Wednesday, April 18, 2007

War Zones

Looking across the conference room today, I noticed a young colleague wearing a "Virginia Tech" sweatshirt. Since the company I work for employs a great many engineering types, I figured this was her alma mater. I asked her, "Did you know anyone who died?" She shook her head sadly, and said, "No, but my best friend did." It breaks my heart to know about the sadness enveloping that particular college campus this week.

At the same time, equally sad is the senseless violence going on in Iraq. Today, more than 180 innocent people, out and about doing their shopping, were killed. I truly am not minimizing the Virginia Tech incident. But imagine if this was happening EVERY day? This is what is going on in Iraq and it needs to stop.
Posted by at
Labels: , ,

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

jetison said:

I might also add (while not intending to minimize the Virginia Tech tragedy), that our own inner city neighborhoods are a collectively neglected war zone. The death tolls are much higher, yet we don't see continuing hours of news coverage or the President, other politicians, or Billy Graham's son, looking for photo ops there.

Our marginalized citizens are murdered and ignored. This situation would not be tolerated in more privileged neighborhoods. We don't see the same shock and concern to death outside the white community, and we don't learn anything from our mounting tragedies either as the following recent story from just one community so sadly demonstrates.


Grieving mother pleads with city: Help us
By Margery Eagan
Boston Herald Columnist
Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - Updated: 04:14 PM EST

“The bad guys don’t control this city,” Mayor Menino said Sunday.

Natasha Steele, whose firstborn, Cedirick Steele, 18, was shot to death two weeks ago, disagrees.

“I don’t know why he would say that. He doesn’t even live here,” Natasha Steele said in her Roxbury home. Cedirick’s father, in fact, had just taken him [Cedrick] to see a North Carolina college. Cedirick had planned to take summer courses and apply there. His father brought him home Sunday night. He was murdered Wednesday.

“We’re sending troops to a war over in Iraq? We need to send troops to a war over here, a bigger war.We need more cops. We need a curfew.

We are tired of burying our children. And the problems are not in Newton, not in Wellesley, not in Framingham. The problems are here in the inner city, and no one seems to care.”

Natasha Steele wears on her lapel a memorial pin to Cedirick. You see these pins with different dead teen-agers’ faces everywhere now in Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan.

Steele, 36, says she knows maybe 100 people who’ve lost sons or brothers or nephews to Boston’s streets. Going to funerals is like some unhappy reunion where you run into people from “back in the day,” all come together to mourn a murder.

She has lived in Boston all her life... She says she’s heard from not a single city leader, save Councilor Chuck Turner, who sent a card.

http://news.bostonherald.com/columnists/view.bg?articleid=192510&format=&page=1

9:38 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)