Dear Editor:

On Jan. 20, our nation was asked to began the task of “remaking America”. It marked an end to one era and the start of another. My parents taught me early, change begins with you, and I had a lot of changing to do. I never thought that white people would ever entrust the highest office in the land to an African American, but that changed. I had never ever dreamed of coming to an inauguration before, had never felt connected to the official history of my country, but that changed, too, as I stood along with my wife for hours in 17 degree temperatures close enough to see with my naked eyes Barack Hussein Obama becoming president in his black suit and red tie.

Things have changed here in Troup County also. I must admit it’s a lot harder growing up today than it was when I grew up. I can remember times when kids in my neighborhood would take on kids from another neighborhood as they visited the “rec” or the pool. I was sometimes involved in some of those discussions that would occur. But that’s mostly what they were, discussions when we thought up the worst things we could call each other. Now and then there would be fists thrown and people wrestling on the ground. But you know what … the occasional black eye, a hurtful word, the occasional pushing and shoving, I’m grateful that given the strong emotions that accompany growing up no matter who you are or where you grow up … we did not have guns, so when tempers got hot the most we could do was to yell and scream and push and shove and every now and then throw a punch.

Think of what it is like today where the young people in Troup County and the millions of others like them are immersed in a culture of violence. A culture that in so many ways glorifies violence. We see it on television and in movies, we hear it in the music, but worst of all we see it every single day on the streets, in the schools and neighborhoods where our children are trying to grow up. Where many, too many in effect are raising themselves. In too many neighborhoods gunfire is a daily ritual of life, an AK-47 is a badge of honor instead of a mark of cowardice, which it truly is. A bullet wound is an emblem of adulthood. This too has to change.

This past week members of the Operation Correct Start Board of Directors made a plea to the Troup County Board of Commissioners to make a change, and stop the violence that’s attacking our community. The response we got from Richard English Jr., who had been in support and actively participated in not one, but all of Operation Correct Start’s local programs (School supply give-a-way’s, Legacy Awards honoring John Lewis. etc.), who just so happen to be the only African American member of the board, who also worked under my fathers supervision, and who should be well aware of the need to bring back programs like the “Swimming Show”, suggested we team up with “Walt’s World”.

Well, we are not knocking Walt Harris and Walt’s World, Harris is a pro bowl NFL player who looks to do great things in this community and he must be applauded for even coming back, but Walt is a football player, who started a program just a year ago to provide education and training for adults. We are a violence prevention/anger management youth agency, that has continuously provided services throughout Georgia since 1995. This is another example why we need change. Mr. English, you can do better than that, all you have to do is look at the faces of the young people around you. We have enough recreational programs, we’re pros at playing, our youth need service providers. How many more young people have to die, haven’t we wasted enough lives, haven’t we lost enough young men and women to prison instead of college? We shouldn’t care what race they are, shouldn’t care where they live – every single young person in Troup County has a spark about them that we have for too long allowed to be extinguished by a level of violence, hatred, and divisiveness that still stalks our city, county and country. This is not just Richard English’s problem, it should be a problem for all the commissioners, city officials, local businesses, schools, law enforcement, and parents.

There is an epidemic of violence that is rapidly spreading throughout the nation and our community here in Troup County and yet there are still some among us who either refuse to accept the ravages of this epidemic or they have other agendas besides the saving of lives and the reforming of young people’s future.

We have to recognize the problem that violence, particularly young violence, poses to our society. We as a community have to form partnerships among different kinds of people in every neighborhood and we have to partner also as the local, state and federal levels in order to combat this social disease of violence.

It’s about never, never giving up on our youth. I feel that way about every single young person I meet here in Troup County today. Every young man or woman, every boy or girl, has the God given potential that we at our herald give up on. And it is incumbent upon us, as representatives of the adult community of this society, to recommit ourselves to our youth.

Bruce W. Griggs,

West Point resident

CEO/Founder/Executive Director

Operation Correct Start, Inc.