HAYWARD HIGH’S APRIL 8 MELEE AND OTHER BRAWLS ARE FEATURED ON YOUTUBE
By Steven Tavares
Students at Hayward High School have taken to YouTube’s catchphrase, “Broadcast Yourself” in a string of shocking and well-viewed videos showing chaotic and violent melees on its campus.
The footage, in most cases shot shakily, feature students throwing blows, wrestling upon the ground and hurling racial epitaphs. The tenor of the brawls featured on YouTube are surreal in their intensity and breadth. All include not just one isolated fight, but, at times, numerous conflicts at once with dozens of spectators following the free-for-all as it randomly flows across the campus.
The Daily Review today detailed one such fight April 8 including a suspected adult gang member tussling with a student. The clip shot by a student of the brawl is featured above and labeled “Nortenos vs. Blacks.” It shows multiple conflicts between blacks and Latinos, a female fighting a young man, a teenager with his shirt torn off and a car rolling up on the fight acting as getaway before police sirens are heard in the distance.
When viewed consecutively, the constant images of students punching and kicking each other is frightening in its ease and acceptability among the teenagers in the videos.
Along with a rise in gang activity, the dreadful state of Hayward’s school district is easily the city’s top problem. These videos show a city in total chaos and almost irretrievably peace. In light of these clips, it sort of makes what Hayward Lt. Roger Keener’s solution to ban gang colors from the clothing of high school students a little trivial when so many young, mostly minority students find knocking each other and potentially killing one another one day quite acceptable.
As a journalist, I find Hayward’s immense problems, exactly that—immense. So large that it pains me to think of any solution that would even make a dent. Hayward is simply unhinged and threatening to become a menace. And the problem persists because too many see these kids fighting all over the city and assume it’s just non-white kids using their city as playground for gang activities. I find too many duck from reasoning the depth of the youth’s anger.
These displays of violence are really an allegory for how they all feel. They are not fighting each other as much as fighting for their collective lives.
Below are two more videos of intense fighting on the campus of Hayward High posted in recent months. More videos are readily available on YouTube:
ebcitizen.com 
Anybody seen the school board meetings in Hayward. You should show video's of those free-for-alls and you would understand what is happening in the schools. With role models like that it's a wonder any of the schools in Hayward are still standing. Not only are the good, solid citizens fleeing the town but these citizens will not run for the school board either –democracy in action.
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Gosh, I seem to remember this building up above San Leandro on Fairmont. What's it called? Oh, that's right- the County juvenile detention facility.
They also have this newfangled thing right next door called the juvenile court, where they deal with violations of the law with different techniques than the adult court system, because children are only starting to learn how to make proper decisions.
Also, I heard about this class of crime in the adult courts. It's right on the tip of my tongue….oh yes, statutory rape. Isn't the premise that even if an adult has consensual sexual activity with someone in high school or younger, the adult will still be charged with a crime because juveniles cannot be expected to have the experienced judgement neccessary to give proper consent to sex with an adult?
Hmmmm…..
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Manny-try living in the mid-west or deep south. They are more accepting of old, white, bitter, whining, prejudice people like yourself.
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Try supplying alcohol to a 17-year-old “adult” and see how far that gets you with the judge.
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Sorry babooze but you are a very bizarre person if you think otherwise. You know nothing of the law and are yourself are not only morally flawed you are morally shallow. To think that any person, let alone someone as useless as yourself, would consider these teenagers “children” is not only laughable, but it's wrong on so many levels. But trying to discuss anything in an adult fashio with yourself is an effort in futility since your only answer is “more welfare”.
Manuel
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“Manny”, that's a bizarre view supported by very little in terms of the law. This view is also very morally flawed.
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No, they are TEENAGERS! Not a child. Legally they cannot enter into a contract until age 18, morally they are months away from being an adult. If they can drive a car, shoot a gun, swing a hammer, operate machinery they ARE NOT a child.
Manny
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A high school student is a child, legally and morally.
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Manuel, no one is defending their behavior. We are attacking you for your racist and bigoted statements. You are the punk!
