Gun violence got a little personal for me today. Someone killed his father and brother and then proceeded to shoot and kill more people until he arrived at Santa Monica Community College and shot some students. He was killed in the college library. I went to Santa Monica Community College for two years (1989-1991). Here’s a true story. When I got news that the Persian Gulf War had started, I was watching Telly Savalas (Kojak) watch a tennis match on the college campus.
Not long after I heard about the situation in Santa Monica, an old friend sent me the gun violence tally for Philadelphia and announced that he was fleeing the city. I kind of knew he wanted to leave, and it’s partly to pursue new career opportunities. But it is sad that he doesn’t feel like it’s safe to stay anymore.
This week in Philadlephia, you could spot city leaders and most of the news media staff, vehicles and other resources at 22nd and Market Streets, at the scene of a building collapse that killed six people and injured 13 Wednesday.
We wish to express our sympathies to the victims and their families and commend our colleagues on outstanding reporting. A great deal of attention has been turned toward the cause of the catastrophe, who should be held responsible, and what the city can do to prevent it from happening again.
But at the same time, very little attention has been paid to the 30 shooting victims reported across Philadlephia so far this week.
By the way, pretty much every time I go into Philadelphia, I pass by the intersection where that building collapsed. I use 22nd street to cut across the city.
News events are getting a little close to home.
What are the unemployment rates in Philadelphia? The true unemployment rates, not the phony ones that the government puts out claiming no one really wants a job. And what are the (again true) inflation-adjusted income structure of the city? Not being an apologist, but these things correlate well with violence. Desperate people do desperate things, sometimes crazy things.
Understandably, we are often trying to look for external reasons for our problems instead of looking within. I don’t doubt that desperation plays a part in some of the violence that we’re seeing but high unemployment and low wages have always been a problem in urban communities. My concern is that if we always find a way to blame it on something or someone else we will never do the real soul searching that needs to take place. One of the problems is that guns have never been as prevalent as they are now. I grew up in a lower middle class Black neighborhood and if you got into a fight the worst thing that could happen is maybe someone brought brass knuckles or numb-chucks to the rumble. You fought and most likely became friends after that. I’m only 43 so it was not that long ago. Unemployment was high and Reagan was handing out government cheese as a solution to poverty. The problem now is much deeper than the economy.
Mine was white lower class. We didn’t have numb-chucks, but we did have switchblades.
What you say is correct, but I’m talking about these freaky rampages, not ordinary day-to-day violence.
It’s about 10% unemployment, but I’d say that’s a conservative estimate.
But what’s more problematic is the 52% illiteracy rate among Philadelphia’s adults. Illiteracy is transmitted intergenerationally: if mom and dad are illiterate/functionally illiterate, the kids are more likely to be as well.
Between that and the school closures, you’re looking at a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty.
Kindergarteners last year, college students, yesterday.
Maybe now we can talk about some sensible gun control?
Just kidding!!!
Yeah?
Imagine how close to home “news events” have gotten for the millions of people that the U.S. corporate empire’s armed forces have killed and maimed since the Korean War. How close to home they feel for those other millions of Americans who are too poor to flee bad neighborhoods.
You’re beginning to feel the heat, Booman. I’ll say it again. Until the U.S. backs off of the world’s food trough, brings its troops home and starts rebuilding this country on every imaginable level the societal heat’s just going to get worse. The official corruption endemic to this country at every level is unsustainable, from the bottom right to the top…from the street cops to the political parties, the media, the financial sector, the armed forces and almost everything in between. It cannot continue without further breakdowns, and those breakdowns are simply going to get closer and closer to home for every one of us. You continue to support the current two-dimensional UniParty scam that we laughingly call “the political process” in America despite massive evidence that it is totally broken. Unless a political party arises (or one of the two existing parties totally reinvents itself) and runs on a platform as radical as that of FDR’s New Deal in the early ’30s we are just going to continue to spiral down into eventual failure as a society.
Bet on it.
Those “news events” that you mention?
They are chickenshit compared to what’s headed our way if we do not make a massive transformation soon.
Just chickenshit.
Your man Obama? Your “smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics?” (Dr. Adolph Reed, 1996)
You wuz warned.
AG
True. But I’d quibble that it’s unsustainable in the foreseeable future. It takes a long time for the working classes to see that they are the chumps and not in the club that takes everything they can by whatever means they can obtain.
