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Can a rally help stop the madness?
By adamg on Fri, 08/17/2012 - 2:30pm
People shaken by last weekend's quadruple shooting in Dorchester are organizing a rally this Sunday to try to shake up the rest of the city to do something.
"We want to let the perpetrator(s) know that we are mad, and actively seeking justice for every victim of violence," organizers of the Shake the City event say. "Violence is becoming a terrorism in our community and we can no longer let violence rob our sense of security."
Organizers say they want to demand justice for Genevieve Philip, Kirsten Lartey and Sharrice Perkins, who died, and the fourth woman, who survived with a leg wound.
Their shooting was one of two quadruple shootings in Boston last Sunday.
Since then, a man was shot near Burke High School, a man was knifed to death in Dudley Square, a man was shot in Uphams Corner and a man was shot in Mattapan.
The rally begins at 2 p.m. at the tennis courts.
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Comments
Justice
Requires participation in the judicial process. Let's start there.
Discuss.
Preaching To The Choir
If they want to get the attention of most of the city, people not usually directly affected by the violence, they really shouldn't hold it in that neighborhood. Waste of time. How many peace marches etc. have they had over there already?
A rally helps bring people together who do want to accept the
A rally helps bring together people who do want to accept the insecurity, injury and death of violence in their neighborhoods.
Its a beginning.
You know, Anonymous, someday
I'd like to move to whatever planet it is that you communicate from. Obviously it ain't Earth
How about parents be parents
How about parents be parents and neighbors be neighbors and not tolerate drug or gang activity in their midst?
Feel good rallies don't fix a damn thing.
typical head in the sand response
Do you not realize the gangbangers are walking around with firearms?
It can't hurt
The organizers deserve credit for fighting back. Unfortunately the recent surge in violence will lead to more citizens arming themselves with guns and knives to protect their families.
Wrong move.
There will be more shootings at or shortly after this rally.
NO
It won't stop or even help stop the violence. The violence is caused primarily by broken families, broken sub-culture. The sociopathic-like young men [and women] who behave so violently weren't hatched from an egg 6 months ago. They were raised by somebody [usually mom or grandma] and picked up the attitude that hate, predatory mindless violence, lack of sympathy, empathy and impulse control is OK.
Man I love this subtle tinge
Man I love this subtle tinge of misogyny and probably racism. Tell us some more about how single moms create ghettos.
Wake up
Did you actually read the above post? The poster was referencing the breakdown of families as a whole, with single moms and grandmothers left to do the jobs of mother and father. Not an easy task. The breakdown of family structures is THE root cause of the problems in these communities (and I'm an athiest, so this isn't coming from a conservative values person). It's pretty simple, if the kids in your community grow up to kill people at a ratio higher than everywhere else, you failed as parents.
Blaming women for crime is an
Blaming women for crime is an easy thing to do, much harder to look at the reason these women are left to fend for themselves. It also supports a heteronormative narrative that leaves no room for same sex parenting. Single parent households are the root of the problem? What, like you get dad back into the households and everything will fix itself? Jobs will suddenly become plentiful?
sorry to be heteronormative
but love makes the world go round, baby
social experient
Our social services [AKA welfare, SNAP, WIC, SSI, section 8, etc.] deliberately marginalizes adult males, ESPECIALLY black males. It ENCOURAGES fatherless, broken families. I believe the main architects of The System were hardcore radical far left feminist [many Marxist] who wanted and still want to favor females and marginalize boys and men. Yes, I genuinely believe this. As a social experiment, it's been a disaster. Maybe it was also designed to be a social disaster?
Have economic policies played a major role in social problems over the past half century? OF COURSE! Our industrial and manufacturing decline and collapse [deliberate post-industrial policy] has been disastrous for so-called working class / blue collar men, of all 'races', but especially black men, who were genuinely discriminated against up to around the time this decline and collapse took place. And to make matters worse, MILLIONS more mostly semi-skilled and unskilled 'immigrants' were allowed unchecked into the U.S., depressing over-all working class / blue collar wages, and creating a dismal job market for potential workers.
But, you want to know who really gets screwed over? Working class / blue collar non-veteran white men with no union, city hall, 'connections'. They are literally, legally discriminated against with 'affirmative action', job quotas [yes, they exist], government tax credits given to employers who hire a 'minority' or vet on the preferred short-list.
Conpeerasy Thorry
Where'd you cut and paste the rant from?
Rant? Someone says something you don't like
and it's a 'rant'? Give me some credit, it's my very own 'rant'.
You know you've getting close to the truth, when people on all sides complain about what you've said, and/or start to mock you.
Rant
Some of it is truth, most of it is truthy.
Oh the poor picked on men of this world - controlling so much of the wealth ... so many of the cultural resources and power structures.
Oh, and if there is a war on men, has it occurred to you that it is at the hands of other men? It would have to be, given who has the power to initiate and wage such a war ...
So go right ahead and blame women/feminists/affirmative action/mean people who pick on poor white guys for your "oppression" - the powers that be ...the MALE powers that be will continue to support you in that while they push you further down the totem pole.
Right so when global warming
Right so when global warming deniers are mocked, it's because the people doing the mocking are afraid that they're getting too close to the truth haha
Dang radical feminists, skating and grinding and kick-flipping all over my property.
