"In 2007, the crime-riddled nation of Ecuador did something surprising: It legalized the gangs that had been the source of much of the violence. Then something even more surprising happened over the next decade:
"In 2007, the crime-riddled nation of Ecuador did something surprising: It legalized the gangs that had been the source of much of the violence. Then something even more surprising happened over the next decade:
I shared this with a friend, and this is her response:
"Thank you, Sandy! I signed up for Future Perfect. It was one of the few pieces I've read in a long time that held my interest and I read it through to the end. I think legalizing gangs is an idea whose time has come. Marginalizing groups of people or classifying them as "deviant" (as stated in the article) just makes the problem more intractable. I'll bet many of the people who join ISIS and al qaeda do so precisely because they feel like outliers and insignificant, powerless in the eyes of the prevailing powers. Obama must have used the word inclusive hundreds of times during his term of office. And he was absolutely right--when people are not included in the socio-economic political system, pushed to the sidelines and rendered impotent, gangs and terrorist groups are what you get. They create their own system, their own drug economy, their own political leadership and soldiers. It's what any self-respecting outcast would do, LOL."