I See Dead People

As a nation we genuinely have our priorities misplaced.  We are spending millions upon millions of dollars attempting to prevent people with Ebola from entering our country.  Don't get me wrong, Ebola is very frightening and we are not well prepared to fight this deadly infection.  And we had that one very well documented, reported and investigated case of a man from west Africa dying in Dallas, Texas.

Meanwhile tens of thousands of young Americans are dying every year due to gang and gun violence in virtually every American inner city and pocket of poverty.  Many, many are completely innocent, guilty of only being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  And many, like Laylah Peterson, are just children.  Laylah was shot and killed last week while sitting safely on her grandfather's lap in their own home in Milwaukee.  Two men fired shots into the house, for some unknown reason, and shot the child.

Laylah was white and the shooters allegedly were black and some are claiming this was racial violence.  I'm pretty certain the reason doesn't matter.  If you want to write this off to racial violence, I'll be happy to post the story of a black four year old girl shot the day before in nearby Racine, Wisconsin.  Here the shooters were also black. Race doesn't matter.

That fact is that deaths from Ebola here in the United States will be rare.  Yet by the time I finish writing this blog entry another child, perhaps two or three, will be dead from the massive violence right here in America.

You probably know all the steps we are taking to prevent Ebola, airport screenings, triage centers, CDC edicts, hospital preparedness and more.  We even have an Ebola Czar.

What are we doing to end youth violence in our inner cities? On a Federal level virtually nothing.  Not a damned thing.   Unless the victim is black and the shooter is a white policeman (or neighborhood watch patrolman), you are unlikely to hear a peep from the President or the U.S. Attorney General.   Again, this isn't about race, it's about priorities.

The greater St. Louis area is preparing for riots and an eruption of violent protests this week when the Grand Jury might possibly fail to indict patrolman Darren Wilson who fatally shot eighteen year old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

"Hands up, don't shoot."  Do you suppose if little Laylah had raised her hands, they home invaders would have held their fire?

In Milwaukee there are no protests, there are no riots and there will be no violence over the murder of a 5 year old girl.  Police have few leads and there have been no arrests. There isn't even a person of interest. The FBI isn't there and neither is the justice department.

But by tomorrow there will be one or more similar murders in the same Milwaukee neighborhood.  And by next weekend there will be more.

My personal hero today is Milwaukee District Seven Alderman Willie C. Wade.  Alderman Wade is walking his district alone, knocking on doors, looking for a lead as to the identities of the shooters who killed five year old Laylah in cold blood.  He is hoping that his constituents will talk to him, a black, a trusted friend, when they might not talk or "snitch" to the police.



Willie C. Wade is a real hero.  We need more heroes.  I'm tired of seeing dead people,

"...you have to get shot by a white cop to get any justice..."

America's Genocide continues every day.  It's a damned shame American's don't know about the "killing fields" right in their own country,  Maybe they know but they don't care. Maybe they're just numb.

Here's just one story. Marcus McCarty, only 14 years old, was fatally shot Sunday afternoon. He's just one of several young black men murdered on Sunday. There is no day of rest in America's killing fields. 

Marcus was standing on the sidewalk when two older boys (or men) walked up. One of them was carrying a gun and opened fire, striking the boy in the back. The murderers walked calmly back to their Infinity and drove away.

Marcus was rushed to Stroger Hospital in critical condition, but was pronounced dead minutes after arrival.

As is often the case, no arrests have been made and no one is in custody for the shooting.

The story received almost no press, but here is a short story in the Chicago Homicide Watch.

In the middle of the afternoon on Sunday in a residential neighborhood, it is likely several people witnessed the murder.  Gangs and criminals have instilled a "don't snitch" mentality into the folks who must live in the area the gang controls.

In addition we cannot minimize the impact of the police killing of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri two weeks ago.  Inner city blacks already didn't trust the police.

The saddest comment of all came is a comment attached to the story linked above. 
In his comment a person using the name "Tracksuit Al" noted (quite correctly), Sickening that you have to get shot by a white cop to get any justice in this country if you're black.

The Streets Run Red With Blood

"The streets run red with blood...."

