Kids Off the Block , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Diane Latiker

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125 pages

English

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"What can I do?"That was the question Diane Latiker asked of herself as she watched the teens in her Chicago neighborhood succumb at an alarming rate to gangs and gun violence. Her answer started small, inviting ten kids into her living room to talk about their struggles and dreams. But over the years it grew. With the help of God, her family, and many other people along the way, Diane's Kids Off the Block morphed from a personal crusade to do what she could into a nationally known program that has helped more than 3,000 at-risk Chicago teens.In this powerful, energizing book, she tells her incredible story to men and women who are sick of sitting behind their keyboards watching the world crumble and are ready to do something to make a difference. Through doubt, financial strain, and deep grief over lives lost, Diane has never lost her faith that God called her to this life-transforming work. In these pages she'll show you that God is calling you to do something too. Maybe something that feels small . . . definitely something that will change the world.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Illinois

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 septembre 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781493427918
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0432€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2020 by Diane Latiker
Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakerbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-2791-8
Some names and details have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.
Published in association with Ambassador Literary Agency, Nashville, TN.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all the young people who believe they are alone, that no one cares, and that society has disregarded them. I believe in you, love you, and will always be here if you need me. You are everything!
Contents
Cover 1
Title Page 3
Copyright Page 4
Dedication 5
Foreword 9
Introduction: How Did I Get Here? 13
1. “You Should Do Something with Those Kids” 19
2. Can’t These Kids Be Kids? 31
3. “Are You Miss Diane?” 44
4. Resistance from Every Side 57
5. Midlife Career Change 68
6. Around the Clock 79
7. Save a Teen 91
8. “It’s Your Vision” 102
9. Headstones 113
10. When the Lord Takes You Down a Peg 127
11. Hope and Change 140
12. Not on My Block 151
13. Turn Around 162
14. No Peace 176
15. Hero 190
16. The Floodgates Open 202
17. Battlefield Outside My Door 214
18. We’re Worth It 226
19. Fierce Over 40 236
20. Look What God Did 246
Acknowledgments 257
Back Ads 261
Back Cover 272
Foreword
Diane Latiker is saving lives
Not just of future babies, husbands, and wives
But of children drowning now
In the downpouring rain
Of poverty, hopelessness,
Killings,
Abandonment, pain
Of shootings,
The absence of hugs,
Drugs,
Gangstering thugs
Mothers on meth death
Crack cocaine brains
Fathers on streets
Shouting blame games
Some have even forgotten their names
Some killed by police
Jailed, not released
Children lost and broken, cuffed tight
To the chair of don’t nobody care about me
Despair
So, why should I care?
Why should I care?
Why should I care?
Diane Latiker’s saving lives
Because she does care
And dares to risk all she holds dear
Never embracing
The dark cloud of fear
Not that she sometimes
Doesn’t move past her tears
Not that she sometimes
Doesn’t fall to her knees
And pray to God, please, please, please,
Show me the way
To get through another day
But she gets up
And spits in the face of despair
Cleans herself up
Fixes her hair
And opens her heart
To another young face
Looking for salvation
A safe hiding place
And she hugs them
Scolds them
Holds them and molds them
Till she sees them in peace
Then she opens her arms
Gives them release
Then guides them to look past their pains
Teaches them how to use their talents, their brains
To reach back to others
Teaches them what nobody really wants to hear
About the enemy within
Their fears, their fears, their fears
But Diane teaches to get in fear’s face
Tell fear his butt is evicted
Get his butt up, out of your place
Pick up his doodoo,
’Cause you now need your sacred inner space
She teaches healing
To give yourself another chance
Stop choking on your vomit
Take off your chains of self-doubt
Take your stance, start your dance
Fear and self-doubt get out, get out!
Diane doesn’t preach fantasy
She lives the price that has to be paid
She has piles of gravestones for those no longer here
And their voices scream at us from those stony bricks
They scream stop, stop, stop!
Stop falling for the tricks
Stop hating each other
And all that looks like you
Stop being the apple and not the tree
We know life’s beating you to your hopeless knees
But if you don’t stand up and see past your pains
You’ll end up like us
Fear and anger
Turned into brick-like pus
We hope folks will hear
What Diane has to say
It’s not about living just another day
It’s not about just becoming another stone
But creating a future that you really own
Building your dreams out of what you learn and know
Get up, never stop, go, go, go
Diane’s book
Is an inside look
At all she’s had to live
Of all the challenges she’s had to face
Diane is a hero to me
An example of all we could be
