"Nearly Every Community in America has Issues Related to Violence.
We have solutions."
"We are passionate about prevention, intervention, enforcement and re-entry strategies. We are passionate about measurement and even more passionate about saving our children from bullying, gangs and community violence."
For Immediate Release: January 3, 2012
America’s Nightmare
No COLORS Awakens America
As Youth Violence Crisis Threatens the Community Fabric of the Nation
New York, NY – Morgan James Publishing today released perhaps the most timely and relevant nonfiction book of the year with its release this week of No COLORS – 100 Ways to Stop Gangs from Taking Away Our Communities.
No COLORS is the first book published that focuses on proven community solutions to the youth violence crisis now threatening the fabric of America. The gang problem is no longer a police problem. It is a sign of community dysfunction and is a community problem.
Authors Bobby Kipper and Bud Ramey provide a thought provoking and frightening picture of the epidemic of gangs and youth violence across the nation. No COLORS is a wakeup call. It’s here now. It’s lethal. It’s an epidemic. Youth violence is spreading to quiet suburbs. Gated communities. Small towns. Suburbs. Everywhere.
In October 2011, the FBI released the 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment: Emerging Trends which reported a 40% increase in U.S. gang membership, just in the last two years.
“The FBI report is a wake up call,” Kipper and Ramey note. We now have over 1,400,000 gang members in America. And it is not just in the big cities anymore. The most dangerous growth has been in small towns and suburbs.
No COLORS provides a sweeping view of towns and cities communities across the U.S., Canada and abroad that have experienced meaningful results from their gang prevention community strategic plan. It’s about those communities who recognize that gangs and youth violence is a sign of community dysfunction; that the community as a whole has to bring their kids back.
This is much more than a melancholy episode in the growth of American and Canadian communities,” the writers state.
“It’s all on the line here for your community”, the authors warn. “Gangs erode schools, neighborhoods, businesses, and real estate, swell jails and prisons and ruin young people’s lives. Neighborhoods live in fear. Doing nothing is no longer an option. “Waiting on government” to fix it is not working - and never has worked.”
It’s not just a big city problem and police cannot handle it alone. The presence of gang activity is now everywhere in towns large and small.
Gangs affect the value of homes, creating a violence-plagued environment that results in subsequent flight that affects everything from the diversity and viability of neighborhoods to who goes to public schools.
Similarly, violence and the threat of violence impacts businesses and can result in the loss of jobs. Gangs erode our school system, which feeds into the continuum of neighborhood dissolution.
Youth violence and gangs also add significantly to the unsustainable cost of incarcerating so many young people.
Most people think there’s nothing we can do except to look to the police. There is so much we can do and No COLORS outlines successful interventions across America and the civilized world.
Dramatic success awaits towns and cities whose leading citizens engineer a comprehensive community response that includes city agencies, businesses, schools, community organizations, regional partners, faith-based groups – anyone who has a stake in a safer more livable community, and that includes everyone.
No COLORS takes us on a journey where it is acknowledged that gang problems can be deeply rooted in a way of life and going up against the gang mentality can run as deep as questioning somebody’s personal identity and self-worth. It is a complex and ongoing psychological contest that cannot be won by programs based on “just say no” approaches. As a member of the San Jose clergy active in gang prevention put it, “The battle may be fought in the streets and the neighborhoods, but the war itself is being waged over the souls of our young people.”
Kipper and Ramey urge the nation to act. “We have studied communities across America, and in so doing, we bring you this message: Act now - in your community. You cannot wait any longer. You can no longer allow your community leaders to deny that there is a problem.”
Community denial is part of the community dysfunction that just enables the gangs to grow out of control. Even worse is watching the future of our children be ignored because of politics, the authors note.
Watching great cities and communities tumble into a culture of violence is hard enough, “but even more difficult when we know what is working in communities which have faced the issues head on.”
No COLORS touches our notion of community and our primal sense of home, because at its core, No COLORS is about the places we live, collectively and individually. More specifically, it’s about the devastating changes that can and have occurred in those places as the result of gang-related youth violence.
No COLORS offers parents, business leaders, civic groups, members of the faith community, nonprofit organizations, teachers and city leaders a guide to what is working across America, Canada and abroad. A unified community can and must act.
There is nothing to fear from becoming involved in saving our children from gangs, drugs, guns, violence and an early death.”
Kipper and Ramey provide hope to a situation growing more hopeless every day. Readers will benefit from the authors’ quarter century of immersion in both the public affairs and law enforcement side of the gang and youth violence crisis. The myths will be dispelled – that kids can never leave a gang, that all kids are involved in gangs are violent offenders, and that only the police can solve the problem. It is essential to reconnect these high-risk youth to their schools, families, communities and ultimately their futures.
Americans want to be a part of something positive. No COLORS is about how we each can make a difference in this crisis, a pathway of proven and measureable community responses to the youth violence crisis.
The authors ask us to draw a line in the sand here, now. “We can’t win this with arrests. We have to win the hearts of our young people and show them a better way.”
Here Kipper and Ramey present 100 bold interventions and processes.
“Think of it as a menu. Select what is most appropriate for your specific community. Make your plan. Be creative. Enjoy the process and the challenge. Win your young people back. Cultivate their better angels. Reach in to shape their character and mind and instincts for inspiration, not despair. Level the playing field for children living in poverty with viable alternatives to street life,” the authors propose.
“We have left them behind. Now we are returning for them.”
The electronic (E-book) and pre-orders are now available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. Bookstore release is set for February 1. Advance multiple order copies are available at a discount at www.bookNoCOLORS.com or www.solveviolence.com .