We could be talking about the tragedy and violence in Cairo this weekend, but we're not.  The above quote comes from right here in the United States, right here in Chicago, where gun violence, shootings and murder continue in epidemic proportions year round.  The six murders and twenty-eight other shootings are this weekend's toll on Chicago's South Side, our own mid-east microcosm of murder.

President Obama and the State Department issued warnings to Americans not to travel to Egypt and to leave the country as quickly as possible.  Similar warnings should be issued to Chicago's South Side, where the police are both incapable and unwilling to stop the rampant violence.

In spite of the fact that Chicago has one of the strictest gun control laws anywhere in the United States, the law is basically unenforced and, many say, unenforceable.  This is in part because courts strictly limit or outright forbid "Stop and Frisk" practices by the police as racist or otherwise unlawful.

In a broad, sweeping and scathing ruling this past week, Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin severely restricted New York City's practice of "Stop, Question and Frisk."  The long and thoroughly documented ruling will eliminate most of the stops and appoints a Federal Monitor to oversee NYC Police tactics.  

NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly defended the practice and claimed it had saved over 7,000 lives and removed thousands of illegal guns from the streets.

The fact the courts chose to ignore is that while only 60% of the people stopped by police where black or Hispanic, 97% of the murder victims are black and Hispanic.  

The real racism is in the murders.  Courts routinely and purposely overlook this fact.  

Meanwhile Kelly predicted New York would become another Detroit or Chicago if the judge's ruling is not overturned.

"Stop and Frisk" is rarely used in Chicago.  But blacks are murdered in genocidal numbers.  Someone needs to file a racism suit against the Chicago Mayor, government and Police for their failure to protect blacks.  After all there are relatively few white murders in Chicago.  The police MUST be discriminating by protected whites disproportionately while allowing blacks to die.

Justice for .......

Justice for Sterling..... Sterling Sims was just five years old when he was gunned down along with  his 31 year old mother, Chavonne Brown, on June 28, 2013.  There are no suspects.  There have been no arrests. There has been no news coverage, beyond local press.  No one is protesting. No one is carrying signs with Sterling's name or picture. No one is demanding the Police Chief resign.  There will likely never be any justice.

Justice for Antonio..... Sixteen year old Antonio Fenner appears to be guilty of walking down the street in his own neighborhood, near his home on July 1, 2013.  He was shot and murdered by gang bangers apparently shooting at a 32 year old gang member on the same street.  Naturally they missed the gang member that was the object of the attack.  It is rumored that "everyone knows" who committed the murder, but there are no suspects, no one will "snitch." There will never be justice for Antonio. 

Justice for Damani ..... Damani Henard was just 14 years old when he committed the crime of attending his own high school, riding a bike.  He was shot and murdered just outside his school on July 3, 2013.  Once again there are no suspects, no arrests, no outrage, no protests, no national news coverage, no riots, and no news.  No national media pundits are calling for the Justice Department to get involved.  There will never be justice for Damani.  You will likely never read his name again. 

Justice for Ed ..... Fifteen year old Ed Cooper was guilty of playing in the park with his friends when a gang of men piled out of a van and fired at the children, scattering the crowd. Ed was shot as he ran but continued to run for cover. He died in  a vacant lot down the street just a few days ago, on July 9, 2012. Suspects?  Of course not. Arrests? No and yet no one is protesting about the lack of justice. There will be no justice.

I could go on, literally forever, but I am sick to my stomach. I hate the media, I hate the lazy police departments, I really hate the supposed "leaders" like the Reverend Al Sharpton who only are interested in a crime if it fattens their wallets.  I certainly hate the Zimmerman protesters who will riot, assault police, destroy property and even commit murder themselves in their rage, but will never actually do one damned thing to help the genuinely needy in this country.  And I hate our communities who refuse to invest in our towns and people to give them a good education, jobs and to make them safer.

Truth? We can't handle the truth.  Thousands upon thousands of young black male children and teens are killed every year by other black men, children and teens.  Few of these horrific murders are ever committed by women.... and almost none are ever committed by whites.

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.”

No News IS NOT Good News

Just because you didn't see or hear this headline this morning doesn't mean it didn't happen. The big networks simply chose to ignore it.


3 People Murdered and another 18 injured in Gun Violence on Saturday in Chicago

If you watch network news, ABC, CBS or NBC or if you watch cable news, FOX, CNN or MSNBC or if you listen to NPR you didn't know that.  They were all too busy rehashing the 12 murdered and 58 injured in Aurora, Colorado on Thursday morning to bother to mention that murders continue unabated across the country.


