All Student Deaths are Equal

Ever heard of Harper High School?  Ever heard of the 27 children killed there last year?  You didn't because they are not important like the rich white kids at Columbine High School.  Just poor black kids shot in the neighborhoods around the school. Gang shootings.  If you want to survive, you have to be in a gang.  Your gang protects you, other gangs kill you.

We just sent Pakistan $240 million to help them secure their country.  Is that right?  How much goes to Chicago to secure the neighborhoods around Harper High School.

When I lived in Peru, I always felt safe in downtown Lima because a soldier stood guard on all the key intersections with a machine gun, probably an assault weapon, I'm not a gun man.

 I once went to a beautiful waterfall in the Amazon forest.  A soldier with a machine gun waved me into my parking spot.  More soldiers lined the top of the mountain ridge as I walked down a path for a few miles on the way to a glorious waterfall.  I was told not to go beyond the waterfall because the Shining Path still controll that part of the jungle.  (Cocaine funds the Shining Path, so again, thank you America for the market.)  People always react when I tell them of such stories with shock on their face and with comments, I would never want to be in such a place.

Guess what?  I would gladly go back to Peru instead of hanging around in the neighborhoods around Harper High School, or in most big cities after dark.  A white man, after dark in a gang controlled neighborhood of Chicago.  Get real, a white man stupid enough to be there after dark is going to die.  I suspect policemen are not going to be caught out alone at night in those neigborhoods.  Peru would care enough to secure the neighborhoods, but in America we send our troops to a 150 countries around the world to secure the world, forget poor black neighborhoods.  Forget our pathetic Congress taking on such issues.  No election is ever going to be won by addressing security in poor black neighborhoods.  

There are two Americas.  The one for rich Americans, like Lehman Brothes CEO who walked out with about $500 million in cash as his bank collasped and his country got plunged into the second depression/ big recession.  And a second America that exists in the slums where unemployment runs 25 to 50% and children try to stay alive long enough to get out of the neighborhood.  Our government meanwhile sends serious  money to Pakistan and Eygpt to buy friends and sends in troops all over the world to secure our financial interests (oil, etc.).  

And as Americans, we don't give a shit.  Screw Harper High School kids.  We can't even pass background checks even though 90% of Americans favored the act.  Congress works more for the NRA than us, accept it. Will Congress do anything to stop gangs from controlling streets in America?  We don't even officially track the deaths (again thanks to legislation backed by the NRA).  

In the America I grew up in at the age of eight I road a bus down town (without a cell phone) in El Paso, walked a half mile from the bus stop to the YMCA.  I lost my nickel sometimes for the ten-mile ride home, but the bus driver took me home anyway because I told him my mom would give me an extra nickel to pay him the next time I went downtown.  Where did that America go?