Our Kids Killing Each Other

I don’t have a TV, and so I’ve been catching up on “The Wire” through Netflix. The stuff is in my head, it’s an overload of brilliant television, too much violence and a whole lot of reality. This is the place from which I open the papers today and learn what I already now – our kids are killing each other , Boston made the top 10, we are number 6 on the list. The shit is painful, and what’s even more frustrating is that there is nothing new to recommend. Papers are talking about the same old thing – “restoring police officers in the streets and creating social programs for poor youths.” Is that really what’s going to do it for us?

Look, maybe at some level these are things that will help, but the very best youth programs that I know can only serve a precious few, and by all means, let’s help these programs where we can. And cops, well, that’s a whole other story, I do watch the Wire after all, and before that, I knew about Foucault, power, and the dead end of “discipline and punish.” The “pragmatic” in me likes things like the “Shot Spotter” system, an acoustic technology that lets police rapidly intersect a shooter as soon as the weapon is fired. It works after the fact, but it gets to a perpetrator, but seriously now, is this the best we have? Feels like the opposite of a root cause.

We can talk about breakdowns in the family, racism, structural oppression, and a nation state that bails out bankers but lets its poor people die. We can talk about all of these things and we would be absolutely right, but our kids are still killing each other. There is something that is terribly counter-evolutionary about a society where kids kill one another, something feels terribly backward when locking up our kids becomes the state’s option – ask the folk at “The Gathering for Justice,” they can tell you what we are doing to our kids – I am blessed to work with them.

Truth is that I’m stumped by this one, grappling with it, feeling the pain of the whole thing, trying to open up and see what’s here, be bold in this search for something new. I’m seduced by Meg Wheatley’s proposition that “whatever the problem, community is the answer.” I’m moved by the idea that it has to be organic, and that there is little an outsider can do, be it state policy or charity. But in that little that we can do, we have to be incredibly precise, clear in our intention and unbelievably open to the fact that we don’t know.

I do know we have to stand with whoever is inside the thing, and trying to do something about it, trying to shift their own self first, not playing the name game first, the police game, the 501(c)3 game or the who is the best dressed pastor game. This has to happen somehow else. I’m going to keep messing with this one, stay with it as long as it takes, there is an answer somewhere and it has to do with heart, with authenticity and opportunity, appreciation, innovation, connection, it has to do with a willingness to truly take the time, it has to do with the fact that this thing we are looking at is not outside of our selves, this shit is real, and that’s how it hurts.