Violence

"You don't know when these things are going to happen and you don't really know why, they just suddenly erupt and it seems spontaneous but it is very premeditated because each of these kids have a street persona and it is the only thing they have in their life, it is the shards of their individuality. They keep this close to themselves and they know an infraction, they sense an infraction immediately and they have trained themselves to react and the reaction can come instantaneously or a month later. And that is the thing that makes it seem spontaneous but it is not but it is very practiced at least in their heads what they are going to do. "
-Ed Burns writer of "The Wire" Baltimore Police Detective for 20 year and teacher for 7 years.

I didn't have a fight in my class until the 2nd week. This was actually an accomplishment. CVS is a very violent school, last year their were over 70 fire alarms, and each one usually resulted in a brawl. The first week of school one student was shot. Another was stabbed in the eye and lost it.

Working construction, and having a cloud of bad luck, i have seen blood. But to see blood taken by violence is different. It lies on the ground thick, deep, and is so much more color than anything else in the city.

The two students were a male and a female. They did not actually get into a fight but squared off with one another. I ended up taking them to Mr Hampton, are gynormous dean of discipline. This was somewhat of a risky move because I had to leave the class, and because I did not want people to think that I could not handle my students.

The think that really angered me was it was an incident without any provocation. She made fun of his rapping skills, he made a retort while I was checking her, and she could not let it go. This need to be the aggressor, and the refusal to acknowledge that their can be mutual aggression. The conflict dichotomy guarantees ascendancy for one and descent, to be the master and to be the bitch. And their is no way out of that logic, there are only the non sequiturs of bringing up the fact that it is not worth it, that it is an act of self limitation.

The students do not see that by retaliating to everything, that they are forfeiting control of their lives to the aggressor. This fact follows a logic independent from the zero sum game, but is more true and permanent. A man is a person who can take care of themselves, but more importantly, is a person who is in control of their own life, of their destiny. Limiting yourself is the same thing as emasculating yourself. And I do think that these students unconsciously feel that threat, the blow, but they do not understand or see it.

I talk about being a man not to be gender exclusive, but just to show the manner in which I relate my understanding of my gender to the situation.

The really nasty fight happened on the third week. A fire alarm was pulled the last hour of the day. Security ran to respond to a big fight. By respond, i mean join the fight. Not a hugging kind of hold but to throw punches and wrench arms until they snapped. I did somehow manage to keep my class together and start taking attendance, when another incident happened. I can't call it a fight. A gang of male students was beating up a pregnant girl because she claimed that the leader of the gang was the father of her child. She lay on the ground. I ran over, security saw me and moved, and a brawl ensued between us all.