Community Conversations

Homer Youth

A paper prepared by Deland S. Anderson for the Pratt Museum in conjunction with a Community Conversation on Teens on 19 March 2004.

A group of twenty people assembled at the museum to discuss community issues tied to teens. Of special concern was the growing gap between elders and young people in the community caused largely by numerous recent incidents of teens being involved in destruction of public and private property and violence against persons. The ages of the participants in the evening’s conversation ranged from the early teens to the late sixties. The individuals there represented various groups or interests in the community as well as several different walks of life. Students from the High School, Middle School, and Flex School were present. A few teen parents attended, as did one minister, one teacher, one teachers’ aide, a community health nurse, and one youth counselor. Numerous community leaders were conspicuous by their absence. Despite special invitations sent by the facilitator, no one from the Police Department showed up. The City of Homer had no government representative. No school principals, assistant principals, or counselors attended. Only one clergyman came. No one from the Boys and Girls club or anyone affiliated with the now defunct Choices for Teens/Teen Center ventured in. And, despite extensive press coverage on this theme over the past year, no media representatives attended, except Hannah Harrison, an intern at KBBI Radio who served as co-facilitator for this Community Conversation. This is all by way of saying that, whatever the reasons for Homer’s community leaders not showing up, their collective absence could easily be read as lack of interest in a matter with which they are intimately involved.

In contrast, the presence of three self-professed bad boys at the talk was striking. Dressed in gangland garb, with dark glasses, hats, and outsized jewelry, they spoke in a sharp street vernacular about what it was like to live in the town of Homer as a teenager. One of them offered that it was much more fun to go out and find some trouble than it was to participate in any of the condoned activities in the community. What went through the minds of some of the other participants was, Why did they come to a community dialogue at the museum rather than going out and beating something up?

This question, or some version of it, deserves a moment’s reflection. As a subset of the group, these young men were by far the most vocal. Their comments, laced with criticisms of the community of Homer, came near to dominating the evening’s conversation. Clearly this indicates that they wanted to be heard. They emphasized repeatedly that it’s the monumental boredom of life in Homer that leads them to look for trouble. But how exciting is it to talk with strangers in a formal setting about your boredom? So, we surmise, they probably didn’t show up just to be entertained.

At several junctures of the conversation, one of these participants proudly described himself as the leader of a loose affiliation of some 35 Homer youth. He spun the narrative of how it had begun when a few Homer High students banded together to avoid being beat up by football players. Social outcasts, youngsters unhappy in their home lives, or just plain bored kids gravitated toward this group that began to call itself the “wolfpack.” He ridiculed the notion that it was any sort of a gang, and shrewdly distanced himself and the group from any of the persons or actions that had drawn the attention of the police and victimized citizens. At the same time he praised the value of this group to the youth of Homer. He described in some detail the location of a makeshift camp in a grove of trees on private property in the heart of town. He called the place Boys Town, and professed that this secret and illicit camp was the setting of innocent social gatherings involving nothing more serious than drinking sodas and eating steaks. But for those who read the police blotter, a cloud of suspicion must hang over this claim, as the campsite was the veritable epicenter of most of the acts of vandalism in the recent past, including trashed vehicles, intentionally spilled heating fuel, attempted arson, and the destruction of public art, among other things.

So, back to the question of why these guys showed up at the talk. Perhaps the leader was speaking as the self-appointed spokesperson for the group. Many of his comments seemed to be designed to get others to see the so-called wolfpack as cuddly rather than vicious. Perhaps he was trying to clear his name. He repeatedly lamented that his name had been ruined by negative stories in the local press. Or perhaps he was just seeking the attention or approval of his sidekicks by standing up to “the establishment” during this community dialogue. Probably there is some truth in each of these suggestions, but the plausibility of the last was heavily underscored by a steady stream of negative responses to positive suggestions presented by the group. The list of good and plausible suggestions made by the group is too long to recite here, but all alike emphasized the importance of building a coalition of interested parties and working over the long term to realize the vision in mind. Habitual responses such as “Well, they said we couldn’t do that,” and “What you people need to do for us is…,” indicated that these young people felt disenfranchised by those in control as well as entitled to many more privileges than they enjoy at present. So strong was their vituperative decoction of grievances and demands that one participant pleaded with the young men to stop saying such hurtful things for fear of poisoning the minds of others present, especially youngsters.

Another possibility is that these young toughs just wanted to be heard by an impartial panel. Their deeply cynical remarks barely masked their feelings of being wronged—whether by the police, the schools, the press, their parents, their peers, or society in general—and that it was someone’s job to make up for all that. It was perhaps this victim’s sense of entitlement that most disturbed members of the group.

At one point, one of the teens said acts of vandalism had been committed to send a message to the community of Homer because the Teen Center—their hangout prior to “boys town”—had closed its doors. To others it was clear these young people were acting out—throwing a sustained fit of sorts—because their fun had ended. But that’s clearly not where they thought they were coming from. Instead they thought they had a legitimate complaint against their community: you can’t just throw a bunch of people together in a town and not give them something to do that they enjoy. Otherwise they will set out to tear down what the community has built up. When presented as a fact of sociology, this is a cynical enough syllogism. But when promoted as an ethic, as it was here, it can only strike one as extortion.