Read a lot of
Ayn Rand, do you? With a little William Luther Pierce chaser?
"Man I love this subtle tinge
"Man I love this subtle tinge of misogyny and probably racism. Tell us some more about how single moms create ghettos."
Yeah it's racist to point out that certain demographics have serious social issues resultant of the breakdown of the nuclear family and neighborhood institutions. YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM by blocking any discussion on what needs to be done by and for these demographics by calling everyone racist that dares discuss the issues at hand. The enabling, condoning, and facilitating of these serious social issues within certain demographics by NOT ALLOWING DISCUSSION WHICH COULD BREAK THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE AND HEAL BROKEN FAMILIES BY CALLING EVERYONE RACIST IS BIGOTRY. You don't want the afflicted demographics to resolve their problems and have a normal life like you, you just want a pulpit to be a bully from as people suffer and die in the streets.
But I grew up in a
But I grew up in a single-parent household, I thought my life wasn't normal noooo. Or maybe the problem is more complex and has to do with socioeconomic inequalities but that would force us to have discussions where we just can't blame imaginary welfare queens or matriarchs.
I grew up in 'ghettos'
and don't need to read dry, academic texts on the problem, but Read:
The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, known as the Moynihan Report (1965) by Daniel Patrick Moynihan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Patrick_Moynihan
http://www.blackpast.org/?q=primary/moynihan-repor...
He basically said that any society that enables broken families headed primarily single moms while simultaneously marginalizing males, is going to end up with a huge problem involving out of control, predatory, misogynistic young men who lack impulse control. Such a society is going to have a huge problem with violence, violent crime, and it deserves what it gets.
He quoted statistics circa 1960 that showed NYC had the highest rate of single parent [female headed] fatherless families among African Americans in America at around 30%. Today, many urban black neighborhoods are above 70%. This problem exploded during the 70s and 80s, and not surprisingly, urban crime wave correspondingly exploded. This is not a coin incidence.
'
The Moynihan Report shifts
The Moynihan Report shifts the root of socioeconomic problems in the black community (so much that it indirectly leads to the coining of term 'blaming the victim') from institutional discrimination and exploitation to some supposed black matriarchy that has emasculated black men. The one piece always missing from these 'restore the nuclear family' spiels is that poverty, joblessness and institutional oppression do not just disappear if men presumably reclaim their patriarchal status. So it's all economics, isn't it?
By the way, bell hooks isn't dry and she does a fantastic job examining why narratives like the Moynihan Report are flawed.
The War on Men
One question, isn't it better for the women to kick the man out of the house if he is unemployed? He's eating the food and consuming the resources the kids would get otherwise.
I would add that in Massachusetts we have definitely gone down the other road, favoring women over men through anti-discrimination policies that have their roots in actual experiences of sex discrimination and harassment.
In addition we restrict the kind of economic risk-taking that men engage in and favor slower growth and the less productive jobs that women historically do in education, medical care and government.
How this works in the favor of white women is one thing, but I'm not sure anybody anticipated that the culture would not be beneficial to black women. I'm sure they said that it would be better for black women if we beat down these black men a little.
Look Elsewhere
I suspect that the huge percentage of minority men in prison is a big reason they aren't around.
We can't play this "black/white" game much, either, because most major cities don't have large concentrations of black folk and blacks are a smaller portion of the population than in past years. The problems have spread to other minority groups, unfortunately.
You do realize all males are a minority?
Including so-called 'white'. There's a small plurality of females vs males among the general population.
And does this problem of violence and prison extend to Asian males? In general, no. Why not?
A different culture
The majority of Asians in Boston are Chinese who are either immigrants or the children/grandchildren of immigrants. Chinese culture stresses duty to the family and not disparaging the family honor.
Or they're just better at not getting caught.
I went to HS for 2 years in an Asian [mostly ethnic Chinese]
neighborhood, where over 50% of the students were Asian, mostly ethnic Chinese, some Koreans and a few Vietnamese. Most were at least first generation, many second, American. I'm white.
There are ASIAN gangs, and Asian punks, like any other so-called 'race'. The biggest problem with under-achievers and criminal, violent behavior among Asians is of course among Cambodians and Vietnamese. They aren't quite the 'model minority' Chinese and Japanese get tagged with. But, Asian thugs generally target only other Asians. Most thugs target their same so-called 'race'. This isn't the case with some other thug demographics.
Vicious cycle
There's certainly a vicious cycle involved in more and more black men being sent to prison and more and more black youth being raised without fathers around. If a young fellow grows up knowing more men who've been to prison than college, that's got to affect his horizons.
I'm not going to pretend to the most knowledgeable about the situation, and I'm far from involved. So I won't say I know a solution. But I'd be interested to hear any convincing argument about how public policy could change to help break the vicious cycle.
End the "War on Drugs"
That would be the first step - stop sending people in for long prison terms for being pawns in the distribution cycle.
Raising expectations for all youth in school - and I don't mean through more standardized testing - would be useful, too. We still have far to much of "the soft bigotry of low expectations".
Providing low cost or free schooling options for adults who are ready to get with the program and get on with their lives would help, too.
What about all the
What about all the innocent boys and men that have been killed in the city. Is that not as important as girls killed in gang retaliation?