There is no “foreseeable future” anymore, Marie. Well…maybe a week or two if we’re lucky. Stuff jumps off so fast now! One more superstorm on a level greater than Sandy in some heavily populated area, one serious disruption of fuel deliveries, one nuclear accident, one really effective terrorist action on the 9/11 model or any other major unforeseeable disaster and this country could tank in a matter of days. Then what?
We are balanced on a knife edge now, and we have no real hand in holding the knife.
Bet on it.
AG
Meh — all those potential events aren’t enough to quickly crash the system as a whole. If they, along with a few other major negative events, happened on the same day, it still might only hobble the system. Short of major wars (something this country has no living memory of and never experienced in most geographical parts of this country except by indigenous peoples), things fall apart slowly. Fast enough to cause distress and dis-ease but too slow for a constructive response from the people.
We may have made ourselves vulnerable in the event of a solar superstorm, but as that topic is most popular with the “end times” and “survivalist” crowds, not known for rational and scientific thoughts, weathering that may not be a Herculean task either.
A pandemic, one not like anything previously seen, would be a game-changer, but global public health institutions have become very good.
22nd Street is where I get off the trolley to go to Trader Joes. I cannot count the number of times I’ve either walked by those buildings or shopped at the Salvation Army (which, by the way is where I got two awesome sweaters and a great tweed jacket, poppin’ tags!!).
By the way, we are up to 34 shooting victims for June ALONE. And with 23 schools closing and 3,700 people getting laid off, it’s only going to get crazier.
And with that I’m into the comments.
In Oct. 2002 the Beltway Sniper was shooting people at random in Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia. People were terrified to get gas for their car. I lived in Northern VA and the Beltway Sniper shot someone a few blocks from where I lived 2 days before I moved back to Indiana for health reasons and to be near family.
It might appear safer to live in red state Indiana and this even redder county, but this is crazy Fox News viewing, low info voter, conspiracy theory world. I would much rather be healthy and back in Northern VA.
Shooting of citizens has happened before, like someone going to an office and shooting people. Or remember what “going postal” stood for? I think now it’s that it seems more random and probably more often.
What I see that is different now is the GOP, Limbaugh and Fox News create a sense of lawlessness and tension through messages of fear and hate. The gun toting loons around here are eating it up. I know people who have added big automatic weapons to their cache to repel Obama’s secret military that’s going to break down their door. I see GOP legislators or reports of someone on Fox telling people to take the law into their own hands to be patriotic. There are record numbers of militia groups and threats against the President. At the same time the GOP is putting pressure on socieity through a seemimg relentless attack against minorities, women and the poor.
Guns are easier to get than the right to vote. GOP state legislatures are making it easier to conceal and carry and extending places acceptable to have guns.
There are more people now who are disconnected with reality than I can remember. They are being told that someone outside of them is causing their fears. I hear absolutely crazy talk around here. The GOP tells them the government doesn’t work and they want some kind of order, something to hold things together. It makes it like a “Lord of the Flies” kind of situation where a loss of civility and order encourages people to act out their fears and feelings of violence.
I am pretty sure the old friend Booman is referring to me.
It’s not just the gun violence though. It’s so much more than that.
We are closing 23 schools this year, 3,700 teachers, assistant principals, counselors, and other staff are being laid off. This is due to a $304 million dollar deficit, yet there is $400 million for a new prison. And what no one talks about is how the mayor’s wife is up to her eyeballs in the school privatization scam.
PA is 49th in the US for job growth. That’s pathetic. I haven’t been able to find full-time work with benefits since 2010: I’m an uninsured independent contractor now. Anyone need a grant writer, fulltime?
52.3% of my fellow Philadelphians are functionally illiterate: that’s even MORE pathetic. This sad fact plays out in so many ways, from people that can’t read to people who have no concept of basic etiquette.
Everyone’s freaked out about that building that collapsed. Well guess what? there are 40,000 more buildings just like that here.
They just changed the tax structure. Now it’s even MORE unfair, pushing much more of the burden onto ordinary residents while giving breaks to businesses.
For that matter, the city just fucked up my taxes, royally. You mortgage holders probably know that your monthly payment includes your taxes and insurance, paid quarterly. This is handled between the servicer and the municipality. Well here in Philly, they undercalculated my taxes to the tune of nearly $800, which I know have to pay on top of THIS year’s taxes. Did the city calculate them properly this time? Who knows for sure, wheeeeee!
And let’s talk a little more about how the tax structure here penalizes small business ventures like myself with higher taxes (and as the school closures demonstrate) fewer public services.
I’m sorry for the long rant, but there has GOT to be something better than Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.