Shooting on the block two days in a row. This has never happened to us before and I've had to ask myself some new questions.
First, if someone's kid gets shot while they're playing on that corner, I feel like it's so crazy out here that it becomes my fault! Because how dare I have kids outside playing in the summertime?!?! I knew that neighborhood was "unsafe". Kids that live in places like that should be in homemade bunkers with their cellphones, right? That's what they get for having poor parents!
Second, is it just time to stop trying? Is it time to just pack it up? Have we actually lost the city? Is it more about just trying to not die here than actually trying still have a life here? These two things are very different.
Somebody fired at least 10 shots yesterday while kids were playing and it took police nearly ten minutes to arrive! Isn't that what shotspotter is for?
How did nearly 70 people get shot in Chicago over the weekend and there's all the violence prevention organizations and prevention tech getting funded to keep that very thing from happening?
It's not getting better. It's getting worse. We're gonna ask for speed bumps one more time, and we're gonna use our own money to put up cameras and pink flashing lights to deter shooters by letting them know they're being recorded and KIDS ARE PLAYING HERE!!!
This is not just a last ditch effort for us. It may be the last chance some of the kids in our neighborhood have. I get that it's not big, huge, mega tech or well funded and approved by "crime" experts in a lab, but it's more than anyone else is doing for us now. I pray this can work, because if it doesn't this may be my last summer on the block for one reason or another?
See you on the block,
Tamar
