Former Vice Lords Chiefs Now Going a Round for the Kids
The focus is on boxing, but the key is teaching discipline and self-control. Brown asked one boy a question and the boy lazily answered.
“Look me in the eyes,” Brown said, sternly, turning the boy’s head to face him. “Always look a man in the eyes.”
It’s in the eyes of these young men — many already entrenched in gangs — that Brown and Fitzpatrick see themselves.
Drawn by the lure of the streets. Hungry for anything that can bring order to chaotic lives.Fitzpatrick and Brown contend that in the evolution of a street thug, this is the age where there’s a chance to knock young men off a path blazed with fists and pistols.
“This is where we’ve got to reach them,” Fitzpatrick said. “And they’ll listen to us because they know us, and they know we’ve been there.”
The men say that, for them, transitioning from gang life was like trying to get untangled from a thorny bush. They did it bit by bit, fell back more than once, swallowed the pain of extrication.
They don’t want these boys to feel that pain.
“They learned what they learned on the streets from people like us,” Fitzpatrick said. “So the people on the streets should be the ones who go into the schools to help straighten this out. You can’t teach this from a book.”