A Call To Arms

I found this on Eurweb.com.



Mr. Ricardo Hazell has the floor:

THE SAGA CONTINUES: A CALL TO ARMS: Forget Iraq, the war for Black America is at home!
By Ricardo Hazell
(August 9, 2007)

*Today I cried for the first time in a very long time and it was over the lost lives of three individuals I did not know.

Over the weekend, four young African Americans from backgrounds not dissimilar to my own were living their lives when a truly wicked individual decided to take them in a Newark, NJ schoolyard.

A schoolyard not unlike the concrete and gravel paved schoolyards that I frequented in my school years.

The lives of Terrance Aeriel, 18, Iofemi Hightower, 20, and Dashon Harvey, 20 were taken from them just because someone felt like it! There lives had just begun; fun-loving college students who, by all accounts, just wanted to live out their dreams.

Their lives were priceless, yet someone treated them as though they were worthless. A fourth victim, Natasha Aeriel is in fair condition at Newark's University Hospital. She will recover physically, but the emotional scars, as well as the violent death of her brother Terrance, will be with her forever.

People are asking why this sort of thing happens, and that is a valid question. The answer, though simple, is a difficult one to come to grips with. The simple fact is black lives are seen as having little to no value by some black people themselves. Perhaps I should say a certain type of black person. We can talk all day about outreach programs and anti-gang units and so forth, meanwhile our children are dying and dying and dying some more. Often times, when children and young adults are killed by gunfire cynics on the right, and even some black people, subconsciously believe it was somehow the victim's fault. That is true in some instances in which the murders are gang-related. There is also the drive by shooting phenomenon in which children are hit by stray gunfire. Even in this circumstance one could argue that the children were not the intended targets and, therefore, the crime is less malicious. It would be a very impudent argument, but an argument can be made all the same. But in the Newark circumstance the victims were truly innocent and were definitely the intended targets.

So the questions remains, and it is a question as old the African-American urban experience itself, how do we protect our children from these devolved animals? Set up neighborhood watches? That only works in cases in which an individual is vigilante enough to be watching. Culturally African-Americans have adopted the 'no snitching' policy. Snitching has been stigmatized in the African American community since the days of slavery. More recently that policy has been thrust upon us by the drug culture prevalent in many of our communities. Telling just isn't something black people do, even if doing so will remove a known psychopath from the streets. And let's be honest, if you grew up in a crime-ridden environment you knew who did what. One did not necessarily have to smoke crack cocaine to know who was selling it, one did not have to be buying a gun to know who sold guns, and one did not have to be a gangster to have some idea as to who had a 'body' on his gun. Yet, these men were still walking the streets. The streets are always watching, but they seldom talk. Someone knows who took these beautiful young peoples' lives, but the likelihood of that person coming forward is relatively slim. Though I hope that will change.

Another option to consider is dumping more money into law enforcement so that our communities can have more policemen present at anytime during the day. This would prove to be a blade that cuts both ways as the majority of the officers would not be from the community and would certainly misinterpret certain cultural norms. This would result in an increased number of police beatings and mysterious police shootings of unarmed suspects. I did not know any of those who fell victim to this most unfortunate of circumstances, but the pain and angst in my heart feels as though they were blood kin to me. When in pain we sometimes do or say things that may seem a bit extreme. In my pain and angst I feel myself contemplating the most extreme of measures against those that would foul the air of our communities with their every breath.

