WyBlog

Johnson was mum in the days immediately after being violently carjacked on Jan. 26, but spoke out late last week.

This isn't his first brush with violence, either. Months earlier, Johnson was having breakfast at the counter of a mom-and-pop eatery popular with police and local clergy in the West Ward on 18th Avenue when gunfire erupted inside, leaving one man dead and two others injured.

Looking back on both incidents, Johnson said government leaders like himself must shoulder responsibility in combating violence by keeping youth from getting sucked into a life of crime.

"It's a whole lot of things that contributed to what happened to me. It's not just those kids," he said.

A former basketball player who coached for nine years, Johnson, 56, also works as chief-of-staff for state Sen. Ronald Rice and describes himself as a longtime youth advocate. Over the past decade-and-a-half, Johnson said, government cutbacks have laid waste to the budgets of social services and youth recreation programs which he said are vital to a community's health.

Freeholder President Blonnie Watson, a Central Ward resident, agreed that the focus must be on helping young people.

"When you're hungry or you need a roof over your head...what do you do as a human being? These young kids are suffering because their parents can't provide for them," she said.

"Always we hear the cry from teenagers 'What can we do, where can we go?'"

... My answer is, "Go home, mow the lawn, wash the windows, learn to cook, build a raft, get a job, visit the sick, study your lessons, and after you've finished, read a book."

"Your town does not owe you recreational facilities and your parents do not owe you fun. The world does not owe you a living, you owe the world something. You owe it your time, energy and talent so that no one will be at war, in poverty or sick and lonely again."

"In other words, grow up, stop being a cry baby, get out of your dream world and develop a backbone, not a wishbone. Start behaving like a responsible person. You are important and you are needed. It's too late to sit around and wait for somebody to do something someday. Someday is now and that somebody is you..."