Outraged
by “Lim”

I woke up this morning and felt outraged because
I’m still here. Every day feels longer and longer: the
same four walls, the same routine, the same food.
I’m getting sick of it.

I’m upset, because the system says you’re innocent
until proven guilty, but I’ve been here for two and
a half months for something I didn’t do,
but the law has other plans.

I’m just tired of being incarcerated
— it’s taking away from my youth, but since I’ve been here I’ve
had a lot of time to think and look at my life and get my priorities
straight, but I’m making the best of it, and I know soon I can return.

Source: Illustrations from the Inside: The Beat Within (2007)

Willie* was standing on the corner in front of his friend’s house. His own apartment was only 5 doors down the street. It’s around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday night during the summer. He has no air conditioner at home and neither does his friend Tony*.

They were playing their music on a boombox. It was loud but no one cared. It’s summer in Little Village (LV); people are used to this. Willie and Tony live in a community beset by violence. Little Village has less green space than any other community in Chicago. A few years ago mothers from the neighborhood had to stage a hunger strike to secure a new high school for their children. Little Village is a mostly Latino community, specifically most residents have Mexican roots. Many of the young people who live in LV are “gang-affiliated.” Regular readers know that I think that this term is mostly meaningless. Writer and Chicagoan Alex Kotlowitz puts it more elegantly:

Virtually every teen and young man shot, the police tell us, belonged to a gang, as if suggesting that “what goes around, comes around.” But life in these communities is more tangled than that. You can’t grow up in certain neighborhoods and not be affiliated, because of geography or lineage. (An administrator at one South Side high school estimates that 90 percent of the boys there are identified with one clique or another.) Moreover, it’s often safer to belong than not to belong. You want someone watching your back. And honestly, as Matthews suggests, many if not most of the disputes stem not from gang conflicts but rather from seemingly petty matters like disrespecting someone’s girlfriend, or cutting in line, or simply mean-mugging. This doesn’t explain the madness. Not at all. It’s just to suggest that it’s more complicated and more profound than readings of a daily newspaper or viewings of the evening news would suggest.

“The police just rolled up on me & my vato (Tony). We wasn’t doin’ nothin’. We was just outside listening to music, talking shit, and watching girls,” Willie told me.
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They have dreamed as young men dream
Of glory, love and power; 
They have hoped as youth will hope
Of life’s sun-minted hour.

They have seen as others saw
Their bubbles burst in air,
They have learned to live it down
As though they did not care.
– “Old Black Men” by Georgia Douglas Johnson

I know a young man who won’t live to be old.

He tells me so almost every time we speak.

James (not his real name) is 21 and working his first ever job.

With his second paycheck, on Valentine’s day, he bought me flowers. “These are for you, Ms. K. I know you hate this kind of shit,” he said with a devilish smile.

James loves to make fun of me.

I took the flowers, smacked him on the arm with them, and gave him a hug. [I am not a hugger.]

“You should save your money. Don’t spend it on me,” I protested. [Inside I was struggling to hold my emotions in check.]

“Oh Ms. K, what’s the use of saving. I ain’t gonna be here but for a bit.”

I’ve heard these words (in some variation) so often that they now pour off me like water from a shower head. I should be outraged, perhaps. I should feel… something. But I don’t respond anymore. I pretend that I don’t hear the words. I am numb and to be honest I can’t guarantee that he will live to become an old man. He’s young, black, and living on the West side of Chicago. I steel myself for bad news every morning…

I saw an old black man sitting outside a Greystone building in Lawndale last month. I did a double take. I don’t see a lot of old black men in Lawndale or anywhere else in Chicago really. I see some old black women. I even work with some who are active in their local block clubs and churches. But the old black men, they are ghosts…

The President spoke in Chicago on Friday. He said a lot of things and then hours after he left the city four more people were shot (one lethally). As I predicted on Friday morning, judging from social media reaction, most people were disappointed in the speech. I still haven’t watched it. I don’t plan to. It’s not a protest. I just don’t want to.
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View more videos at: http://nbcchicago.com.

I have kept my mouth firmly shut over the past few days about President Obama’s upcoming visit to Chicago. I was taught that if you can’t say something nice, it might be a good idea to say nothing at all. I am informed through the press that the President intends to speak about gun violence and other issues while he’s here. He’ll be speaking this afternoon at Hyde Park Academy, a Southside high school.

If you know anything about Chicago, then you understand why he would speak on the Southside. First, most of the public shootings and death happening in the city are concentrated there and on the Westside. Also, one of the most recent high profile homicides to have occurred in Chicago, the killing of Hadiya Pendleton, took place on the Southside. If he is going to address gun violence, the Southside of Chicago is a good place to do so.

It wasn’t a given, however, that President Obama would come to speak in Chicago. It took local organizing to get him to come. An organization called the Black Youth Project started a petition at change.org after Hadiya’s death calling for President Obama to make a comprehensive speech about gun violence in Chicago. The petition focused on the experience of Aisha Truss-Miller, a committed young organizer who is well-known to many of us who address violence in the city. She shared the story of the killing of her cousin, Leon Truss, and then asked the President to act on his and other young people’s behalf:

“[M]y family and I are joining with the Black Youth Project to ask President Obama to come to Chicago and honestly speak on the root causes of gun violence in Black and Latino communities. This speech must be a substantive one, that includes specifics on the policies and programs his administration will initiate to save the lives and improve the futures of our young people.

