Popcorn Songs

This World Needs to Change

In 2005, 380 people were murdered in Philadelphia. Two were sons of
clients - one mother turned back to drugs in her grief; the other turned
her life around, in hopes of keeping the rest of her children safe.
Two were clients. Bashir was trying to get his grandfather's car keys
back that the grandfather's girlfriend had traded a dealer for crack.
The dealer shot him dead in broad daylight. Sam got into a verbal
argument outside a bar on December 30. He was shot in the chest, point
blank.

Philadelphia's crime statistics have never been good, but the murder
rate is up 15% from the year before. I assumed my clients and their
familys were numb to the overwhelming nature of it all - what's 15% more
when every street in your neighborhood has lost a son or daughter? I
was wrong.

Today a client was sentenced to 5-10 years in jail for a string of
burglaries. This was a bit longer sentence than I had anticipated. I
expected the family to be mad. As we waited for the elevator, his mother
told his girlfriend to stop crying, saying, "he's alive, baby, he's
alive. He won't be out on these streets with all these killings. He's
gonna live. We should have never left New Orleans. Katrina would have
been better than this."

I'm not sure why I'm writing this. Maybe to just get the word out; to
mark the passing of people often forgotten. Sam's death didn't even
garner a blurb in the back of the paper. This has got to stop yet I have
no idea how. Stricter gun control laws have made no difference. Youth
intervention helps somewhat, when the counselors aren't teaching the
kids how to commit gun-point robberies (as recently happened in
Virginia). Prayer never hurts.

People have got to stop killing each other.

Thanks for listening.

posted by Matt Hicks  # 3:43 PM