How the hood deals with murder and what America can learn from us during a mass shooting.

Last Sunday was the Mass shooting in Las Vegas.  My 7 year old granddaughter asked me why the people didn't drop to the ground instead of running.  I explained that there were to many people there for people to drop because other people could step on them while they were trying to escape.   She knew that they should have gotten as low to the ground as they could get in order to survive.  She then wanted to know why they didn't seem to know this.  I had to tell her that most of the people who were there do not live in violence prone neighborhoods.  Aleara pondered that for a little while then asked. "Why not?" she looked at me puzzled. I explained to her that middle class people do not have shootings every day or most days.  She then looked at me and asked why it was like that in the hood.
"I can't go play with my friends in the back now because they were shooting there." I knew it was only a matter of time before Aleara started asking me the same thing my kids asked me back in the early days of the new Century and actually as far back as the early 90s.

Aleara knows what to do when shots are fired because she has to remember that.  She knows that if she forgets that she may die.  We do not need drills because our reality is that we have a lot of shots fired between the first and last warm days. A period of time I call the Killing Season. Little kids learn what to do when they are 3 and 4 because they go out without their parents to the back yard. 


Aleara is right people in Vegas should have ducked down but since he was so high up in the air I doubt it would have changed things in the least.  When shots are fired and its not a massive crowd then you should hit the ground and if necessary then play dead so that if he does come by you he doesn't shoot you again.  You should also listen for sounds but do not open you eyes until you see someone that you can trust.

My granddaughter wanted to know why someone wanted to just kill all those people and why did he do that?  She stuck to the known problems that will get you killed in the hood.  Drugs and gangs I told her no one knows why he shot those people. She got a little sad because she is her mother's child and is very tender hearted. 


I also want to know why people shoot people?  I want to know why our children have to know what to do to survive a shooting but with all the knuckle heads who cant deal with life wants to take as many people out with them as possible.

Preparing for my Newest Grandchild

 My youngest daughter is about to have her second child, another girl, and while I am excited and busy trying to get what the baby needs; I am also wondering if she will live in peace or will the violence ends. It's not like I'm not used to this type of thinking, it's not much different than when my own children were little.

More people are becoming Activists than when my own kids were little. People, mostly women, who are using their anger and Social Media to stop the violence and get justice for those murdered.

We are Stop The Violence and we actively support the families of people murdered across racial and income levels. We also work to get young people to report what they see and also trying to remove the no snitching rule. This rule and fear has to end. No one is being tortured now and this rule is hurting us not helping us.

It's time we start living in a non violent world and start loving each other.

Do it for my Granddaughter

On the First Day of Spring my granddaughter Aleara turned 7. She had a small celebration at school and at the After School Center in the Housing Projects she lives in. These were simple like most 1st graders enjoy. A few days prior to her birthday my teacher asked me to write about the day Aleara was born because she was unaware of what other event took place that day. On March 20, 2010 my 21 year old nephew was gunned down on the streets of North Braddock in what the police believe was mistaken identity. Aleara's mom found out about her cousin's death in the hospital where she was awaiting the birth of her daughter. My granddaughter has had to share her birth with an anniversary of a young man's death because to many young men die at hands of other young men for stupid reasons like "He disrespected me". It's never going to stop unless we change things. We got to stop this senseless killings ourselves. My granddaughter Aleara and every other little kid deserves to wake up like her middle class peers not worrying about losing someone else that she loves. Until we stop this violence destroying our Community we risk genocide. "One Hood One Love." Until we start remembering this we are in trouble.