As I write this President Obama is flying over Chicago to visited the families of the victims in Aurora to give them comfort, according to the White House Press Secretary.


He will never mention the nearly 300 murdered in Chicago so far this year.  He will not be stopping to give comfort to the grieving families of Gerry Woods, Akil Partee or Pablo Hernandez, all murdered Friday night and Saturday morning.


How I wish George W. Bush were still President.  Not because I want him back in office, but because if he pulled the stunt of flying over the families of 300 black and Latino victims to give aid and comfort to 12 white victims, my fellow Democrats would condemn him for racism, insensitivity and incompetence.  Instead we have President Obama and the silence of the Democratic lambs.


I don't blame President Obama.  It's not racism, it's politics.  Colorado is a swing state.  He needs their votes.  Chicago will vote for Obama regardless of how much he ignores or even abuses its citizens.


And, lets be honest, the Chicago problem is one of unemployment, poverty and failed social engineering.  It's going to be tough to fix.  And President Obama is not up to the task.  He is way to small, way to weak to take on a mission this large.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


On a related note, my friend Steve is launching a series on the need for Gun Control and ways to successfully implement it over on his blog The Peripatetic Blogger Steve and I might not always agree on this issue, but I urge you to read his blog and consider his opinions and solutions carefully.  We need everyone's ideas.  We need all hands on deck.

Crying Out For Those Alone....

The horror of 12 senseless murders hit the television, radio, newspapers, blogs and social media yesterday in an inescapable fashion.  The live, non-stop coverage of the frightening assault on a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado was relentless.  Everyone knows of the events and the name of the obviously deranged murdered, and many of the individual heartbreaking stories recounted on Facebook and the national news networks.


It's estimated over one thousand law enforcement officers from local, state and national agencies are involved in the investigation and in the search of the assailant's booby trapped apartment.


Certainly there are many thousands of journalists, bloggers, investigative reporters, pundits, experts, politicians, religious and civic leaders analyzing every tiny detail.  Like similar events in the past, it will be dissected for months and tens of thouands of pages will be written.  Books and even movies are likely to follow that.


I am raising no objection to any of this.  It is as it should be.  I pray for comfort and healing for the suffering and know, in many cases, there will be no relief from the relentless grief.


But, even as Aurora captured the news, there were dozens more murder victims this past week nationwide that gathered no attention.  There will be few, if any, law enforcement officers investigating.  There will be no national task force, no F.B.I., no forensics, no new laws, no  great discoveries. Many of the murderers will never be identified and many will murder again.


For all these murders there will be no national press coverage.  Probably no local press coverage either.  The victims family will never be interviewed by Piers Morgan or Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity.  We won't know their story, experience their horror or feel their pain.


Facebook entries might be made, but you and I will never see them.


Neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney will make a speech, say a prayer or suspend campaigning in respect for their tragedy.


And the worst part? Next week it will all repeat.  Roughly eighty to one hundred bright young people will be senselessly murdered.  You'll never notice.  You'll never know.  And, as a society, we won't do a damned thing to stop it or even slow it down.


Maybe that's the scariest part of the genocide happening in our country right now.  Because every story is a small piece, we can ignore it.


Because of Aurora our movie going experience will change.  There will be ample extra security, cameras, alarms on doors, maybe even metal detectors.  There will be security guards, probably armed security guards. 


Even though there have been virtually no murders in movie theaters over the last 100 years, we will have massive protection going forward.


But the national genocide will continue unabated, at the rate of 6 to 7 Aurora's every week, 80 to 100 people murdered every week, most in senseless acts of violence every bit as horrific as Aurora.  But nothing will be done.  Nothing.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


As you remember the twelve people killed in the Aurora movie theater this week, please also remember these twelve people killed in Chicago this past week, too. They'll get no press coverage and you'll likely never see their names anywhere but on this blog.


