Guns and Roses

On Saturday night at 10pm I was watching the news about Sandy Hook Elementary not knowing that my school was at that very moment losing one of our own to gun violence. As I watched the news I listened to the rhetoric about gun control and how senseless and evil the person who did this was, not knowing that I would be feeling the same hopelessness.  I watched the grief counselors and psychologist converge on the community not knowing that we would be in need of these same services.

On Sunday I heard Obama recite the names of the dead and express his sorrow to the parents, not knowing that a Mom I knew would benefit from a phone call from him, because I'm sure she voted for him too. On Monday morning I went to school and talked about security measures for our school and then later realizing how security measures we Moms take to keep our sons safe in this city are just as futile.

I slowly came to the realization, that while the nation will mourn the children of New England, no one outside of his family, friends, and people who knew him will help us mourn. No one is helping all our children of color who lose their lives everyday on the streets to guns.  No talk about gun control there,  I know I will not see this young man's face plastered all over CNN for the next month, either his face or nameless, faceless youth who also lost his life that Saturday on 24th Street and Potrero.   Who will help his friends make sense of this and help them heal.  What is worse is that this has probably happened to them on several occasions, never getting any grief counseling and never being told that this is not ok.  This should not happened to their friends anymore than it should happen to those children in Sandy Hook.

 Therein, lies the hypocrisy of this nation the genocide that is occurring on our city streets somehow does not measure up to the so called anomaly mass shootings.  It should also be an anomaly that you can't walk down the street on Mission or Hunters Point and expect to get shot.  It should be an anomaly that students in Oakland probably know more dead kids than live ones. It should be an anomaly that everyone is getting shot and no one is doing anything about it!  I am angry, I am in pain and I know that the first responder to this crime did not break down and cry because of what he had to see, to him it was another black kid shot in the hood and it kills me. I know that the shooter will not be psychoanalyzed and be given the excuse of mental illness and how we should have helped him and looked out for the signs of violence that would have made him choose this path of violence and evil.  He more than likely will go to jail and no one will ask him about his childhood and how come he turned out the way he did.

No one cares, I am a lonely voice in the big sea of indifference but I had to pour my grief out somewhere, and if no one ever reads this it's ok.  It was therapy for me but if one person reads and shares and somehow is touched by what I say then I did a good thing.