Mon Dec 24, 2012, 06:54 PM

marmar (60,759 posts)

260 School Children Killed in Chicago in 3 Years -- Where Are the Tears for Them?

New America Media / By David Muhammad

260 School Children Killed in Chicago in 3 Years -- Where Are the Tears for Them?
What makes the victims of everyday inner-city gun violence expendable?

December 24, 2012 |

Like President Obama and many others across the country, I too wiped away tears as I watched the horrifying news coverage of the tragic shootings in Newton, Conn. I immediately called my children who were still in school. I sat watching the television trying to fathom how I would respond if I got a call that a shooting had occurred at my children’s school. This brought on more tears. But for the parents of 20 children and six other families in Newton, it wasn’t an exercise; it was an excruciating reality.

I then watched and listened to our President, and like parents around the world, the shooting had affected him emotionally as well. Twenty children gunned down. He struggled to hold back tears.

It was then that my phone buzzed. I quickly grabbed it to see if it was one of my children calling back. But it wasn’t. It was a colleague in Chicago. I had emailed her the day before asking for research into one of the mentoring programs in the city’s schools for youth with the highest risk of being shot.

She provided me with the information I was seeking. Then she included a P.S.: “What a devastating horrible day in CT. But frankly I wish people cared this much when it was children on the south and west sides of Chicago.” ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/260-school-children-killed-chicago-3-years-where-are-tears-them

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10 replies	Author	Time	Post
260 School Children Killed in Chicago in 3 Years -- Where Are the Tears for Them? (Original post)	marmar	Dec 2012	OP
My Tears Turned To Action - Repeal The 2nd Amendment Now!	cantbeserious	Dec 2012	#1
Too little, too late.	NYC_SKP	Dec 2012	#2
The implication of this is that everything YOU have been doing to	enough	Dec 2012	#6
That's the kind of "reasoning" the nuns used to give us kids when they told us we were going to hell	MichiganVote	Dec 2012	#7
Not for the next 20 kids, it's not.	CrispyQ	Dec 2012	#10
There's not a competition to see which murders are	SheilaT	Dec 2012	#3
This message was hidden by jury decision.	qkvhj	Dec 2012	#4
Chicago's new mayor has tried to bring attention to them	frazzled	Dec 2012	#5
The straw buyers the NRA does not want to shut down and the	roseBudd	Dec 2012	#8
Since I Won't Grow Up To Be a Man	Texas-Limerick	Dec 2012	#9

Response to marmar (Original post)

Mon Dec 24, 2012, 06:58 PM

cantbeserious (1,973 posts)

1. My Tears Turned To Action - Repeal The 2nd Amendment Now!

eom

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Response to cantbeserious (Reply #1)

Mon Dec 24, 2012, 07:01 PM

NYC_SKP (48,780 posts)

2. Too little, too late.

That you waited until now is an expression of why and how this could happen.

cheers.

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Response to NYC_SKP (Reply #2)

Mon Dec 24, 2012, 08:09 PM

enough (6,903 posts)

6. The implication of this is that everything YOU have been doing to

stop gun violence has been very effective and this is why we don't have a problem with gun violence?

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Response to NYC_SKP (Reply #2)

Mon Dec 24, 2012, 09:25 PM

MichiganVote (18,962 posts)

7. That's the kind of "reasoning" the nuns used to give us kids when they told us we were going to hell

Dude, you need to lighten up on the guilt sauce.

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Response to NYC_SKP (Reply #2)

Tue Dec 25, 2012, 03:38 PM

CrispyQ (16,025 posts)

10. Not for the next 20 kids, it's not.

A journey in activism starts when it starts. There are no rules that say you can't get involved in the middle of the battle. If everyone had your attitude change would take even longer than it does.

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Response to marmar (Original post)

Mon Dec 24, 2012, 07:13 PM

SheilaT (12,441 posts)

3. There's not a competition to see which murders are

worse.

