m going to try and get a job but right now I need to take care of my kids.”

I was grateful that he did that, that he was honest with me. I said, “Try to get yourself a job. It’s less stress, believe me.”

A few years later he died in a motorcycle accident. I saw him the day before and he tried to give me $30 for an event I was putting on for the kids in our neighborhood. I said I wouldn’t take any dope money.

I show drug dealers job applications all the time. When I did my last event I had shirts for the kids that said, “We need jobs” on the back. If we had jobs available for kids here it would be a different world. They’d feel just as important as an adult.

Just look at all the good people who had support at an early age that are doing well today. Look at Tiger Woods. Look at Michael Jordan. That’s what I tell the kids around here. If we can instill good, productive habits, the world would be a better place.

It’s tough out here because you have kids that don’t have good role models within the community. When I was growing up kids had adults asking them what they wanted to be. The family structure was there. Now the parent has to work so hard to find a job or is working at a job where kids are left home alone doing something negative and falling to peer pressure. 

If we had summer jobs for these kids it would make a big difference – showing a child how to succeed in a trade; a newspaper job, a secretarial job. Apprenticeships are gone here.

The environment is important.

Melody Young
Chicago, Illinois