In the past I have always found myself having sympathy for the drug dealer, the thug and the gangster. Being from "the hood" I know all too well what type of living conditions would drive an individual to forcibly remove the belongings from another at gunpoint, make a run uptown to "reup" and join the familial structure of a street gang or crew. I too believed that one had to do what one had to do to get by on a day to day basis. But no longer! At this point in time I am ashamed to even admit I once shared meals with these individuals, went to the club with these individuals, played ball with these individuals and fought side by side with them. I feel these deaths are a direct result of black and Hispanic community's persistent habit of making excuses for those that commit crime without any concern for the well being of the innocent. It is quasi-understandable. These are our sons, nephews, cousins and fathers. But we need to cut our familial ties and cast some of them out. The fact is these harbingers of destruction do not even recognize that there is even such a thing as an innocent bystander. Yes, I am accusing some individuals who may have never touched a firearm or sold contraband but at this point in time the black community can no longer afford to make concessions for any of them. If you're "down" with them then that is as good as being one of them. These gunmen are terrorists without a cause. It's like Iraq in our urban centers and, not unlike Iraq, the answer lies not in outside authorities' ability to stop it, but in the everyday man, woman and child of these most neglected of urban areas.

In my pain I propose this, if you don't have any felonies get your gun license, organize with like minded individuals and hit the gun range to practice your aim. Vigilantism is not the idea at all. I'm not saying every drug dealer and criminal should be run up on by a sort of ghetto militia, but the wild ones always reveal themselves. The guy that is always flashing his gun, the one that is constantly threatening to run and "pop the trunk", and especially the guy that is always firing his gun in the air at every opportunity. These free radicals, if you will, are destroying the cells of our neighborhood's body and need to be dealt with. Some people are conditioned to only understand a certain response, and in some cases that response needs to be extreme, albeit unpleasant. Violence is the only thing some understand. When I used to play basketball daily I would make it a habit to visit every basketball court in whatever city I lived and, more often than not, it was in a depressed neighborhood. And, without exception, whenever there was a disagreement there would be some idiot threatening to run to the car and grab his gun and start shooting indiscriminately. Many times that threat was made a reality. These people need to be met with, not equal, but overwhelming force. I am sick of turning on my TV or opening the newspaper to witness the death of yet another innocent individual who was minding his own business only to wake up dead. Perhaps tomorrow this will change, but today I have nothing but bile and contempt in the area of my heart where love and understanding for these people once lingered. Why do we feel that we have to kill up one another to be involved in organized crime? Some of the most prosperous gangs around are Chinese, but do you see Chinese gangsters indiscriminately killing one another? Irish gangsters run the rackets in Chicago, despite the presence of many powerful black street gangs. They still commit crimes and kill, but they do so on the extreme low. But our "gangsters" feel they have to kill everything in sight. Why? Because of a persistent self-hate. They feel worthless so they think every other black face is worthless as well. But I love me some me and if you hate me then we are diametrically opposed and you have to go!

I know one thing, the next time someone threatens me or my loved ones with gun violence, even if I know for certain it is a hollow threat, I am responding with hellfire from the barrel. People have been arming themselves in the United States for protection since the country's inception and there are militias in virtually every state west of the Mississippi River. I don't see any reason why that very same mindset cannot be used to protect our babies from this malignancy in our communities. Sounds crazy, I know. But I am so pissed off right now. If I see another mother on TV crying over her slain child I am going to seriously lose my damn mind! Armed guards at our playgrounds? OK! Armed escorts for our children too and from school? Fine by me! A "Most Wanted" list of enemies against the community? Sounds fine by me! Sounds like a war? Well, our community has been at war with itself for quite sometime and the good guys have been loosing battle after battle. I'm tired of these candlelight vigils that accomplish nothing, I am sick of seeing Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson on TV saying how much of a shame these losses are without really doing anything about it and I'm tired of the police promising to add more patrol cars and politicians that promise to lower the urban crime rate year after year. May God forgive me for feeling this way. Again, this hatred may go away tomorrow, but today I say these people have to go by any and all means necessary!

Ricardo A Hazell is a freelance writer based in Dallas, Texas. You can contact him at rick_hazell@yahoo.com



I understand the sentiment behind it. I think our ranks grow everyday; those of us who have concluded ' I'm done'. Who don't want to hear anymore excuses because you realize they don't make any difference because we, as a community are being terrorized, and it's by OUR OWN.