Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Looking back at Clinton's campaign against youth violence

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Looking back at Clinton's campaign against youth violence:

Looking back at Clinton's campaign against youth violence

by Mike Klonsky

It's difficult and heart-breaking to look at the news each day and see the growing body count of Chicago's mostly-young gun violence victims without thinking about what might have been. Pandemic gun violence with accompanying catastrophic effects on the families and friends of both the victims and shooters, could have been avoided or at least, diminished if appropriate measures would have been taken and policy decisions made in the wake of the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School.

Back during the Clinton administration, as part of his National Campaign Against Youth Violence (NCAYV), in the months following the Columbine disaster, I was invited to join Pres. Clinton's Academic Advisory Board. The board, was led by Anthropologist John Devine ("Maximum Security") and included some of the nation’s leading scholars of urban America and youth violence like Elijah Anderson ("Code of the Street"), Sissila Bok ("Common