There is clearly a gap here. Partly it is defined by generation, partly by class. The 20-70-age set in Homer is immersed in community life with programs, gathering, and events happening at a sometimes-overwhelming pace. Add to that the manifold recreational activities of this area and everyone’s need to work, and it makes for a very full life indeed. So it comes as a shock or a sham to hear people say there’s nothing to do in this town. At most it might be true that the adults in this community are so into themselves that they forget to include young people in their social activities. So much for the generation gap. But there were also young people at the conversation that attested to being kept very busy indeed with all of their school, sport, and social commitments. They emphasized that there was certainly no shortage of things to do in Homer. In response the self-styled thugs remarked that they weren’t into those things any more than they were into the many recreational opportunities in the Kachemak Bay area. But it’s less their skill set that limits them from academic, community, and sport activities, than it is their taste set. They want to do what other young people under the guidance of their parents and elders deem to be a waste of time. They said they just wanted a place they could play pool and cards, watch movies, and dance. This list is telling, as these are all activities that can be pursued on at least a weekly basis in this community. For instance, teens could play pool at the bowling alley, cards at the pioneer home, watch movies on couches while enjoying popcorn and sodas at the local theater, and dance at various school or community dances. What they really want, it seems, is to be given a place to hang out alone to do what a few juveniles would list as safe but still enjoyable activities. Apparently this group has formulated a certain class-consciousness by excluding themselves from the mainstream. They conform to a self-fulfilling prophecy of being cast out by the community.

Teenagers being unhappy with their school, town, parents, or peers is nothing new, of course, and in a normal situation it is to be expected. Kids in Homer and Anchor Point go to parties to break the rules and feel better by being together. Kids at the head of the bay might sneak off to watch television or a movie, as it is forbidden in their culture, and doing so builds a sense of independence as well as solidarity in young people. Similar events, perhaps involving different rules, no doubt happen in the native communities of Seldovia, Port Graham, and Nanwalek. We may as well recognize that it goes on everywhere, and we might even concede that in moderation such shattering of taboos is healthy. But that’s not the only thing that’s going on these days in Homer. What is new and very disturbing, at least in this community, is the formation of a group of young people who will lash out at us for not paying for their pleasures.

This infantile response to boredom might be contrasted with a remark made by the eldest participant in the conversation: I grew up on a farm; I don’t remember being bored. Young people today face a different set of problems and challenges than their parents or older generations did. This is where the gap begins to form. When I was a kid, rants one parent, I went out and got a job, a man’s job! But that parent did not grow up in a programmed environment, where every TV show or movie or electronic game has a built-in resolution, where the initiative lies in the hands of software giants and not young heroes. Programmed thinking stunts the growth of youngsters and robs them of character building real life experiences. It is the single greatest cause of boredom in today’s society, for instant gratification wanes instantly when the cathode rays flicker out. Ennui sets in when the tube goes black. This is the character of most homes, schools, and entertainment venues in contemporary society. The workplace is often no better, relying more and more on programmed protocols and filled with post-retirees trying still to work out their issues. This leaves young people with little room to develop and grow, to experiment and learn, to challenge their assumptions.

This is not to say that when a van gets burned or someone is gang raped in Homer that it’s all our fault. Those who commit such crimes must bear the primary burden of guilt. But if we are to prevent such horrible acts, we must work to anticipate them and derail the destructive energy that fuels them. An absolute must in this endeavor is to understand where these people are coming from, and to intervene when they go wrong by redirecting that energy to a positive outcome. When the cops blame the parents and the kids blame the schools; when the clergy condemn them and their friends condone them, then it is time to come together.

There are numerous factors at work in our present environment that encourage the growth of destructive youth culture. Locally we are faced with the degradation of our public schools. Because of reluctance to properly fund in-class education, our legislators are creating schools that take a back seat to prisons. Flat funding of education budgets together with misguided school administrations has taken a terrible toll on our schools over the past decades. This has a direct impact on our youth, as it affords less attention and fewer opportunities for pupils, leaving them with less to do in and after school, and rendering what they do in school less and less constructive. Nationally we are faced with a counter-cultural movement that is destructive in kind. Consider the following contrast. A generation ago, we had more chauvinism, racism, bigotry, and (perhaps) political and religious jingoism than we do today. But we also had a counter-culture woven out of peace, love, joy, social justice, sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, environmentalism, spiritualism, and political activism to balance things. Young people experimented, protested, went off to find themselves. They might have joined a cult, but they did not blow up office buildings or open fire with automatic weapons in school libraries. America’s counter-culture is very different today. It is fueled by hatred, loneliness, cynicism, and destruction. It is based in materialism, but is shaped by those who have little material wealth. It is cultivated by the disenfranchised, and spread through such media as the infectious beat of rap and hip-hop, flash cars and gangland style pants. It is pushed to the extreme by alcohol, meth, assault weapons, and the meanness of tabloid journalism, just to name a few factors.

But the wrong things being done by young people today are not all just their fault. To a certain degree, they just reflect the world that has happened to them. In a world beset with destruction, as ours is today, perhaps we should expect that some will respond by destroying still more. Think about it—it is far more gratifying for some to burn a car than it is to build a birdhouse—Can’t all be creative. And as anyone knows who’s ever smashed or burned or shot up anything, the gratification of destruction is instantaneous, while the joys of creation are long in being realized. So, it’s not all their fault, and they don’t have the taste to deal with it even if it was, so it becomes all of our problem, and solutions must be found that meet the collective needs and values of the community. Destructive actions should not be tolerated or condoned, but they must be understood and not simply retaliated against.