Don't like gangs? Join one!

Gangs are credited (or is it debited?) with most of the crime in our inner cities. But let's not forget that gangs also created baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, and virtually every other team sport. Gangs -- that is, groups of friends with a common identity who like to hang out together -- created polyphonic music, jazz, rock & roll, the stock exchange, the industrial revolution, and the US Constitution. Gangs of euro-american settlers took on gangs of native americans in the Old West.

At the end of the day, every group we belong to is a gang. The question is, why don't we belong to the gangs that get blamed for the state of things in our inner cities. Why have we removed ourselves and our influence from the lives of the young people growing up in the hood?

Well, I'm sure we had our reasons. But now it's time to put ourselves back into their lives. It's time to get involved in the neighborhoods on the other side of the tracks. It's time to wake up to the amazing potential that each child and young adult is, regardless of where they were born or how their parents behaved.

Affinity Neighborhoods is a gang of socially conscious investors who buy underpriced houses and apartment buildings in distressed neighborhoods, fix them up, and sponsor events aimed at catalysing neighborhood revitalisation. The key ingredient is PRESENCE. Be there. The inner cities got the way they are through neglect. They will blossom again when we take care of them.