Every single gun death is abhorent and appalling. If we gave the coverage each and every one deserves every single day, maybe then more people would understand that it really is the guns.

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Response to marmar (Original post)

qkvhj This message was hidden by Jury decision.

Response to marmar (Original post)

Mon Dec 24, 2012, 07:43 PM

frazzled (9,137 posts)

5. Chicago's new mayor has tried to bring attention to them

I know he is reviled here, but that is because it is the cartoon-character Rahm Emanuel we have constructed, who has been used as the respository for everything people disagreed with in the Obama administration. But this is what he did to try to bring attention to the daily shootings of children here:

A Monday afternoon shooting in Downtown Chicago may have dominated the airwaves, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel says the recent slayings of children on the South Side should not be ignored.

Emanuel paid a visit Tuesday to the Englewood home where 6-year-old Arianna Gibson was shot and killed while she slept on her grandmother's couch early Sunday morning.

“I want everybody to understand while that loss was particular to a family, which is why I visited with them, it is a loss to this city and we as a city are less than who we can be and should be when a child’s life is cut short,” Emanuel said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Gibson's death came just four days after 13-year-old Darius Brown was fatally shot while playing basketball near his South Side home. Both children would have started school on Monday.

The mayor stressed that the high-profile shooting on State Street should be no more alarming than Gibson and Brown's deaths in Bronzeville and Englewood, where gun violence is more prevalent.

“I don’t tolerate gun violence or any type of violence anywhere in our city — whether that’s downtown in the business district or whether that’s an innocent child sleeping in her grandmother’s home,” Emanuel said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. “I reject any value system that thinks that something happening downtown is more important than it happening in Englewood. That child in Englewood — while it’s the child of that mother and the child of that grandmother — that is a loss for the city of Chicago."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/09/emanuel-visits-family-of-_n_922784.html

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Response to marmar (Original post)

Mon Dec 24, 2012, 09:31 PM

roseBudd (8,368 posts)

8. The straw buyers the NRA does not want to shut down and the

Last edited Mon Dec 24, 2012, 09:32 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)

unscrupulous gun dealers, the 40% of gun sales that require no background check, are surely a fcator.

Mass murders garner attention and fear because they are so utterly random.

I'll take whatever momentum I can get. Sandy Hook happened at exactly the right time, to sway public opinion

http://www.pollingreport.com/guns.htm

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Response to marmar (Original post)

Mon Dec 24, 2012, 11:04 PM

Texas-Limerick (93 posts)

9. Since I Won't Grow Up To Be a Man

Last edited Tue Dec 25, 2012, 12:48 AM USA/ET - Edit history (1)

Beach Boys medley, Surfer Girl, Fun Fun Fun, and When I Grow Up to be a Man

Little shooter little one
Makes my heart come all undone
Will you spare me, will you shooter girl
Shooter girl, little shooter girl

We didn't go to the prom together
I took your best friend with my woody,
As you well know
We were there all night long,
Dancing close and slow

Couldn't you forgive that date with Heather
And let our new love grow
So I say from me to you
Don't let this nightmare become true
Will you spare me will you shooter girl
----------------------
Boom Boom
----------------------
Well she got her daddy's car
And she cruised through the
Hamburger stand now
Seems she forgot about the library
Where she shot her young man now
And with the muzzle blastin' , go
Shootin' as fast as she can now

And she'll have her gun, gun, gun
'Til they pry her cold dead fingers away
(Gun, gun, gun , 'til they pry her cold dead fingers away)
------------------------
Boom Boom
------------------------
Since I won't grow up to be a man

Do you feel the same way now that they're shooting the kids?
Will you look back and say I wish I hadn't supported what I did?
Will You joke around at the shooting grounds?
Since I won't grow up to be a man?

Will you look at things the same after your neighbors bury their girl?
Do you think things should stay the same after the shots heard 'round the world?
I was once young and free, but how will it be
Since I won't grow up to be a man?
-------------------------
Cheer up and enjoy some old farts who can still sing:

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Read my journal

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