The Community Mourns the Murder of A Young Child. How Do We Respond?

Last week this columnist wrote an article in this space entitled “Summer Activities for Our Youth.” I did not ex pect to hear that a 14-year-old child was shot and killed and five other teens ages up to 16 were also shot. It was devasting news for this community, especially in light of the fact that we will be observing the 3rd anniversary of the Tops Massacre on May 14th. We have not forgotten this awful pain. Many are still healing from that tragic attack on our community.

The fact that hundreds of teens were at a party late at night and a fight broke out in the crowd, and shots were fired into the crowd, and a fourteen-year-old was killed, we can only ask ourselves why was a child of age 14 and others out at night at a house party with hundreds of teenagers? This is the question of the hour.

I am reminded of the African Proverb that says “It takes a village to raise a child.” Yes, it does take a village, but in some cases, the children are taking over the village. As adults, we must take it back!! Sometimes I wonder if we say the words but don’t work to make them come true as we should.

I said the following in the interview: “I am calling for a Town Hall meeting to discuss this and to come up with possible solutions to this ongoing violence. I am calling on our church community to get more involved, our sororities, our fraternities, and all groups including all of the anti-vio lence groups to come to this town hall and when they come, leave their titles at the door. We need to sit down without the media and talk to each other as a family.

How can we make our families stronger? Come with one thought in mind how can we make this community safe for our children? It won’t be easy because this is a complicated issue. I am not overlooking the fact that illegal guns are the main reason for this violence. How are the youth getting these guns? I called the name of the late Neal Dobbins and his tireless crusade against illegal guns. He was always vocal about it. I don’t hear it as much anymore. I wrote several articles about Neal and his campaign against illegal guns. He had a plan and was constantly talking to those in power about this issue. I plan to repeat one of the articles about Neal Dobbins in the near future. He was a fearless fighter.

His story needs to be told again. Maybe, someone will get inspiration from it. As a historian, it is my job to bring back those stories that will help us to create a better life for us all. Yes, we have broken families in many cases. We know it and we know the reasons for it. The question is what can we do to fix it? We can start with the words of the late Irv Weinstein, channel seven news anchor. Every night on the 11 pm news, he would pose this question to parents: It is 11 o’clock, do you know where your children are? Perhaps we should put these words on billboards and spread them throughout our community!!