260 School Children Killed in Chicago in 3 Years -- Where Are the Tears for Them?
New America Media / By David Muhammad
260 School Children Killed in Chicago in 3 Years -- Where Are the Tears for Them?
What makes the victims of everyday inner-city gun violence expendable?
December 24, 2012 |
Like President Obama and many others across the country, I too wiped away tears as I watched the horrifying news coverage of the tragic shootings in Newton, Conn. I immediately called my children who were still in school. I sat watching the television trying to fathom how I would respond if I got a call that a shooting had occurred at my childrens school. This brought on more tears. But for the parents of 20 children and six other families in Newton, it wasnt an exercise; it was an excruciating reality.
I then watched and listened to our President, and like parents around the world, the shooting had affected him emotionally as well. Twenty children gunned down. He struggled to hold back tears.
It was then that my phone buzzed. I quickly grabbed it to see if it was one of my children calling back. But it wasnt. It was a colleague in Chicago. I had emailed her the day before asking for research into one of the mentoring programs in the citys schools for youth with the highest risk of being shot.
She provided me with the information I was seeking. Then she included a P.S.: What a devastating horrible day in CT. But frankly I wish people cared this much when it was children on the south and west sides of Chicago. ............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/260-school-children-killed-chicago-3-years-where-are-tears-them
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)That you waited until now is an expression of why and how this could happen.
cheers.
enough
(13,257 posts)stop gun violence has been very effective and this is why we don't have a problem with gun violence?
MichiganVote
(21,086 posts)Dude, you need to lighten up on the guilt sauce.
CrispyQ
(36,460 posts)A journey in activism starts when it starts. There are no rules that say you can't get involved in the middle of the battle. If everyone had your attitude change would take even longer than it does.
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)worse.
Every single gun death is abhorent and appalling. If we gave the coverage each and every one deserves every single day, maybe then more people would understand that it really is the guns.
Response to marmar (Original post)
Post removed
frazzled
(18,402 posts)I know he is reviled here, but that is because it is the cartoon-character Rahm Emanuel we have constructed, who has been used as the respository for everything people disagreed with in the Obama administration. But this is what he did to try to bring attention to the daily shootings of children here:
Emanuel paid a visit Tuesday to the Englewood home where 6-year-old Arianna Gibson was shot and killed while she slept on her grandmother's couch early Sunday morning.
I want everybody to understand while that loss was particular to a family, which is why I visited with them, it is a loss to this city and we as a city are less than who we can be and should be when a childs life is cut short, Emanuel said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Gibson's death came just four days after 13-year-old Darius Brown was fatally shot while playing basketball near his South Side home. Both children would have started school on Monday.
The mayor stressed that the high-profile shooting on State Street should be no more alarming than Gibson and Brown's deaths in Bronzeville and Englewood, where gun violence is more prevalent.
I dont tolerate gun violence or any type of violence anywhere in our city whether thats downtown in the business district or whether thats an innocent child sleeping in her grandmothers home, Emanuel said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. I reject any value system that thinks that something happening downtown is more important than it happening in Englewood. That child in Englewood while its the child of that mother and the child of that grandmother that is a loss for the city of Chicago."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/09/emanuel-visits-family-of-_n_922784.html
roseBudd
(8,718 posts)unscrupulous gun dealers, the 40% of gun sales that require no background check, are surely a fcator.
Mass murders garner attention and fear because they are so utterly random.
I'll take whatever momentum I can get. Sandy Hook happened at exactly the right time, to sway public opinion
http://www.pollingreport.com/guns.htm
Texas-Limerick
(93 posts)Last edited Tue Dec 25, 2012, 01:48 AM - Edit history (1)
Beach Boys medley, Surfer Girl, Fun Fun Fun, and When I Grow Up to be a Man
Little shooter little one
Makes my heart come all undone
Will you spare me, will you shooter girl
Shooter girl, little shooter girl
We didn't go to the prom together
I took your best friend with my woody,
As you well know
We were there all night long,
Dancing close and slow
Couldn't you forgive that date with Heather
And let our new love grow
So I say from me to you
Don't let this nightmare become true
Will you spare me will you shooter girl
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Boom Boom
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Well she got her daddy's car
And she cruised through the
Hamburger stand now
Seems she forgot about the library
Where she shot her young man now
And with the muzzle blastin' , go
Shootin' as fast as she can now
And she'll have her gun, gun, gun
'Til they pry her cold dead fingers away
(Gun, gun, gun , 'til they pry her cold dead fingers away)
------------------------
Boom Boom
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Since I won't grow up to be a man
Do you feel the same way now that they're shooting the kids?
Will you look back and say I wish I hadn't supported what I did?
Will You joke around at the shooting grounds?
Since I won't grow up to be a man?
Will you look at things the same after your neighbors bury their girl?
Do you think things should stay the same after the shots heard 'round the world?
I was once young and free, but how will it be
Since I won't grow up to be a man?
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Cheer up and enjoy some old farts who can still sing:
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