David Sepulveda Photo
Leslie Radcliffe with neighborhood recruits working on Truman Street community garden.
I am having difficulty understanding what the point is of having a community conversation about violence in our community.
Does it mean hosting a two-hour session where the community is given time to retell the harrowing stories of how their loved ones or neighbors were murdered or injured in their neighborhoods? Does it mean that city officials share slideshows, charts and graphs to report the stats of how many of your children, family, friends and neighbors were killed or injured as a result of a violent act? Does it mean that the service agencies share what resources are available to those affected by violence?
All of that is all well and good. Under no circumstance am I undermining the work of the NHPD and the agencies like Ice the Beef, Project Longevity, Street Outreach, or Gunz Down Books Up.
But at some point we have got to do the work of addressing the issue of guns in the hands of those that use them to commit crimes … whether it’s a robbery or a beef.
How many more mothers and fathers have to try to hold on to their sanity knowing that the hurt will never be healed? How many more have to suffer and die before we don’t do any more than ‘talk about it’???
How many more chalk outlines on blood-stained sidewalks and piles of yellow tape balled up in the sidewalk trash cans do we need to walk our babies by on their way to school?
How many more times do we need to rush to school to pick up our babies (they’re all our babies) because a threat of shooting caused another school lockdown? How many more candle memorials, Go-Fund Me’s for funerals, bricks in the Memorial Garden do we need to have?
How many “shots fired” do we have to count from behind our closed curtains before dialing 911 and check on our neighbors while waiting for the sirens to stop and the lights to flash on our block?
And if we think this unchecked unaddressed violence does not have a trickle-down effect, we are delusional.
A teenager who knew he was gonna get in a fight after school brings a knife to school, and while other students videotape him getting his butt kicked … still holding on to his backpack, he pulls out a knife and stabs his assailant several times, And the cell phone video goes viral … just like the Tik Toc of students slapping teachers! Now teachers are getting arrested for manhandling physically aggressive students … YES I SAID IT … the teachers manhandled (treated them like they were grown) physically aggressive students (who were acting out in a way that they shouldn’t have been). Now I’m not calling blame … but it IS what it IS!!!
Come on folks … what we are doing is not working. We need a new approach.
We don’t need these round-robin community forums!
We need to do what we have never done to address issues we know exist … in our communities, in our schools, in our homes. We need to get the folks with the resources at the table with the folks who first-hand see the problems, some even before they hit the streets: social workers, street workers, school counselors, community activists, police officers, ex-police officers, mental health workers, teachers and clergy.
We have nothing more to lose, because we are already losing. We may gain even something by doing something different.
But we have to set aside our egos, our selfishness, our political posturing, and do the sacrificial work of working together for a common goal of saving our children, saving our communities. We cannot textbook ourselves out of this. We might not get it right the first time, but we at least have to try. Because our children will continue to die while we continue to hold conversations about how many of them are dying.
If you have a plan, let us all come together … not just your friends or cronies, but folks who will challenge the plan to be the best it can be and put in work. We can share the thoughts and strategies, select a few of most agreed upon, fine tune them into action plans, and put them to work. Then evaluate, put them to work, re-evaluate.
These issues are bigger than just one person, one way of thinking, one department, one agency. But together we might be able make something happen that makes a difference.
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” — Walt Disney Company
Leslie Radcliffe is a longtime leader of neighborhood improvement and public safety initiatives in the Hill neighborhood. Read a full story about her work here.
LESLIE RADCLIFFE, thank you for your article. I second that motion.