She’s a gift that keeps giving
All she can give
Teaching by example
The life you can live
Because Diane Latiker is saving lives
Not just of future babies, husbands, and wives
But of children drowning now
In the downpouring rain
Of poverty, hopelessness,
Killings,
Abandonment, pain.
Bill Duke, actor, director, and producer
Introduction
How Did I Get Here?
“Hey, Miss Diane, can we play?”
My eyes darted around the Curtis Elementary School gym, looking for the kid who called over the rubber thud of basketballs and squeaking shoes. There was Lamont, standing in the doorway with two of his boys. What’s he doing here? I wondered.
“Hold on a minute, I’ll be right back,” I told the volunteer helping me wrangle the crowd. I walked past seventy-five kids running layup drills in their Kids Off the Block T-shirts and over to Lamont. “What’s going on?” I asked him.
He held up his Jordans and nodded toward the court. “We wanna play.”
I studied his face. I had known that boy for years, and not once had he shown up to the basketball program. He wouldn’t even come to Kids Off the Block, the after-school program that I ran out of my home. I talked him into coming to the bowling alley with us once, but he never would set foot in my house.
“Miss Diane, I ain’t sitting next to those so-and-so’s ,” he told me then—only he didn’t say so-and-so ’s . Too many rival gang members there, apparently.
I had no idea why he showed up that afternoon ready to shoot hoops. But I also knew I never turned anyone away who wanted to play.
“Cool, come on in.” I pointed to the lines by each basketball hoop. “Go ahead, we just running drills now.”
Lamont and his boys walked across the gym, their backpacks slung over their hoodies. I figured they’d change into their gym shoes and jump in with the other kids, so I turned my attention back to the program.
“Miss Diane, watch!” a boy hollered as he flung a basketball at the hoop.
I grinned and clapped, watching the ball sail toward the backboard and bounce into the net. “Nice shot!” I cheered. Three days a week, the gym a block from my house was filled with kids just dying to dribble and shoot. Basketball had a way of bringing boys together, no matter what block they came from or what gang they pledged their allegiance to.
Not fifteen minutes later, the door swung open and in walked TO.
Oh, Lord , I thought.
TO wasn’t supposed to be there that day. Most days he showed up ready to play, but he had told me he couldn’t come this time for one reason or another. And most days, I would have been thrilled to see him. But most days, Lamont wasn’t there.
Everybody was scared of TO. The kids told me he still ran around with his gang, much as I fussed at him to quit. I couldn’t go a day without somebody telling me about kids from TO’s and Lamont’s gangs shooting each other up. And now, members of both gangs were in the gym with seventy-five other kids.
“Oh, hey, TO!” I said nervously. I stood in front of him trying to steer him away from Lamont. Lord, please don’t let Lamont notice TO , I prayed.
“Hey!” I whipped my head around at the sound. There was Lamont, glaring right at TO. Too late .
“I know that was you the other night!” he bellowed, charging toward TO with his boys behind him. TO didn’t move, but he wasn’t backing down. The look on his face said he was fixing to fight.
Both boys screamed at each other, hurling words that I never allowed my KOB kids to say in front of me. And there I was between them, in the middle of a screaming match.
“Calm down!” I tried to yell over them. “The other kids are watching. Stop!”
But they didn’t. Before I could move, Lamont and his boys reached in their backpacks and pulled guns. Later, the other kids would tell me they were .45s, the kind of gun Dirty Harry carried. All I knew was they were huge. TO locked eyes with Lamont as two boys behind him whipped their guns out too.
Everything froze. From my peripheral vision, I could see the other kids staring, scared to move. No basketballs bounced now. There was just an eerie silence. I was nearly fifty years old, and I was stuck between a bunch of kids dead set on shooting each other. It was like something out of a movie, only in movies kids holding guns look scared, like they wouldn’t actually shoot. Not these kids. Their faces were cold and hard. My heart pounded.
If one of these boys gets killed up in here, I’ll never forgive myself , I thought. Images of their families flashed through my mind.
Something inside me snapped. How dare these boys ruin a perfectly good day of basketball? I was furious at them for putting all the lives in that gym at risk. If bullets started flying, any one of us could get hit. Not just the kids holding guns. Bullets don’t care.
No , I thought. Not today. I ain’t letting this happen .
I grabbed TO’s collar, yanking him down to my height until our faces were just inches apart. If I could get through to him, everybody else would listen.
“TO, tell them to put the guns down!” I screamed. “Tell them! Put the guns down!”
“Miss Diane, I can’t tell them to put the guns down!” he screamed right back at me.
“TO! We all gonna get shot! Tell them now! Tell them to put the guns down!”
“I can’t, Miss Diane! I can’t do it!”
Our voices grew louder and louder. My throat burned, but I kept screaming. No one tried to escape. The boys around me were so scared out of their minds, they couldn’t move.
“TO!” I screeched. “Do it! Tell them to put the guns down!”
“I