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Stop The Murders and Preserve Life
By Kevin Fobbs
January 6, 2005
There is something that weighs heavy upon my heart ...and I want to share it with you and the nation. Detroit finished the year with a record that New York, Chicago or Washington D.C. would certainly not envy.
Detroit is killing itself with 43 murders per 100,000 residents, leagues ahead of New York City which had a murder rate of 7 per 100,000 or the windy city that is Chicago which had 15 killings per 100,000
Detroit had a total of 384 murders and at least half of those were due according to published reports to drug deals gone bad. This may not be as horrific as the Tsunami, which devastated Southern Asia. This may not be the type of human loss which is reported on every news station and in every radio market or chronicled in every newspaper. Instead, the Detroit residents who sit with their saddened hearts either to mourn their loss or pray that the violence will pass over their house wait in darkened silence.
Trust me there is silence. I have spent time over many years with parents, with brothers and sisters or with neighbors who loss someone who was taken too young. It can be very numbing. What can be even more numbing is the family survivor's tragic silence... or the soft silence of the hearts and minds of the 1,279 plus survivors of attempted murder, who thankfully were not killed, but may be maimed for life.
When I saw the end of the year spend its moments down, I did wonder about the mindless shootings and families of those 384 murder victims. These are the family members who are the ones left behind to pick up the shattered pieces of the remains of the family structure.
Many of us were enjoying a season of joy and a celebration focused on the birth of Christ. During the holiday season, I thought of the mother who would stand over her child's coffin, asking for one more instant with a seven or eight year old victim of a drive by shooting. I thought of the father kneeling at his teenage daughter's draped body praying to a just God, and wondering why it was not him that was sitting in her spot in the living room or at her chair at the dining room table or on her seat on the front porch when the bullet sliced the life from his daughter's body.
Now close your eyes, for just a minute. Think of your own child...his or her face. Do you see their eagerness...their warm spirit filling your heart? I know that you care deeply for this precious gift or gifts God has blessed you with. You are fully entitled to that joy you and your family share.
Now take that feeling to Detroit. Put yourself in the shoes of the grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, or even a brother or a sister or a neighbor. Remember your eyes are still closed... now look now into the heart...the soul of those parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and neighbors...as they wake up the next morning...up to silence and grief. What would you feel to have your loved one...a random news item on a page...a statistic reported on radio or television?
I'm sure your heart jumped for a brief moment. Your spirit felt anguish, because you didn't want to see your/their young small daughter's life erased...your/their small child's potential snatched by drugs or a bullet...your/their precious gift removed from your/their heart...your/their spirit extinguished. Your exercise is biblical. Christ said what you do to the least of my people you do onto me. I have felt their pain many times but I also know, my friends, this does not have to be.
There is but a thin line that keeps your daughter or son or niece or nephew safe. It is called, "Love, The True Anti Drug". Last month I had President Bush's National Drug Czar John P. Walters on my daily news talk program on WDTK 1400AM The Kevin Fobbs Show. Director Walters, a former Detroiter kicked off his national "Love, The True Anti Drug" campaign in Detroit. If parents and caring neighbors, teachers, and faith leaders pledged to get involved, murders in Detroit can be cut in half by fully engaging Director Walter's new national campaign.
Are we our neighbor's keeper? Or are we merely a casual observer who turns the page until we find something we like...that comforts us...that makes us feel secure? We have to somehow feel personally touched by their loss.
For me the deaths are personal...they have names.. they have faces..they had lives. They had futures. True enough we can blame, point fingers or simply ignore the personal losses. But we have to begin to try to care.
I have to be honest with you, perhaps 25 years ago perhaps I would have simply turned the page on this story of shocking murder rates...perhaps 25 years ago I would have wanted simply to seek a more comforting story, perhaps a more comforting page or news segment...
But something changed in the Motor City or perhaps it was already growing.
You know what happens inside of your gut when you see a larger child shoving a smaller child? Perhaps it happened to you or your child.
Did you just look around and watch? Did you have it happen to you and you simply wanted someone to care enough to have enough compassion...to help, to intervene?
Did you react, did you see two victims? Did you see a child being threatened as well as the young bully who needed someone who cared about him in his life, and to be surrounded by parents who knew the difference between right and wrong? Did you also see neighbors who shared in his life's goals, because of traditional values...that stir a heart to action? What you saw was love being the True Anti Drug as well as the anti murder solution.
This is evident in your life and it has worked for you. It is why your children are not victims of murder or violence or drugs and others...victims and the perpetrators who murder did not? Love of a family and embracing family values is the winning formula for a wonderful life...safe and secure from violence, and from indiscriminate murder.
Director Walters has it right. President Bush has it absolutely correct! It has to be "Love The Anti-Drug" It sounds simplistic but it works hand in hand with the faith that a family, that a parent, that a neighbor is willing to try.
Do you remember when Detroit was called the "Murder Capital"...not exactly the type of tagline that encourages tourists to visit ..now is it?
But you know my friends...something deeper. .much more deadly was also developing 20 or so years ago...the idea that this could not change. You remember the headlines...child, after child, after child was being murdered on the streets of Detroit for gym shoes or for clothes. Perhaps the victim was murdered for simply looking the wrong way at a person with a gun outside the junior high or high school. Or the student victim could just as easily have been inside the school at his locker...outside the safety zone of the student's family.
This was a time when drive by murders occurred with frightening regularity sometimes right inside the home, the hearth or in the homes' living room or kitchen or dining room...an errant stray bullet killing an innocent through a hole in a bedroom wall. It all became a "Killing Zone".
My friends...didn't something wonderful happen then...didn't we say enough is enough...much like the riots gave birth to "New Detroit", an organization created to focus in large part on social and racial healing, Detroit got fed up and got focused and ready to rock against the innocent killings...the murders of children Save Our Sons and Daughters was born...
Detroit, you remember that. Detroiters and Metro-Detroiters came together, and supported Clementine Barfield as well as other parents who had their own personal agony and anguish. She had seen her son torn from her family...murdered, while I and a lot of many good caring compassionate folk decided enough was truly enough. We used a version of Love not only being the true anti drug but also the anti-murder drug as well.
Murdered children, shattered families became personal to everyone. Even President Ronald Reagan weighed in and honored Clementine Barfield...the organization's primary founder with an award for the organization which symbolized a community...a family made up of all of us...who cared enough to stand against the violence, to conquer fear with compassion and love and firmness to resolve the crisis.
So Detroit, we may not be able to stop all of the murders...but we can certainly make the earnest attempt to use Love as not only the true anti drug or the anti-murder solution, but also the true preservation of life medicine. Taken in daily doses...We all will win.
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Kevin Fobbs is President of National Urban Policy Action Council (NuPac), a non-partisan civic and citizen-action organization that focuses on taking the politics out of policy to secure urban America's future one neighborhood, one city, and one person at a time. View NuPac on the web at www.nupac.info. Kevin Fobbs is also Second Vice Chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and daily host of The Kevin Fobbs Show on News Talk WDTK - 1400 AM in Detroit as well as co-founder of the Jackson, MI-based American Conservative Values Television Network. Listen to The Kevin Fobbs Show at www.wdtkam.com.
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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.
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