Nathaniel Gonzalez, age 16


Marshall Knights, age 21 


 Ricky Hankins, age 49 


 Daniel Green, age 21 


 Mark Carney, age 26 


Andrew Jackson, age 27 


 James Bell, age 26 


 Martin Tejeda, age 16 


 Elle Mills, age 53 


 Maurice Wilson, age 22 


 Phillip Finley 


Anthony Collazo, age 21

Genocide

The violence has become so horrific that it DEMANDS the President make a speech from the Oval Office during prime time.  Our civic leaders need to rise as one and demand the powerful United States take a stand for the sake of humanity.  A generation is being murdered.  And, worst of all, we're not talking about Darfur or Cambodia or any far off land, we're talking about the President's home town, Chicago.


Chicago is experiencing between 40 and 50 shootings every weekend.  About 9 end in fatalities.  Almost all the dead are minorities.  Almost all the shooters are minorities, too.

This year there have been 228 gun deaths in Chicago, so far. Actually, that number is a week old, so it's higher now.  While also a tragedy, there have been 144 American deaths in Afghanistan.  Unlike the 228 Chicago number, the Afghanistan number includes deaths for all reasons, accidents, and roadside bombs.   The Chicago number is gun murders only.


This isn't a new phenomena.  Sine the war in Afghanistan started, all the way back in 2001, we've lost 2,000 troops.  


But that number is dwarfed by the gun deaths in Chicago.  Since we first invaded Afghanistan, Chicagoans have murdered 5,000 other Chicagoans, nearly two and a half times more than American lives lost in Afghanistan.


Yet we hear about the war in Afghanistan nightly.  ABC, CBS and NBC have reporters stationed in Afghanistan.  We marvel at their bravery.


Congress has held literally HUNDREDS of hearings on Afghanistan.  Presidents Bush and Obama have held numerous press briefings on Afghanistan.  There have been dozens of plans, strategies, troop build-ups and plans for victory in Afghanistan.


In waging the war in Afghanistan the United States has spent between $2.3 and $2.7 TRILLION DOLLARS!!  In Chicago we've spent virtually nothing.  There are no troops. Hell, there are damned few police.  And few murders are solved, most are just chalked up to gang violence.

Why do allow this tragedy to continue?  Even worse, Chicago is just one city plagued with murders and gun violence. In all of America over 4,000 are murdered yearly.


When will President Obama give the long overdue speech from the oval office?

The Black Teenage Boy in the Hoodie

Back on April 2nd I wrote that the Trayvon Martin murder got so much press because it was so exceedingly rare.  Indeed, people are almost never murdered in gated communities by Neighborhood Watch patrols.  And blacks are rarely killed by whites in any communities. I don't mean to minimize Trayvon Martin's murder. Trayvon Martin deserves justice.


But, as I mentioned in that earlier article, similar murders in poor, urban communities are tragically common, so common almost no one outside of the affected families ever bothers to notice.  Not the media, most certainly. But not even the black leaders like Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton, who dominated the media during the Trayvon Martin investigation.


There are thousands of such murders every year, ignored and quickly forgotten.  And one more occured two days ago.  Like the Travon Martin murder this also involved and black teen in a hoodie and a 24 year old Latino male.  But this one happened in the Watts area of Los Angeles.

But this time the victim was a tiny one year old baby boy, Angel Mauro Cortez-Nava, and the murderer was the black teenage boy in the hoodie.  Today police are still searching for the murderer, who shot and killed the baby and wounded the father in their own front year.  The teen shot the two as he rode by on his bicycle.


The murder was probably part of a wave of gang killings between the rival black gang, Fudgetown and the Latino gang, the Hispanic Barrio Grape Street Gang. Little Angels father was wearing a purple sweatshirt at the time of the shooting, but his friends and family claim he had no gang affiliation.


The police say this is just one of a half dozen killings in the neighborhood in the last year.


Maria Trujillo, a family friend and neighbor spoke for the entire community when she was interviewed by the media, "With these shootings going on, you don't feel safe in your own front yard,"


"I have seen plenty of people pass away here. For a child to go, this has to stop immediately," neighbor Marcus Williams said. "When a child, a child, a baby, this kid didn't have a chance at life. It really hurt. I'm afraid to let my kids play in the yard now. This is right across the street." 


If only we could generate national press and outrage over this killing.  If only community leaders and national leaders like Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton would get involved in these acts of violence, perhaps we could begin to put this epidemic of violence to an end.


What if President Obama stood at a press conference and said little Angel Cortez looked like one of  his children?