Silent Screams - Do You Care?

A Letter from Rev. Michael L. Pfleger 

June 19, 2009

WHEN DO WE SAY ENOUGH?

Two more children die in the streets of Chicago and again we shake our heads, wipe our tears and go on.  When will it stop?  When will the lives of our children and the scars their deaths leave in our communities become a concern as important as Wall Street greed or Michael Vick’s dogs?  The stopping of the violence needs a comprehensive response not a band aid solution. 

It needs:

1. Federal Government resources, attention and laws to stop easy access to guns
2. Education systems throughout the country to address violence, consequences and teach conflict resolution in its curriculum from preschool to 12 grade
3. Parents to step up and know where their children are and who they are with and what’s in their house
4. Positive alternatives for young people to be involved in and summer jobs to offer our youth and year around jobs to offer young adults
5. Churches, Synagogues and Mosques to open their doors and provide programs for our youth and take responsibility for the neighborhoods where these buildings sit tax free
6. Schools that offer every child quality education, no matter the zip code
7. Legislators in Springfield and Washington who will stand up to the N.R.A. and who see, value and respond to the loss of black and brown life as much as the loss of white life
8. A society that divorces its love affair with guns and make a conscious decision that perhaps before we save whales and exotic birds, we might want to save our children
9. A demand that we rebuild the safety net of disconnected neighborhoods and blocks and become brothers and sisters again that look after each other and set standards for our blocks and neighborhoods that every child is our child and you will not shoot or kill our children and hide in our homes
   

These are only a few suggestions, but it is time to do more than shake our heads and put up balloons and teddy bears.  It’s time to demand the White House call a National Summit on Violence, but it’s also time for reach and every one of us to take ownership and responsibility for our houses, blocks and neighborhoods.  We can stop this violence, we can save our children.  So let’s do it now!