“The bridge built between the school and community organizations to ensure student safety should not be destroyed by short-sighted management. This is the sentence from Diane Gendron’s text, which appeared in The duty of November 19, 2021 with the title “A bridge in the heart of the island, for a space in memory of Thomas Trudel”, which feeds our reflection on the violence that is taking place in Montreal. If we want to seriously tackle the phenomenon of violence, guns and street gangs, we will have to take different means and not just add police officers. The fight against this urban violence absolutely requires concerted work involving the various governments, schools and partners from the community world. They are well aware of the many reasons that can explain the violence of certain young people in our communities: social inequalities leading to poverty and exclusion, the search for meaning, the search for emotional relationships, etc. It can also be a lifestyle chosen to obtain power and money facilitating the consumption of goods that our benevolent society (sic) promotes.
Returning to the sentence quoted above, we hope that the actions will be taken in the spirit of long-term management. Our field experience as CLSC workers has brought us so many great disappointments. Decision-makers often tend to sprinkle money on it, which is then withdrawn very quickly, once the media coverage of the social phenomenon has run out of steam.
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