CHICAGO – It’s morning. June 10, 2017. I just learned that among the previous day’s gun violence is the shooting death of Xavier Joy 23, a college graduate who returned to Chicago to work with young people and give back to his community.
I don’t know for sure, but I think this young man might have been a chess coach for one of my grandsons. I am reluctant to ask my 15-year-old grandson because he’s already had to process too many friends or family getting shot. Last weekend, his uncle was shot three times on the North Side. Within the past two months, a former classmate and a friend were shot to death.
Whether shootings are classified as “innocent bystander,” “gang-related” or “justified/officer-related” is immaterial to me because they resulted in a death or injury at the point of a gun leaving a community and a family to process over and over again their grief, fear, anger, frustration.
It is not quite the middle of the year as I write this. Already 27,284 people have been the victims of gun-related incidents; 6,734 resulted in death; 13,177 injured. According to Gun Violence Archive, 1,699 of those gun-related incidents involved children under 17 years of age. One hundred forty-six were mass shootings. Nine hundred thirty-three were officer-involved incidents with 124 officers shot or killed.
I’ve been to vigils and marches. I’ve been to community meetings where the police commander advocated expanding Neighborhood Watch and promises greater police presence. I’ve sat in Peace Circles with neighbors who oppose Neighborhood Watch. They don’t want neighbors watching each other; they want neighbors talking to each other, strengthening and healing their community. I’ve sat with Abolition activists who want an end to the police. Often, I recall this poem:
Give Us This Day*
By John Sheehan
If I have a loaf of bread
And my brother and sister have none
Then I owe them half
Even if they do have a gun
I just might not realize
how much guns had to do
with my having the bread
in the first place
Until we see that violence comes first from the top; until we reorganize society to meet the survival needs of everyone, we will lose loved ones to the violence from the suites as well as the violence from the streets. Until then we will suffer the senselessness of a destructive social order that puts property above the right of every human being to have the food, shelter, healthcare and education necessary for survival. Until then, we will have to endure the senselessness that only makes sense to the corporate ruling class – the 1% – which is hoarding and protecting private property as they siphon off the social wealth derived from the labor of so many generations they have exploited for their profit and our poverty. This is the insane sense of senseless losses like Xavier Joy and every other loved one lost.
Dedicated to Corey Donzell Webster, fatally shot on June 24, 2017. R.I.P Little Corey
*from Elsewhere Indiana, by John Sheehan (Tia Chucha Press)
