Four years ago, to direct kids at risk to the Boys Club, he started a weekly radio call-in program called "Street Soldiers" that is now broadcast throughout California to an audience of over 200,000. His callers ask tough questions about gangs, drugs, teen pregnancy, and the multiple pressures of life in the inner city today. "Street Soldiers" not only provides callers with a lifeline and listeners with a practical resource for hope, but has repeatedly averted gang warfare and stopped "payback" violence before they occurred.
Street Soldier is the story of Joe Marshall's success and, as virtually the only good news coming out of the inner city today, it is incumbent upon all of us--citizens, parents, legislators, and teachers--to listen. From Marshall's own college days in the turbulent sixties and his early years as an idealistic young teacher, the book moves to the heartbreaking lessons that compelled him to do something. Street Soldier then takes readers through the day-by-day trials and tribulations of his efforts in the `hood, searching for effective ways to convince gun-toting crack dealers and gang members to take pride in their race, take responsibility for their actions, and take charge of their lives. Along the way the book goes inside the minds and lives of a handful of the kids who transform themselves in the mast dramatic way possible--and a few who sadly cannot. In the end, Street Soldier is a call to each of us to help shape the future of this generation at risk, to help our children grow strong--to be street soldiers in our own communities.
Filled with tense confrontations and joyous celebrations, Street Soldier is an uplifting story by and about one man who makes a difference--and the cure his story may well provide for the cancer eating at our nation today.
