Violence

RE THE OP-ED by Holly Weston on violence in the city: It seems that most people who write about the problems that exist in the black community just quote statistics and never offer any real solutions. Black-on-black violence is a problem that began long before we gained our civil rights. Throughout most of our history in this country, our survival depended on turning the other cheek to unspeakable acts of cruelty for several hundred years. The problem with turning the other cheek is that it doesn't prevent anger from building inside most people.

A march lit by flashlights will be held tonight to protest violence and harassment directed at gays and lesbians in Center City. The marchers will gather at 8 p.m. in Louis Kahn Park at 11th and Pine Streets. The march will wend its way through various streets, circle City Hall and then end up at the corner of 13th and Locust Streets. That corner - a crossroads of several distinct late-night groups - has been the scene of frequent harassment and street crime, according to gay leaders.

In the first few minutes of "Mortal Kombat," a movie based on the gory video game, a young man is beaten to death on the stone steps of a temple. The killing sets the tone for what follows: Scene after scene of kung-fu fighters locked in to-the-death battles set to mind-numbing techno-rave music. Kick, sock, pow. To Jerry Rubin, a crusader against Hollywood violence, that constitutes an unacceptably high level of gratuitous brutality. His Los Angeles Alliance for Survival is already picketing the film, which opened Friday.

The American character was born of revolution, shaped by frontier conflicts, and hardened by urban riot and a great civil war. "Violence has been far more intrinsic to our past than we should like to think," the Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence reported in 1968. The commission noted that America has endured regular spurts of firearms violence since soldiers brought their guns home from the Civil War. A century earlier, a nation was created through organized, collective violence - the Revolutionary War. Since then, each generation has contributed to this country's unique legacy of aggression.

AS THE summer winds down, I read Mayer Krain's Aug. 6 letter, and it got me thinking again about teaching and daily life in school. I'm not particularly concerned with graduation rates, declining test scores or even the more mundane issues of instructional quality, however engaging or lacking mine may be. But I am giving increasing thought to the rising tide of violence, a problem on a scale I never envisioned when I began my teaching career....

To a parent, the death of a child - particularly one who is murdered or accidentally killed by other children - always evokes in me the most profound emotions. Three incidents last week had a chilling effect on my psyche. The first, and the one that has gotten the most national attention, was the massacre of 12 high school students and one teacher by two of their classmates in Littleton, Colo., an upper-middle-class suburb of Denver. The two perpetrators, ages 17 and 18, were heavily armed with guns and pipe bombs.

SOLUTIONS I don't see acts of violence among my own peers as often as you would think it occurs. But, when I'm informed of the events, I take note of the words many adults use, things like "This generation is a disgrace," or, "I never acted like that when I was your age. " Fine and dandy, but who does that help? Nobody, that's who. Nobody. Many people don't realize that not only "thugs" commit crimes, but also fairly decent young men and women. I do believe that the young generation, that has profoundly been dubbed "Generation X. " is a troubled one, but I do feel that the older generation shouldn't worry so much about the millions of dollars the government coughs out annually in youth programs.

I THINK I have a solution for all the killing. This isn't a race issue - it's a social issue. I'm a black American, and all we do is march. It seems to me we're marching in all the wrong places. Maybe if we, as black Americans, take this march to the White House, then maybe the killings would stop. Ask Mr. Bush for some help and send some soliders in for a few years to rid the corners of drug dealer and murderers, so we all would be safe. Randy Young North Killadelphia

Philadelphia lost two important lives during the Easter weekend - Kathleen Sullivan and Tyrese Beauford. Lives lost senselessly and violently. We don't know what to do. The loss of Tyrese Beauford is incalculable to his mother and his family. I believe we fail to realize how much we lose every time a young man or young woman dies in a pool of blood on our streets. We lose our future. We will never know the spirit, the future and the beauty of Tyrese Beauford because we lost the child.