THE 'CODE' HAS A DEVASTATING IMPACT

Time was, Leslie Wingard didn't watch the evening news. It was too
depressing, she said.

But Wingard, who teaches reading at Grand Park Alternative School - a
center for students who have run afoul of school rules and society's
laws - watches it now.

And prays that no one on it looks familiar.

"I've lost two students [to homicide] this year," said Wingard. "I
asked myself: 'What could I have said? What could I have done?'

"I used to never, ever watch the news. I felt it was incredibly
morbid. But now, I watch it to make sure that none of my students are on it."

Wingard talked to me about living with that kind of anxiety last week
- - a day after she joined a community discussion at Jacksonville
Community Council Inc. on the book Code of the Street.

Written by University of Pennsylvania sociologist Elijah Anderson,
the critically acclaimed book deciphers the "code" that governs the
lives of youths and adults who live in areas that normalcy abandoned
long ago; where the chasm dug by decades of economic and social
neglect has been filled by the drug trade and its accompanying nihilism.

It's not surprising that Wingard, like any other caring teacher,
would be shaken by the slayings of her students. After all, most
teachers would much rather see their students live to send them a
graduation invitation, and not have to read about them in the death notices.

Problem is, teachers like Wingard only have power in the classroom.
They don't have power once they release their kids into the streets.

That's where the code takes over.

The code sprang from the economic instability that has plagued inner
cities for decades; the kind that has people trapped in either
low-wage work, or irregular low-wage work or illicit work. It is a
code that has reworked notions of success and respect around that
hopelessness. It compels youths to kill over minor slights; to plan
for funerals instead of college.

And it's a code that decency and compassion compels us to dismantle.

Michael Hallett, a University of North Florida criminology professor
who has, among other things, participated in the Jacksonville Journey
anti-crime initiative, urged city leaders to read Code of the Street.

He did that, he said, because "it's a constant struggle to get
rational discourse into public circles about the crime problem." He's right.

Too many times, when people talk about the violent crime epidemic
here, an epidemic that impacts the entire city but disproportionately
affects black people in impoverished areas, they are quick to paint
it strictly as a failing of character and personal responsibility.

They seem to believe that youths who live in communities ruled by the
code are hoarding some magic dust somewhere that can make their
parents become more responsible; that if they just stopped listening
to rap music and spoke proper English, all would be right in their world.

But, they still have to live in their world. And it's a world in
which respect isn't defined by those things that are held in high
esteem in a world governed by stable jobs, sound infrastructure and
social networks that make violence taboo.

It's just the opposite. It's a world in which jobless poverty and
family instability has made willingness to resort to violence a
source of esteem.

It's a world governed by the code.

Counteracting that code will be tough. But some of that effort can
come from the Jacksonville Journey initiative. It is asking for a
modest millage rate increase - an increase that would amount to $61
million over the next five years - to support strategies to tamp down
the violence problem.

But it will also take a targeted economic development strategy that
is geared toward poverty reduction, as well as an educational and job
training strategy, to begin to reverse the years of economic and
social decay that has, in some areas, made violence the cost of doing
business. Or the price of respect.

And has teachers like Wingard seeing her kids end up in a coffin
instead of in a cap and gown.