This Monday, March 30, the third community meeting to respond to gang activity will take place at 7 p.m. in the Elizabethtown Presbyterian Church Activity Center.

I have learned from the first two meetings that our county is home to at least seven active gangs and more than 30 suspected gangs, and that law enforcement and the school system are asking for help. Law enforcement wants to set up more neighborhood watches and foster better communication with the citizens they are paid to protect and defend. The schools need volunteers to serve as tutors, mentors, teacher assistants, or just to have lunch with a child who has no one to love them.

Like disease in the body, gangs are the cancer of a society. They cannot exist in healthy communities who believe they are “their brother’s keeper.”  

Depending on the police alone to solve gang problems without community support would work if we lived in a police state that had no rights or freedoms, like North Korea; but it is not enough in a free society.

And if a free society like ours is apathetic about gangs (whose purpose is to destroy our children), we will not keep our freedom long. Gang violence affects all of us.

Let’s get the word out and increase Monday night's attendance from 150 to 300!

Tommy Rains

Elizabethtown