The Headline You Never Saw

Everyone saw this Headline:

Gunman kills Six at Sikh Temple in Wisconsin

The entire nation (and most of the world) was shocked this weekend by the senseless assault on a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.  Every cable news channel quickly dropped weekend programming and broadcast full time from the site of this tragedy.  Twitter literally burst at the seams with reports, rumors and completely false accusation (all aimed at the right, from Progressive Zealots on the left who all but claimed Michelle Bachmann pulled the trigger).

The world was at once captivated and horrified.

However, no one saw this headline:

Twelve Murdered in Chicago This Weekend

The headline above never appeared anywhere until my posting, but it is completely true.  It represents just one small piece of the massive American Genocide being ignored by the press.  Because each murder happened individually (or in small groups) and because each is attributed to "gangland violence" they are ignored and forgotten, never reported outside of the neighborhood communities.

Worse, there will be no follow-up.  We won't know anything about the killers.  Many will, in fact, never be identified.  Many will kill again..... and again.  Some will actually murder more people than the famous serial killers.  They will go unrecognized because they are taking lives slowly in drive-by shootings and random acts of violence.

I keep coming back to Chicago because there is an excellent website, Redeye Chicago Com that tracks every murder.  

But these murders are being duplicated in every major metropolitan area in America.  Well over one hundred black teen and twenty something boys and girls die every weekend.  No one reports this tragedy.

I'll finish this tragic entry in my long and growing blog series with a tiny portion of a gut wrenching article in the Chicago Sun Times written by Mary Mitchell, Chronic grief overtaking black communities

It used to be when a teen was killed under any circumstances, mothers would snatch up their children and keep them inside as if they were trying to hide them from the Angel of Death.

Mourners would stop by the grieving family’s house carrying trays of food and just sit quietly. But the prolonged killings of young black people have resulted in a macabre cultural shift when it comes to the grieving process.

Mourners leave empty liquor bottles and cigarette packages on the spot where the victim died. They order T-shirts with an image of the fallen and distribute them to the dead youth’s family and friends. They string up balloons like they are getting ready for the family reunion picnic.

The Rev. Oscar Crear, pastor of New Tiberia Missionary Baptist Church at 2156 W. Wellington, is one of the pastors called upon to perform funeral services for young people who have no church home.

“People struggle for a long time after a violent death,” Crear told me during a recent interview.

“A lot of young people are suffering from chronic grief. They are not handling this very well.”

Some ask, “ ‘How can I bury my son this week and bury your son the following week?’ ” Crear said.

“When people go to funeral after funeral it impacts them.”