Kenneth High

“These parents need to be more accountable for their kids. I see young people walking in groups of 10 and 20. I got a son and I live on the West Side of Chicago, but I don’t allow that. I think the protest march helps, especially when you do marches in those drug-infested areas. If they are dealing drugs on a certain corner then the protest march keeps an emphasis on the problems.”

Robert Butler

“I don’t have an answer, but I think I see a lot of unemployment with our youth. I think we need more jobs so they can have some sort of income and to stop them from standing on the streets. I think that will help. And parents, I think, need to emphasis education more to their children; have them strive harder to try to accomplish things in life. I think the protest will keep it in the forefront as opposed to being on the backburner. I think that can be a good thing.”

Donald Cole

“I believe wholeheartedly that the answer is the parents. What you do to get them more involved is to make sure the parents suffer right along with them. If you catch a child stealing, give the parents 20 years and see what happens. Make the parents more responsible and you’ll be surprised how that will go. Like it is said “It takes a village.” When we were growing up, Ms. Jones down the street would whip you just as your mother would. The whole family was involved and so was the whole neighborhood. The protest march is to draw more attention to the main problem. If you don’t have a protest march, which was done back in the 1960s, we would not be as far as we are now. So you’ve got to draw attention to the subject matter.”

Al Mullen

“We should have more involvement with the parents. You should also involve the children because if they partake in what is happening right now, maybe they would be more focused on solutions. The protest march is something good, but it only works if we all involve ourselves. If we involve ourselves and we really want to make something out of our lives, then that’s exactly where we want to go. Then, we got to find out why the kids don’t feel they want to do anything with their lives. We were instilled by our parents. Are the parents now instilling that belief in their children?”

Tim Durham

“In my opinion, the thing that separates people isn’t race -it’s money. And the biggest thing that separates people with money is education. Give people the opportunity and everybody can rise above. There is no reason there should be such a big difference from one side of Austin Boulevard to the next. What is the difference? It is 50/50 black and white on the other side of that street, but the difference financially is huge. They got great schools on the other side. It’s all about opportunity. The protest march; I ignore that stuff. It is not going to get anybody an education or get any money in their pockets.”

Wayne Washington

“I think it is parents-young parents that have grandchildren and have no accountability. You go to some of these schools and you got the police on every corner. You got kids that just don’t care. They walk in front of cars, they have no respect for anyone, they don’t respect themselves. When you see them walking around the streets with their pants hanging down by their knees, they just don’t care. Not all of them, because there are good ones. I have a 16 year old son. He doesn’t do it, but he has two loving parents. At the same time, you don’t have to have two loving parents. You have to teach them to care for themselves in order for them to care for somebody else, or their property or anything else. I think the protest march should be about teaching kids how to respect themselves so they will respect other people.”