Kids who carry around shotguns are not "subpar protohumans". They are kids who have fallen on the wrong path in life? These racist disgusting terms are only used against black and Latino kids. When during prohitiion in this country in the l930's did you ever hear the gangsters in this country referred to as "protohumans"?

If you want to talk about "protohumans", let's talk about all the murderous, homicidal dictators the US has propped up with our tax dollars: Homicidal maniacs like Papa Doc Duvalier, Gen. Pinochet, who killed 3,000 of his own citizens in a stadium in one day and was brought into power by a coup engineered by our own CIA. Let's talk about the School of Americas that actually teaches miliary officers in other countries to murder, torture, maim and kill.

The US is the leading country is torture techniques at this time. We are a warlike, militaristic society that has moved far away from the Geneva Accords and the lessons of WWII. Who, exactly, do you think these kids are imitating in the real world?

The problem is that there are so many youth that are parentless and fallen by the wayside in Oakland do to the welfare regulations that encouraged too many children and non--parenting. These kids simply don't know better and that is sad and tragic. But to refer to them in such ugly terms is a sad and tragic commentary on the society that allowed this to happen and the condemns the children from such homes. Individuals in a better position should know better, but act equally debased in their humanity.

We need widespread intervention in Oakland at crises levels. We need Mayor Dellums to stand up to the plate and hammer at the crisis and make appeals to the elders in these neighborhoods to not sit by. The problem is, too, that many of these neighborhoods are saturated with so many youth who are lost, and their parents too. This is society's tragedy, a society that has allowed this to happen, and a city's too, that didn't step in in time and ameliorate the conditions producing this crisis. A society that has allowed the widespread and wholesale production and marketing of weapons illegally.

We have one of the most violent societies in the world. We have mass murders and serial killings going on, have gone on. And most of these mass murders and serial killings are not done by lost, unparented black Oakland youth. But nobody calls the fathers who kills their children, wives and relatives in mass murders protohumans. Nobody calls those who send people off to fight for the profits of Halliburton and the other big oil producers, "protohumans". No, this is a term and racist epithet solely reserved for African Americans in Oakland by people who should be able to put things into proper perspective but are unable because they are poisoned by racist ideology and thinking.

What's the big crime here? Someone using the term "shottie", or someone referrring to these kids as "protohumans"? Maybe it's a bad choice of terms but at least Bluepeas is trying to do something with these youth the best that she can. She's not sitting on the sidelines by making moralistic, superficial judgements like some who aren't trying at all to help these lost youths at all.

There are some who don't want to believe youth can be saved nor invest in them at all. There are some who are sick enough to believe the penalty for carrying a weapon on the streets should be street executions which are not legal in this country as far as I know. And if they do become so, then we are all in serious trouble, because then anyone can become subject to MURDER on the streets of our city based on a police report of a supposed weapons. To take a human life is no small thing, regardless of whose life it is, and and those who take it lightly themselves are on the moral path downhill into the very camp in which they label others: "protohumans". They are people who have lost their humanity and respect for others, already.