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Only an ignorant liberal would defend the behavior of these punks. Since they can't defend the actions of criminals logically they have to resort to their babooze selves and talk nonsense. bahahahahhahahahahahaha Lay off the $2 wine from Big Lots. bahahahhahahahahahaa
Manuel
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Var Gas is just angry and whiney because the voters in San Leandro rejected his thinking and opinions!
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Manuel or Paul Vargas–I've read your old articles in Christian newspapers. You're not talking or acting very Christian. Is Manuel your alter ego? What would Jesus say or do? Do you believe in the old testament instead of the new? What up with your anger? Why are you so prejudice?
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These aren't children.
Manuel
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What of white and Asian people who murder, rob and rape. Are they animals who we can say represent their entire race?
That's what makes all of these generalizations about Blacks and Hispanics racist to the core. You use them to label an entire group of people (eg. “let the blacks and latinos have the rest and everyone one else can run to the valley and watch it all burn”). You use your fear of people with differently colored skin to take fistfights near a high school and turn them into “animals”.
Who's the violent ones? The children are engaging in fistfights. One of you is expressing wishes to kill children, and others are justifying those desires when you're called on it.
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You just give racist opinion , not facts. You have no argument–just a sick and unstable mind. Get some help because you must be miserable. Maybe you should move to a whiter State.
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You know you're a good liberal when you can't refute a person's arguments, so you have to call her racist.
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We do get upset at racists like yourself, no matter what color!
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It's funny how liberals get offended when we compare these feral humans to animals. But look at their culture – they refer to themselves as “dogs” – from Snoop Dogg back in '94 to that guy on American idol. They recognize and acknowledge their own sub-human characteristics and strive to maintain that reputation with violence, mudering inncoent people after robbing them, mudering police officers, drive-bys and misogyny; and then liberal whitey gets upset when other white folks just observe and acknowledge the truth.
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Manuel you're a hypocrite. You tea baggers aren't funny–just sick.
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Always excuses…you libs are funny.
I am all for aborting these adults…I support abortion that time.
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Non-white teenagers who were in a fistfight are animals who should be euthanized?
Rage on, racists, rage on.
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Dogs get sterlized so they don't procreate into more unwanted litters; and put to sleep when they violently attack. Why can't we do that for these animals?
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Hilarious! Anonymous is counting on no one visiting the video links. In order:
– A stupid organizer (they exist in all professions) slaps a camera that seems to be set up on a table- no evidence that anyone was touched at all, much less “beat up”.
– A woman (not a guy- good obervational skills!) speaks to a State Legislative hearing and says without raising her voice that she campaigned to put them in, and if they don't defend her profession (home care workers make between $8 and $12 an hour), she'll campaign to take them out. It somehow lacks the chutzpah of Tea Partiers SCREAMING at politicians during their Town Halls.
– A completely routine protest action during the Brown/Whitman campaign. People on both sides speaking their mind; nobody touches anyone, no one gets in anyone's face.
– Ah yes, the Kenneth Gladney “incident”. Such a vicious attack: an awkward tussle takes place, an SEIU member is seen holding his shoulder as if he's hurting, Gladney is seen after the tussle and has not a bruise on him. It's heading to trial, so justice will be served. Not the same level of “violence” as a Democratic Party Congresswoman getting shot in the head at point-blank range, is it?
Tea Partiers are so desperate to paint unions as “goons” that a national leader in the Tea Party movement called for an action this February on his website:
“Here is what I am doing in Sacramento, where they are holding a 5:30 PM event this coming Tuesday: (1) I signed up as an organizer (2) with any luck they will contact me and I will have an “in” (3) in or not I wioll be there and am asking as many other people as can get there to come with, all of us in SEIU shirts….(4) we are going to target the many TV cameras and reporters looking for comments from the members there (5) we will approach the cameras to make good pictures…signs under our shirts that say things like “screw the taxpayer!” and “you OWE me!”…Our goal is to make the (SEIU rally) look as greedy and goonish as we know that it is, ding their credibility with the media and exploid the lazy reporters who just want dramatic shots and outrageous quotes for headlines. Even if it becomes known that we are plants the quotes and pictures will linger as defacto truth.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/21/mark-williams-infiltrate-seiu/
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Ummm,. not looney but nice of you to call names. Union members vote, yes, agreed, and no I do not much care for union's, but dumb “thug” males do not vote. Sorry but they do not care about politics nor do they even remotely get it.
