"This is not about a typical human being who we should honour and remember and grieve"

I hear what you are saying, but I don't think that those who have most likely committed numerous criminal acts, possibly even murder, should be memorialized.

I get the whole nurture vs nature, but why reward those who choose (yes choose) to enter a life filled with danger in order to make a quick dollar.

I live in Malvern and have had many friends who have made the decision for themselves to either lead a productive life by working their way up, or those who decide to quit early, drop out, start selling drugs and some who have had to face the consequences of entering that lifestyle.

I think gang members are no more worthy of public memorial than drunk drivers. There may be a plausible reason why a particular drunk driver had a drink problem but from a public policy standpoint it's just not appropriate.

Mammoliti is a dick but he's a dick who occasionally faces very hard choices - I think he made the right one here, albeit as usual worded as insensitively as possible.

David - I think the point of a street gang memorial isn't about the value of human life. It's about the value of the brand [Blood, Crip, whatever] and it is in and of itself an advertisement for gangs. One of the selling points - albeit not an explicitly made connection for the children being recruited into gangs - is that you have a much higher risk of dying very young, but you will be remembered as dying with glory. I know this offends many, but I have some disquieting sentiments of much the same nature every time I pass the memorial at Old City Hall - "Our Glorious Dead". However, despite Mammolitti's accuracy in denoting the connection between makeshift memorial with gang signifiers and gang recruiting, his initiative is misplaced energy. Don't bother trying to determine who was a gang member and who wasn't, and who should have their makeshift memorial torn down and who shouldn't - concentrate on informing kids about the choices they face and the consequences of their choices. Give them a decent breakfast, something to do after school, appropriate role models, decent paying jobs, and a sense that they have opportunities in life. Gangs will dissapate more quickly than with a simple paramilitary information war [i.e. policing and tearing down memorials as part of some municipal anti-gang zero tolerance kinda thing].

dowlingm alluded to it, but while we're at it, why doesn't Mammoliti ban memorials to people who were alcoholics, domestic abusers, gamblers, smokers, tone deaf, horrible drivers, or windbag politicians? They all terrorize the community. And gingers, of course.

p88: Why don't we kick over their headstones and egg their parents' houses while we're at it?

Why can't they make a memorial on private property, instead of using public lands? By all means feel free to grieve, but don't make it my problem.

andrew has it spot on--isn't this the same reason the TTC never publicizes when someone jumps in front of a train?

I might be more sympathetic to Mammoliti's idea if there were a real way to make the determination of who and who wasn't a gang member but, short of going through the courts to have a judge/jury decide, there isn't.

Glorifying a gang lifestyle by placing memorials is rediculous. These people have done nothing honourable and therefore should not be honoured.

And for the argument that the memorials are for the living, not dead, these kids' parents/friends/girlfriends/family should not be entitled to one. They knew that their child/friend/boyfriend was involved in crime and therefore at risk of dying.

These people were cowards, not heros, and they should be treated as such.

raches - You're categorically stating that friends and family are 100% responsible for stopping people from engaging in crime and associating with criminals. You have no idea what family and friends have said or done to get the victim to stop, but you'd punish their failure or ignorance all the same and tell them they're wrong to have loved him and deserve the bereavement. You know who shares that kind of sentiment? They show up to protest gay funerals.

Being a coward or hero has nothing to do with how much your friends and family loved and miss you.

@marc lostracco - I'd support a ban on headstones with gang paraphernalia. This is, after all, what we're talking about, not memorials per se.

Just what we need, a department at City Hall to investigate the history behind every memorial and make judgment on the data they've collected..

You guys probably all live in hipster-ville downtown and have ZERO experience living near dangerous areas and have never encountered anyone who owns a gun, much less has done anything criminal (bar smoking a joint and talking about how rad Noam Chomsky is) so I really don't feel like you can comment on this issue at all.

I don't think fighting the memorials is smart, but I have ZERO sympathy for gang bangers and their "loved ones". ZERO

Although raches was a dick about it, David, your point in #31 isn't correct. Being enthused about criminals killing each other is not the same as supporting the state executing people.

And raches - I grew up next to what is now called "Brown Bricks". I've lived amidst and quite near these "dangerous areas", including being a ten minute walk from the Downtown Eastside for a couple of months, south Parkdale for several years, the Junction when it was rough, and Finch and Sentinel. That makes me no more or less of an expert than you [and for the record, none of these "dangerous areas" are all that dangerous, compared to large portions of the world]. I am quite comfortable lobbing my opinions into the ether from downtown hipsterville and your opinion on the matter is laughable.

If we're going to ban memorials for gang members, because it glorifies dying out of loyalty to a meaningless designation, and a violent lifestyle riddled with a misplaced sense of justice, we should probably ban memorials for "fallen" soldiers too. Of course, we'd probably protest that, citing ideas of honour and nobility and justice, but so would gang members. I wonder if the idea of banning memorials, to them, is every bit as offensive as the idea of banning soldier memorials, to us. When I say "them" I mean "gang members" and when I say "us" I mean non-gang-members.

Actually, I wonder how gang members feel about soldier memorials.

It would be a good psych study.

No, what I'm trying to say is that to gang-members, banning gang memorials could seem just as offensive as we would find it if someone were to suggest that we not memorialize soldiers. We memorialize our soldiers because we believe in honouring our dead, we believe they died for an important cause - even if it was a symbolic or abstract one - and we believe that their death, in some way, served our population. I'm saying that gang members might very well feel the same way.

Notably, I do happen to think that throughout history and even today, we see soldiers from all nations kill over "turf" (land), pride (nationalism) and drugs, oil, and other resources. Including ours. I do think that there's a serious "gang mentality" in the military, and sometimes in the public that supports them, in which we see a lot of rhetoric about honour, justice, and nobility tied to acts of violence (whether that's a valid tie or not - and sometimes it certainly is). But that wasn't the argument I was making in my earlier comment. I just think that it can help us understand the mentality of gang memorials if we look at our own mentality toward soldier memorials. I wasn't arguing that the two types of memorials are of the same value.

I do not take the deaths of Canadian soldiers lightly. And I do not take the deaths of gang members lightly either.

>Fortunately, Dion, with Liberals is on the way out, and hopefully, I say hopefully, new Parliament will make crime a crime.

Dion was in?

lol

palo: You say "Yes, provide them with a free food, after the whole day of a hard prison labour. That is where my compassion ends, with a free food at the end of hard labour day. Or, make it a quick way out, out of this world, and choose electric chair, or use them for medical experiments."

Comparing those is not a fair comparison. Millions of people died as a fault of not their own. Gang members choose to be gang members. Get this: I came from East Europe, and had a hard start in this country. Yet, I do not go to kill others to satisfy my needs and blame a society for my faults. I go to real job every day. Yes, I do not earn enough for my invested years into education, yet I can still manage to put a bread on the table. And your talk about Nazi Germany; how is it related to gang members? Are you saying that victims, all 40 millions or so during the war, were gang members? I would apply punishment to gang members only, not to the victims of war. And to those, trying to come up with excuses, using some Charter of Rights, I also have the right, to live in a society where I can truly say that I feel free from crime, not having to worry to enter certain areas. And be free about how I spend my money, not being forced to provide it to gang members, my money not to go to benefit them. That is my right.