No Safe Passage: Little Rock to Chicago

Last week, the heartbreaking beating death of 16-year-old Chicago student Derrion Albert was captured on video, unleashing a fresh wave of sorrow on the South Side, another layer of fear and terror among students and families in the community, and -- painfully, the predictable calls from authorities for more harsh treatment of youth -- that is, some youth.

Indeed, the videotape shows other youngsters, ages 16, 17, 18 and 19, carrying out the tragic, terrible and fatal attack on Derrion. But what else do we need to ask? What more do we want to know?

First, the nearby school, Fenger Academy, is a newly reconstituted "Turnaround" school. Carver High School was closed by the Chicago Board of Education, and long-time teachers and staff fired, radically destabilizing already challenged communities and pushing students out and across gang territory into unfamiliar settings. Two schools, Fenger Academy and Carver Military School were created with new teachers and staff for the 2009-2010 school year. This made little sense to the community or to the youth from Altgeld Gardens housing development, who now are assigned to Fenger rather than Carver. The students were not consulted about their safety or their school preference.

Second, there were numerous requests to police and school officials from the families, teachers and community members for safe passage community protection between home and school for students (and teachers). Remember the eight extraordinary students from Central High School in Little Rock who ultimately required the presence of their own mobilized community, the world media, and U.S. troops for their safe passage into the school they finally integrated over 50 years ago? Where was Derrion's safe passage?

Third, it is an adult problem that our children attempt to attend school in a war zone in certain areas of Chicago -- a citizen problem, systemic and societal. One hundred sixty-three children were killed in the past two years in Chicago and more than double that number wounded. By the end of September of this school year, three children have already been killed and seven more shot. These are war numbers.

It is adults and adult society who have failed Roseland's children by tolerating these chronic conditions in our city. In the mid-1990s, Roseland was the notorious home of 11-year-old Robert "Yummy" Sandifer, the tiny youngster alleged to have killed and then was himself killed. Were this in Colombia, the Congo or Myanmar, we would recognize that children who are recruited into warring groups by much older adults to fight as child soldiers must be disarmed, demobilized, rehabilitated and reintegrated into the community. Human rights holds those adult leaders responsible as war criminals for the recruitment, arming, training, and deployment of children turned into instruments of violence. Here, we deem these youthful pawns as irredeemable and condemn them to adult prosecution and long-term incarceration.

Fourth, when a disastrous school murder or even just a tragic accidental death of a student occurs in white suburban neighborhoods of Chicago, the community is flooded with experts to address and reduce trauma. These health and clergy professionals work with students, teachers, parents, and administrators as part of an extended public health process. Of course Roseland has its own expertise and wisdom in survival and coping with tragedy. But where are the equivalent official resources and trauma response of caring and compassion for those in this African-American community? What do the kindergarten children make of this?
Our tax dollars, more than one trillion per year, purportedly are going to make areas free from violence across the globe. Certainly we can provide our children here with basic safety, equal education, and solidarity.

So let's ask where we went wrong, each time we assert how these youth went wrong. And let's hold the authorities to the same harsh standards they apply to our adolescents.

 

Follow Bernardine Dohrn on Twitter: www.twitter.com/innocencespeaks

Comments

[Ms Hughes]

Excellent article. The problems in Chicago are systemic. Having grown up there, violence was commonplace and what we see today is the result. You asked about the impact on kids in kindergarten. I recently wrote a blog myself about Chicago and how seeing violence made an impact on my life when I was a child. madison.com/Leander if you wish to read it.

[saevander]

Even with a tragedy as sad as this, the black community will never see the changes within law enforcement necessary to provide the protection these kids require. Unless the parents of these children have a personal connection to law enforcement or political clout, or a lot of money, the cops will always look the other way.

[ejhickey]

Fifty years ago in Little Rock , those eight students needed protection from the Klan and other white racists. Who would have thought that 50 years later black school in Chicago would need the same kind of protection from their students who look just like them.

[exfedemp]

Though you and others continue to be crticized for you activism, I still believe that "extremism in the defense of justice is no vice just as moderation in justice is no virtue." Regardless whether the quotation is from Barry Goldwater (egads) or Cicero, the ultimate lesson is that the failure to act on ones convictions is a fundamental betrayal of ourselves. It is, of course a two edged sword. Our does the sense of our "rightness" does not confer on us any immunity from prosecution, retaliation, or ostracization by those who disagree with us...nor should we expect it to. Matters of conscience don't work that way. Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People" is a powerful reminder of this (see my article for the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington DC Season 2006/2007) Prison is not fun place and being there because one is "right" really doesn't make it better.
Thomas Jefferson understood that the perpetuation of the status quo required the continued erosion of the rights of those in opposition. His call to refresh the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots is now viewed as a call to anarchy and/or terrorism rather than a committment to keep freedom vital and dynamic. When we fear freedom, we have lost it.

[RoseMerry]

Bernardine Dohrn. I have not seen your writing in print in a long, long time. When I see your name, I knew that there was something important said here.

I hope someday this ungrateful nation will remember and the other True Patriots who have fought so long and hard to make the promise of the American Dream real, like William Kunstler, Abbie Hoffman, Gore Vidal, Angela Davis. et al.

Thank you for keeping the faith and for the light you bring.

Children, if you do not know, google this name - check the Wiki. We are among the presence of Greatness.

[Hopeington]

RoseMerry, you said it so well, I can only agree. Thank you Bernardine Dohrn.

