Mothers for Justice and Equality, the latest in a long string of community-based organizations talking a good game about ending neighborhood violence in urban minority war zones, has received its obligatory friendly press coverage.
The Massachusetts outfit has gobbled up some donated billboards, which will feature pictures of minority youngsters lost to violence. And the moms have promised earnest forums and the like to "humanize" the kids and jar us from our numb indifference to the mayhem we escaped from when we moved to the suburbs or well-guarded city condos.
In truth, we relieved, well-heeled white folks have become numb to the never-ending series of parades and prayer breakfast and rallies and other public relations initiatives that remind us how scary and inexplicable the "other" can be, with all that senseless killing.
If the organizations and parades and the like represent comforting therapy for the families of those who have lost loved ones in the futile surroundings of the urban jungle, then Godspeed to them all.
But, as a public relations and marketing tool, as a means to persuade us to "do something," or at least be jarred by the bodies strewn around, organizations such as Mothers for Justice and Equality are usually deficient.
It sounds heartless and amoral to suggest that these moms with dead kids should sharpen up the marketing plan, but this is war. And not just a drug war, but a war for the attention of a general public which, for the most part, doesn’t much care about ghetto mayhem, as long as the bad guys "stick to their own kind," as the saying goes.
First and foremost, these groups must identify the true innocents – not the residual death toll from warring gangs or competing drug dealers, but the little girl walking home from school, shot down for no apparent reason at all, beyond the fact that her family picked the wrong address to call home.
As a matter of academic research; as a matter of anecdotal chatter among cops and prosecutors and judges; the line blurs between "innocent" victims and simply the body count among competing sets of thugs.
Several studies over the years point out that "murder victims" in poor neighborhoods often have worse criminal records than the monsters that shot them. Add to this the casual racism that suggests "all you people look alike," and the larger community views urban mayhem with a detached view that doesn’t motivate toward activism or sympathy.
Don’t Know, Don’t Care
There is nothing terribly new in this. In 2005, Princeton University sociologist Bruce Western found that by their mid-30s, 60 percent of black high school dropouts had criminal records. Assuming that these charming fellows (most of them are male) didn’t relocate to fancy sections of Brookline, their presence in ghetto neighborhoods suggests a ticking time bomb of murder and mayhem. Perhaps more of the prayer rallies and parades should focus on better schools and less casual probation and parole – rather than on the after-the-fact reality of dead bodies scattered hither and yon.
Too much of the well-meaning, but unsophisticated, community organizing on the subject of urban violence offers politicians an excuse to respond with much of the same – well-meaning, but unsophisticated, "solutions" that don’t work.
Last year, Los Angeles officials suffered through the embarrassment of scooping up the wounded from a gang shooting in a park that had previously reveled in its well-lit and open-at-night status – a supposed anti-crime, community enhancement strategy.
Does Mayor Menino’s vaunted "Crime Council" still meet weekly to dream up anti-crime initiatives that don’t work? I don’t know, and, in truth, most folks don’t care.
As the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once put it, nobody knows a damn thing about crime – which is why it’s so easy for ghetto moms and academics alike to rally around a big bunch of nothing.
In 2009, Northeastern University Lipman Professor of Criminal Justice James Alan Fox, wrote a stirring urban, anti-crime essay, calling for, among other things, expanded availability of "youth enrichment and after-school programs."
Sure. That’s the answer. He should speak with the Mothers for Justice and Equality. They could emote together.