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4:46pm…I disagree, thugs vote…SEIU members that beat up the opposition, they vote…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hznSuacEN_I
Here's a guy, right, anyways, heres a guy threating politicians. http://youtu.be/avB_iFEURY4
During the 2010 Governors race http://youtu.be/dlHlSENxoVQ
Heres one where the SEIU shitbags attacked a black man…can you believe that, they attacked a black man AFTER one was elected President. http://youtu.be/TGr8oYV50l8
So yes, thugs vote and they also intimidate and scare people.
As for getting union jobs…well, if any of these pieces of garbage work in the trades that require it, many of which do not require a high school degree (no disrespect to that, I am in the trades), then they will be in the union.
So, Anonymous, you're like all the other looneys out there. You're not always right. And you're sadly living in a fantasy world.
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Future Union thugs and Democratic party members…are they cute!”
UMMM not likely, thugs do not vote and do not register to vote, they do not care. As for Union members, they will be only if they are the 10% that work in Unionized jobs.
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When I was in school Ca. was in the top 5 states in spending per pupil for public school education and our test scores were in the top 5 in the nation. Now we are in the bottom 5 in spending per pupil, and our test scores are in the bottom 5–go figure!
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Future Union thugs and Democratic party members…are they cute!
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this is the harsh reality. if you want your kid to have any chance to not be influenced by ghetto trash you have to move to Pleasanton, san Ramon or Danville if you intend to do so while still living in alameda county. let the blacks and latinos have the rest and everyone one else can run to the valley and watch it all burn
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According to the commenter's logics, Wall Street and banking executives who stole billions of dollars from the public and now want to take your Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are representative of all white people. But enough of the commenters.
Ideally, a comments thread starts out in response to the story it is attached to. At first blush, Steve, I believe your story is overstating the case. When you look at the videos, it is upsetting. However, what the videos actually show is four or five pairs of teenagers fistfighting/wrestling with a couple of dozen people standing around, some yelling, many just watching.
I don't like it, whatever can be done within reason to stop it should happen, but I'll say this: I went to Bohannon Junior High School in San Lorenzo decades ago, and scenes similar to this happened at or near Bohannon from time to time, sometimes between races, sometimes within races. No knives or guns, no broken noses or pools of blood. This is not to defend what happened; my heart is wounded over my experiences. It's just valuable to realize that the videos do not show
That said, I'm acquainted with the potential for deadly consequences when groups of people gather along tribal lines. We can see that in our neighborhoods; we can also see that in our foreign policies. The United States is a very violent, war-loving culture. We honor the idea of using violence to take power and to solve our problems. Steve, I'll think about what you've written a bit longer, but thanks for considering these points as well.
I'll end by telling one of the anonymous commenters that it isn't even close to “f–cking Libya” at Hayward High. Your statement shows a total lack of understanding of the much more deadly business happening there.
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You got it Janice. But once these regressives gets robbed then they'll move to Lafayette or Orinda because “well, the school is better for my little Madison, she just loves the swim team” or some other nonsense.
Manny
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And I suppose this is what “unintentionally” the progressives will bring to San Leandro with their “we want to do good, everyone is great, the poor and downtrodden are victims of the system and have tried so hard” righteous eyes?
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Obama, Stark, Corbett, Hayashi, Lockyer, oh hell, Democrat voters right here.
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WTF!!! No wonder they can't study at Hayward schools, its f–king Libya over there. Was there any supervision around these fights? One hundred kids roaming around and nobody at the school thought something was up? Ridiculous.
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Exactly Janice. But morons will continue to blame everyone else but the perpetrators.
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And we wonder why white and asian families flee these schools and this area to get their children out if they can???
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