Fireworks every weekend.

What will it take to make us realize that we have a crisis on our hands here in America?

Those were gunshots and not fireworks you heard exploding on the streets of places like Chicago and Philadelphia this past Fourth of July.

I wish I had an answer for why, every weekend, we hear about young black men killing each other in urban areas all over the country. Sadly, I have been to the funerals of the victims, and I have been in the homes of the loved ones of the accused. Trust me, there are no winners.

I am one of the people on the front line of this battle for our young people's survival, and I am here to tell you that we are losing. Most of you will never experience having to sit with young career criminals as they explain the difference between trapping for someone else or running their own block. Or how important it is to have good soldiers with the proper tools because, like any business, there is always a chance of a hostile takeover.

It's a shame, because some of these young men are the brightest that I ever encountered. You wonder what would have happened if they had put their talents to good use.

So what do we do?

I am going to start with the most important thing we can do: Doing everything we can to make sure that their families stay intact from the very start of their lives. And no, their parents don't have to be physically together, that is not always realistic, but they absolutely should co-parent. (Fellows, you know where I am going with this.) It's no secret that without proper role models and mentors it is easier for these youngsters out on the street to succumb to peer pressure.

We also need to work harder to get some of these guns off the streets as well. Yes Mr. 2nd Amendment, you can bare your arms until your heart's content. But work with me to cut back on the production of some of these automatic weapons, clamping down on straw purchasers, and better monitoring of trade shows where an unlimited amount of guns are sold.

And then there are the hard truths: We need to take a harder look at ourselves. Particularly those of us in the community who hold ourselves out as the gatekeepers.

The churches have to do a better job of forming partnerships in the community, and making sure that their members immerse themselves in various community programs and volunteer outreach.
I mean that's what JC would have done, right?

I read an excellent article by Will Bunch today which actually got me thinking about this subject, and he wrote about a wonderful program in Richmond, California that seems to be reaping positive benefits.

"The new folks might want to check out Richmond, Calif., a low-income, high-crime community on San Francisco Bay. When murders there spiked in the 2000s, some City Council members suggested calling in the National Guard, but the city went in the other direction. It created an Office of Neighborhood Safety to focus more on solutions around community engagement.

The program was described over the weekend in a New York Times op-ed by its founding director, Devone L. Boggan. He noted: "A police liaison officer told us this startling fact: An estimated 70 percent of shootings and homicides in Richmond in 2009 were caused by just 17 individuals, primarily African-American and Hispanic-American men between the ages of 16 and 25."

What happened next was even more astounding -- a community outreach program that did actual outreach. "Then came the big innovation of the Operation Peacemaker fellowship program," Boggan wrote. "We offered those young men a partnership deal: We would pay them — yes, pay them — not to pull the trigger." Some of the targeted young men were invited to meetings and, if they responded to mentoring, would be paid as much as $1,000 a month to participate in a non-violence program.
This goes against everything that people in Philadelphia and in Pennsylvania have believed for the last 40 years. During that time, as our state's prison population increased six-fold, powerful lobbies like the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association and other police and victims-rights groups have pushed, always successfully,  for longer sentences and harder time. I'm sure there are people reading this who could never believe -- no matter what the empirical evidence shows -- that it would make more sense to pay a troublemaker than to lock him up and throw away.

But Boggan described remarkable success in the Northern California program, both in individual cases -- like a young man named Shyeed who renounced violence and became an ambassador for the mentoring program -- and in the numbers. His city saw an astonishing 76 percent drop in homicides, or nearly double the rate of decline in Philadelphia. It's not clear whether this program can be easily replicated in a much larger metropolis, but Richmond's success shows the possibilities of outside-the-box thinking." [Source]

"76 percent" is an amazing drop in the homicide rate for that city, and, to be honest, cities like Philadelphia (Chicago being the exception) have been experiencing a lower amount of homicides over the past few years as well. But even one homicide is too much, and  there is still a lot of work left to be done.

Mr. Bunch, I will give you the last word:

"On the other hand, four murders on the night of July 4 isn't something to shrug and accept. It seemed ironic that these street killings came on the same weekend when CNN wasted hours of air time on the foggy notion that terrorists -- presumably of the Arabic kind -- might hit America and ruin our Independence Day weekend, even though the network also acknowledged that authorities had no such credible threat. It seemed a sad, shameful ploy to rope in a few viewers on a weekend when there was virtually no real domestic news. But maybe that shone a light on our weird value system when it comes to violence.

Four people killed by the National Guard at Kent State, and Neil Young will write a song about it. Four people killed by Muslim fanatics in Boston, and we send armored personnel carriers into the streets with aircraft taking infrared pictures in the sky. Four dead in Philadelphia on the 4th of July, and we call it one more Saturday night."


*Pic from thinkprogress.org