31 May 2010
Memorial Day.
Posted by nico under: Life as we know it .
Many of you know that I come from a military family. but as we remember soldiers and Marines like them this holiday, I think we aIso need to remember the war going on in our cities everyday. I was talking to a friend the other day and remarked how 22 people had been shot and at least one dead. He asked if I was talking about Afghanistan. While that may be the overseas war Americans choose to ignore (or claim as patriotic), this war is our forgotten war at home. It’s the one that involves our urban youth. It’s the one we shrug off as “gangbangers getting what they deserve” and quickly forget about it as we get on with our lives. We judge their mothers at their births (OMG she already has two babies and she’s only seventeen), judge the children as they grow (he’s wearing a Reds cap…must be a gangbanger), and send them off to prison when they’ve committed something we deem as “adult” crime. Never mind that they’re only sixteen years old. Something has got to change.
It’s not just Chicago. It’s all of our cities. In Boston this weekend, a fourteen year old boy was shot. What are we doing to stop this violence? We cannot afford to give up on one more youth…on one more neighborhood…on one more class. This Memorial Day, remember our city soldiers who are fighting for their lives and the lives of their families everyday. Remember our fallen youth this Memorial Day, and let’s start working together to end this war.
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