We know that President Obama cannot solve the issue of gun violence alone. However, he can call the nation to consciousness about the need for a response to this specific crisis that is affecting youth in cities like mine.”

By the time the President announced his decision to speak in Chicago, the petition has garnered over 45,000 signatures. The Black Youth Project issued a statement after the President agreed to come to Chicago which read in part:

“[W]e urge the President to make his speech a substantive one that addresses the underlying factors that perpetuate violence in Black and Latino communities.

We hope his speech will detail how he will work with community groups, city and state officials to address the underlying issues leading to gun violence in the Windy City, and other cities across the country.

Namely, the illegal distribution and loose regulation of arms, the lack of living-wage jobs, the varied shortcomings of public schools, the disproportionate rate of incarceration for youth of color, the circumstances and culture that propels the cycle of violence, and yes, the misguided choices young people sometimes make.”

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As I’ve already mentioned several times, the voices of youth who are most impacted by having police in their schools have been neglected.

A group of youth in California spoke out yesterday about the proposals currently being considered around “school safety” in Congress. They held a rally outside of Senator Barbara Boxer’s office. Please, please listen to their voices and tell others that young people DO NOT want to attend militarized schools.

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Her name was Dorothy Young and she was sentenced to a reformatory for allegedly cursing at a white boy in 1969. Jet Magazine (2/27/1969) reported:

For allegedly calling a white boy a “bastard,” telling him where to kiss her and using the words “damn” and “goddamn” on a school bus, Dorothy Young, 14, of Sylvester, Ga., is confined indefinitely to a reformatory known as the Regional Youth Development Center in Sandersville, Ga. She is the first child sent there from her county in three years.

Dorothy’s sister, Yvonnne, 11, was accused of using similar profane language to a white boy a year older than she and is serving a year’s probation.

Dorothy and her sister Yvonne were among a handful of other black children who had decided to attend all white schools under the “freedom of choice plan.”

Apparently Dorothy had been reprimanded before for the use of profanity by school officials. She was also written up for “refusing to pick up pecan hulls she dropped on the floor of a school bus.”

Dorothy’s mother, Mrs. Ida Mae Young, explained that her daughter was being antagonized by the white boy:

“Last November Dorothy and Will Aultman, a 14-year-old white boy, were on a school bus and he threw a spitball at her. Dorothy jumped on him and whipped him. Nothing was done to the Aultman boy.”

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Southern Road
by Sterling Brown

Swing dat hammer — hunh —
Steady, bo’;
Swing dat hammer — hunh —
Steady, bo’;
Ain’t no rush, bebby,
Long ways to go.

Burner tore his — hunh —
Black heart away;
Burner tore his — hunh —
Black heart away;
Got me life, bebby;
An’ a day.

Gal’s on Fifth Street — hunh —
Son done gone;
Gal’s on Fifth Street — hunh —
Son done gone;
Wife’s in de ward, bebby,
Babe’s not bo’n.

My ole man died — hunh —
Cussin’ me;
My ole man died — hunh —
Cussin’ me;
Ole lady rocks, bebby,
Huh misery.

Doubleshackled — hunh —
Guard behin’;
Doubleschackled — hunh —
Guard behin’;
Ball and chain, bebby,
On my min’.

White man tells me — hunh —
Damn yo’ soul;
White man tells me — hunh —
Damn yo’ soul;
Got no need, bebby,
To be tole.

Chain gang nevah — hunh —
Let me go;
Chain gang nevah — hunh —
Let me go;
Po’ los’ boy, bebby,
Evahmo’…

I should probably take some time before I write about this but writing helps me figure out what I think. So here goes…

We are told that Hadiya Pendleton’s killer has been apprehended and has confessed to her murder. I am not a friend or family member of Hadiya’s. Perhaps those closest to her are feeling relief amidst their pain today. Understandable. Perhaps they are eagerly awaiting the trials and a guilty verdict. I don’t know. Maybe they are hopeful that the young man who killed their sister, cousin, friend and daughter will spend his life in prison. I haven’t heard or read anything to this effect but perhaps…

I anticipate the angry emails that are sure to come after I post this here. It won’t be the first time that something I have written provokes anger. I’ll surely be accused of coddling murderers. That’s OK. I might be accused of never having been victimized by violent crime. I have but that’s not important. Here’s what I have to say.

When I heard that two young black men had been arrested and charged with Hadiya’s death, I felt nothing but soul-deep sadness. No relief. No joy. Nothing but sadness. After my friend Dara posted their mug shot photos on Facebook, my sadness intensified in a way that was suffocating.

There are many reasons for my sadness. I will share a few. First, I am sad because of headlines like this one: “Chicago Teen Killed After Performing At Inauguration Was Victim of Gang Violence.” Why is this headline problematic? Because the reader will assume that he/she now understands what happened. The ThinkProgress post attributes shootings in Chicago to “rampant gang violence.” This is asserted as an incontrovertible fact. [Incidentally, the attorney of one of the suspects says that his client was not a gang member.] Still it’s the gangs, stupid.

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