Outside Reading: Always Running #4

The people who are involved in gangs not only risk there own lives everyday fighting on the streets for almost no reason that I would understand, but some of them have families that they are completely disregarding by involving themselves in this violence. "The Animal Tribe practically died with the death of one of the last presidents: John Fabela. Seventeen year old John -whose girlfriend was pregnant with his infant daughter- succumbed to a shotgun blast in his living room as his younger brother watched from beneath a bed in an adjacent room"(108). I know that its is virtually impossible for me to relate to this lifestyle because mine is 100 percent different, but for me its just hard to read how often brothers watch their siblings get killed or beat up in a fight and just move on so quickly from it. I read that in the book, and in the documentary The Interrupters, they showed cases of random shootings that happen all the time. It comes to a point where its not even surprising anymore and thats what so hard for me to comprehend. For some people thats just a completely normal life. In the book, his girlfriend now has to raise their child along because he died for his gang. To me it seems like these gangs are so important to the members that they understand that its a possibility that their families will lose everything, but those are just consequences they have to live with. I guess for me even after doing research and reading about the topic its hard to comprehend how my lives gang violence really does affect, in such tragic ways.