[rchsod]

the fight is never over .....now it`s trying to save public education from the corporations.

[Hopeington]

As I read this I am moved to tears. A young man's life was taken away from him in front of my 5 year old grandson's home about 2 weeks ago. And my closest friend's son was shot in a drive by a few months ago, fortunately he survived. My son has come home beaten and bloody on numerous occasions.So many of us live with the fact our son or daughter has a chance of not coming home.
I have tried to make a difference, but like many, the problem seems so big and I don't know where to begin.
They are building new prisons now based on the SAT scores of this generation. So education is the goal, but getting the children to the school's alive is a serious problem that communities across the nation need to address. Sadly, our society has changed and we now need more than just crossing guards to keep our kids safe.
I know it sounds simple, but I have affected the most change with simple love and caring.
Most of these kids think no one cares about them. It's gotta start at home, but the communities need to help also.If there was a real alternative to chose from, most would chose a better path.
The tragic de*th of Derrion Albert is a sorrowful reminder that, as a nation, we all failed to keep another child safe and it underlines the urgency in which we need to address these issues.
CA

[sherbug]

cont:

Then the corrupt legislators, in an effort to destroy the black communities looked the other way as crack cocaine flooded all urban cities. This led to a surge in gang violence, murder, robbery and homelessness and illness. So where did all these drugs come from? Blacks didn’t own any freighters or planes to bring the drugs into the country, so somebody else brought them in and then targeted the black community. And so we come full circle. The worse blacks behave the less money goes into the communities and the less money the worse it gets and so on and on.

And last, but not least the prison profiteers. These are the corporations that now run our prisons that are making money off of the lives of black kids. The more kids that are locked up the better their profits.

It is amazing how our government can look at the misguided youth of Iraq and Afghanistan and know that if those kids had a better way of life and better opportunities that the enticement of gang life would not be as great.

Would not the same logic apply to black kids living in Chicago or any urban city. Wouldn't opportunity, education a way of feeling good about yourself be a way of keeping kids out of gangs?

Before we start on any nation building in Afghanistan, we need to do some nation building in the black communities.

[sherbug]

Thank you Bernardine:

Your point had been on my mind for the last few days. I have seen some of the most hateful posts on other sites about this murder and they are all so racist and offensive it just makes me sick.

Most of them spoke of blacks having a genetic predisposition to violence. Animals that can't be trained and so on. . Your environment, not your DNA, dictate how violent you are. I'm sure there are studies somewhere that prove that point, but my theory is not as popular as the animal theory.

But the statistics don't lie. Blacks make up 13% of the population and are responsible for 60% of the crime in this country. Why? The main reasons are generational poverty, institutional racism and corrupt legislators and prison profiteering.

Poverty just like wealth is passed down from generation to generation. Poverty passed from slavery to sharecropping, to Jim Crow segregation to public housing. There were periods of prosperity for blacks as during the Reconstruction Period. During those times of prosperity, there were black college graduates and scholars and for those people the cycle of poverty was broken, but that was not the case for the majority of blacks.

Institutional racism caused the gerrymandering and the redistricting so that the black communities received the least resources and offered the least tax incentives. That left black communities with no business investment, no investment in schools, infrastructure and as a result black communities became crime ridden.

[sherbug]

cont

Then the corrupt legislators, in an effort to destroy the black communities looked the other way as crack cocaine flooded all urban cities. This led to a surge in gang violence, murder, robbery and homelessness and illness. So where did all these drugs come from? Blacks didn’t own any freighters or planes to bring the drugs into the country, so somebody else brought them in and then targeted the black community. And so we come full circle. The worse blacks behave the less money goes into the communities and the less money the worse it gets and so on and on.

And last, but not least the prison profiteers. These are the corporations that now run our prisons that are making money off of the lives of black kids. The more kids that are locked up the better their profits.

It is amazing how our government can look at the misguided youth of Iraq and Afghanistan and know that if those kids had a better way of life and better opportunities that the enticement of gang life would not be as great.

Would not the same logic apply to black kids living in Chicago or any urban city. Wouldn't opportunity, education a way of feeling good about yourself be a way of keeping kids out of gangs?

Before we start on any nation building in Afghanistan, we need to do some nation building in the black communities

[K Kasper]

To back up your column -- the largest research study done on violence and children found that 1 in 16 had experienced sexual assault in the past year. I think about my classroom and that is 1-3 early adolescents. In addition, children who have experienced violence perpetruated against them are far more likely to have experienced other types of violence: domestic, peer harrassment, gang intimidation, etc.

The neighborhoods many of our young people live in are full of wonderful families and individuals trying to get the best for the people they love. I see creativity and survival in even the darkest areas. Yet, the constant barage of trauma creates a normalcy to assaults and murder. It creates a desensitizing affect on even those who try to help.

57% of our Federal budget goes to military spending and VA support.

4% goes to education.

If we kept and even improved our support for our veterans, and reduced our presence in countries overseas maybe we could start addressing the war at home. I scarely wonder what America would be like if the 57% and 4% were reversed?

[JohnDewey]

Ms. Dohrn -

Thank you for your life's work of social activism on behalf of the most vulnerable people.

[rjmiller]

Poor black people on the South side don't contribute to local campaign funds. Therefore, their problems don't matter as long as they stay contained in their neighborhood.

It is simply shameful.

[John Maki - Huffpost Blogger]

"It is adults and adult society who have failed Roseland's children by tolerating these chronic conditions in our city." So true.