An-Janette Albert is right. We've become a bunch of onlookers and rubberneckers, watching while an entire generation destroys itself.

Albert is the mother of Derrion Albert, the Chicago honors student who was killed recently when he was hit in the head with a railroad tie and then stomped and kicked as he lay injured during a fight just blocks from his high school. The 16-year-old was a good kid who some say was trying to help out a friend or just happened to walk into the middle of a melee.

During a heartbreaking interview with CNN, An-Janette touches on what I think is one of the primary reasons that some teenagers are running wild: fearful adults."I believe they are afraid. If these kids are beating kids in school with sticks, what do you think they are going to do to a woman trying to take her bags and stuff out the car. I'm afraid. I'm scared of standing out on the porch," Albert said when asked by CNN's Don Lemon about the role adults could have played to stop this tragedy. "I don't want to go anywhere, and I don't want my baby to go anywhere."

Why should we fear sitting on the porch in our own communities, bringing groceries from the car or (dare I say it) disciplining one another's kids.

One time, my wife and I were waiting for an elevator in an apartment building while visiting a friend. A young lady walked in and was unwrapping an ice pop. Once she got the wrapper off and put the blue ice in her mouth, she threw the wrapper on the ground. All of a sudden my wife yelled, "Pick that up now! Who's supposed to clean up after you?"

The young woman immediately bent down and picked up the wrapper and apologized. Not only that, her friends began ribbing her for being a litterer and not caring about the cleanliness of her own community. She knew what she did was wrong; she just needed a responsible adult to remind her.

Now I'm not saying that we should run to the corner and wrestle the gun from a drug dealer's hands, but adults need to get themselves together and take control. Adults had to know that the fighting at Derrion Albert's high school was a chronic situation. An adult should have been there to yell, "Put that board down. Take your behinds home."

We need adults to intervene in young people's lives before they pick up a gun or a board.

After tragic events like this, we always hear about how there aren't enough after-school programs or how we need better schools or more police presence. We should come together first and then the resources to deal with the problem will line up behind us. In fact, these resources are not going to come close to solving the problem unless parents, relatives, neighbors and friends step up.

President Obama is sending U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to Chicago Wednesday to talk about the violence there.

I hope this is the message he delivers: "We will provide resources, but the most important resource is you, the parent."

An-Janette can barely make it through the interview without breaking down. She is amazed, as we all should be, that no one stepped in to help her son until it was too late.

"If that was anybody's child...there's no way in the world I could have just stood by and watched that happen...to anybody," said Albert.

Neither should we.