I was thinking about The Field Negro’s lament that we never get to hear about the personal stories or suffering relatives of the thousands of black people who die from gunshots each year in our cities, and I decided to try to find some information on some of the people who have died in Philadelphia recently. That led me to the GunCrisis.org webpage where I immediately found a link to Steven D’s most recent piece on gun violence. It’s funny how the world works like that.
GunCrisis.org documents every shooting that occurs in Philadelphia, and some that occur nearby or nationally. They were able to fill their entire front-page with articles about shootings and murders that occurred in Philadelphia in just the last two days.
Police: Officer kills armed man in Frankford
10-year old shot in Philly overnight
Man shot to death in Germantown Saturday night
Gunman shoots five people at Philadelphia house party
79-year-old man shot dead in Pemberton Township Home
Man, 24, shot dead in Kingsessing
Go back one more day and you get this: Five people shot in Philadelphia overnight.
Here’s how The Field Negro put it:
When violence is random and in places that we don’t expect it, we get 24 hour cable coverage and front page news headlines. We know the names of all the victims and the shooter will forever live in infamy. It ignites gun control debates and we ponder and pontificate about the violence of our culture until it fades away and the next tragedy strikes.
That doesn’t happen when we pick up the paper on Monday morning and read about the shootings and mayhem in the streets of pick a city, that’s just the way it is with “those people”. We expect that. It’s like reading the box scores from last night’s baseball game.
We need to think about a lot more than just gun laws. We need to focus on what we report in the news and what we ignore. You know, this applies to missing persons cases, and many other types of crimes, too. It applies to the rip-off artists that run check-cashing joints and other legal scams that we’d never tolerate in our own neighborhoods. We need to focus on the root causes of the gang culture in our cities and how we can make smart effective investments to curtail and reform that culture. We need to look at our drug laws and our prison system.
While we try to figure out how to prevent another Batman Massacre (which killed twelve people) we need to think about what to about gun violence in our cities. We’ve lost 193 people this year in Philadelphia alone. Do you know any of their names?
The Field is so right.
By the way, Tea Party Senator Ron Johnson has this to say in the wake of Aurora:
Funny, but I can’t recall if muzzle loading muskets and rifles had 100 round magazines back in 1789. I’m sure drug gangs are glad to hear he supports their right to purchase such high round magazines for their firearms. Personally I want him to support my right to own a field howitzer, hand held heat seeking missiles or at least and RPG launcher. Maybe I’ll send him an email asking him to stop being such a wuss and come out in favor of my right to own those arms.
Think big, Steven D. Ask for the right to own a MIRV ICBM equipped with nuclear warheads. After all it’s to deter the government of the United States of America, isn’t it Senator Johnson?
Also ask him which “well-regulated militia” the Aurora belonged to.
If he’s correct, it follows that Holmes and all his psycho colleagues have a right to use them, right? If you have a right to buy newspapers, for example, you also have a right to read them. And since WMDs like the Colorado arsenal has no purpose for its existence except to kill people, Holmes had a right to do what he did, by Johnson’s “logic”. Just as some other law-abiding American has, then, a right to exercise his “basic freedom” on Senator Johnson, for example. Think he’d go for that?
Here’s one name in Chicago. Click the link if you can bear to see her picture.
I was thinking about the same thing. The mass murder of 13 people is a terrible, terrible thing. But why is it that the murder of 250 people in Chicago, including 20 kids, in half a year arouses no mass outrage, no political bloviating,no media frenzy at all? (Though the Tribune deserves kudos for pounding the issue lately.) It is part of a whole national culture that tolerates and even celebrates violence, at least when it’s the Other that pays the price with their blood. The “justice” system, the drugwar, the national shift to a lawless plutocracy at the highest, richest levels are all part of what some might call the seamless garment of disdain for life and liberty. But the gun nut lobby is a huge swath of that cloth.
A lack of names could be the result of newspapers not having a full newsroom or they farm that work out.
However, the KC Star has taken a different approach to give a name and picture of murder victims in Kansas City.
http://homicide.kansascity.com/victims/?page=3#grid-view
I found this very interesting.
You could just as easily have written this in 2002 or 1992. Or even 1982.
That’s not meant to be glib, it just seems the neatest way of summing up the problem.
Every once in a while, the mainstream media creates some major fictional work about the urban dynamics. Boyz N The Hood, Do the Right Thing, Hoop Dreams, The Wire. Every generation gets one. We’re probably due for another one any time now. Maybe it’ll be about Chicago this time?
Crime trends down. It’s still too high. Sociologists and criminologists try to explain it. Sometimes they credit some government programs or economic changes. Sometimes they just blame lead paint and leaded gasoline. Probably no one really “knows” why exactly things are exactly why they are or what would specifically be needed to fundamentally alter the equation.
The American economy obviously doesn’t need all the labor it has on hand as is, let alone the incarcerated population or the people shoved out onto the margins to be ignored. So who the fuck knows?
A betting man would wager you’ll be writing that same paragraph in 2022.
This is actually my primary objection to people going gonzo after every mass killing – the overwhelming majority of murders in this country are done retail, not wholesale, but nobody cares about the individual murders, as Field Negro more aptly put it.
Here’s tonight’s offering. Technically, he was shot in the suburbs and appears to have died in the city.
the shooting in Kingsessing took place 4 blocks from my house.
Lloyd Morgan. Look at that kid.
Christopher Malcolm and Rohan “Sonny” Bennett. But might be drug related, so no biggie.
Michael Haynes