"When did we get to this place where we are allowing young people to put us in fear, where young people are so brazen that they're going to pull out a gun in broad daylight?"
Update from the Providence Police: The 7-year-old gunshot victim from the incident that occurred on Florence Street last Thursday evening succumbed to her injuries at Hasbro Children’s Hospital earlier today. As a result," the men arrested in connection with the shooting, "Ahmari Cabrera, age 19, and Shaheem Nathaniel, age 26, will now be charged with murder. They are held to appear at the next session of 6th District Court and will also face numerous firearms violations.... We will continue to investigate the circumstances surrounding this incident and further charges may be forthcoming.”
Sobering community gathering. Such heartfelt/breaking concerns. I find it amazing that when this community gathers on a street corner such as your video indicates, four police cars drive up as if the gathering will somehow trugger violence. How ill informed is our government and how the prejudices show in such a police presence. What do they think a grieving community gathering is going to do?
To meaningfully address this horrible tragedy, it's necessary to zoom out from this specific incident and look at the larger situation.
Notwithstanding the good intentions and dedication of the staff of the Nonviolence Institute, in my view, it is misguided to view violence as being a function of "individual behavior," as the Institute's web site says that it does.
The root of the violence in this community is not individuals who pick up a gun. Although the Nonviolence Institute claims to model itself after the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., it seems to be overlooking Dr. King's systemic analysis, expressed so vividly when he preached, in 1967, that he could no longer avoid "[speaking] clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government."
Providence, and Rhode Island, in their racial and economic segregation, reflect the country as a whole: the inequitable distribution of resources and opportunity that is not accidental but rather intentional, and has been so since this settler-colony, and this country, were founded on the violence of stolen land and stolen labor.
Poverty is violence. The lack of true opportunity is violence. The lack of access to quality health care, quality education, quality housing, and good jobs: all of these are violence.
Moreover, these are not mysterious, intractable problems. They could be solved in relatively short order, but they are continually not solved because those in elected office continue to do the bidding of the tiny yet powerful minority to whom they are accountable: the super-wealthy who own and control production, banking, and real estate.
It must be added that in terms of actual physical violence, no one excels more at this--as Dr. King pointed out--than the state, with the police being the clearest expression of this.
Despite all of this, leaders continue to point us to the Nonviolence Institute as a solution--the same institute (a) that locates the source of violence as the choices of individual citizens, and (b) that includes, among its core purposes, collaboration with the police--the police!--the greatest purveyors of violence in our city and state today.
Addressing tragedies like this horrific one is possible, but it must be systemic, and it must not flinch either from indicting the true purveyors of violence--the government that protects and perpetuates the violent capitalist system of brutal exploitation of the many by the few--and it must not shy away from calling for the replacement of this inherently violent system with one that puts working people in charge of our own resources, allowing us all to thrive.
Update from the Providence Police: The 7-year-old gunshot victim from the incident that occurred on Florence Street last Thursday evening succumbed to her injuries at Hasbro Children’s Hospital earlier today. As a result," the men arrested in connection with the shooting, "Ahmari Cabrera, age 19, and Shaheem Nathaniel, age 26, will now be charged with murder. They are held to appear at the next session of 6th District Court and will also face numerous firearms violations.... We will continue to investigate the circumstances surrounding this incident and further charges may be forthcoming.”
Sobering community gathering. Such heartfelt/breaking concerns. I find it amazing that when this community gathers on a street corner such as your video indicates, four police cars drive up as if the gathering will somehow trugger violence. How ill informed is our government and how the prejudices show in such a police presence. What do they think a grieving community gathering is going to do?
To meaningfully address this horrible tragedy, it's necessary to zoom out from this specific incident and look at the larger situation.
Notwithstanding the good intentions and dedication of the staff of the Nonviolence Institute, in my view, it is misguided to view violence as being a function of "individual behavior," as the Institute's web site says that it does.
The root of the violence in this community is not individuals who pick up a gun. Although the Nonviolence Institute claims to model itself after the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., it seems to be overlooking Dr. King's systemic analysis, expressed so vividly when he preached, in 1967, that he could no longer avoid "[speaking] clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government."
Providence, and Rhode Island, in their racial and economic segregation, reflect the country as a whole: the inequitable distribution of resources and opportunity that is not accidental but rather intentional, and has been so since this settler-colony, and this country, were founded on the violence of stolen land and stolen labor.
Poverty is violence. The lack of true opportunity is violence. The lack of access to quality health care, quality education, quality housing, and good jobs: all of these are violence.
Moreover, these are not mysterious, intractable problems. They could be solved in relatively short order, but they are continually not solved because those in elected office continue to do the bidding of the tiny yet powerful minority to whom they are accountable: the super-wealthy who own and control production, banking, and real estate.
It must be added that in terms of actual physical violence, no one excels more at this--as Dr. King pointed out--than the state, with the police being the clearest expression of this.
Despite all of this, leaders continue to point us to the Nonviolence Institute as a solution--the same institute (a) that locates the source of violence as the choices of individual citizens, and (b) that includes, among its core purposes, collaboration with the police--the police!--the greatest purveyors of violence in our city and state today.
Addressing tragedies like this horrific one is possible, but it must be systemic, and it must not flinch either from indicting the true purveyors of violence--the government that protects and perpetuates the violent capitalist system of brutal exploitation of the many by the few--and it must not shy away from calling for the replacement of this inherently violent system with one that puts working people in charge of our own resources, allowing us all to thrive.
No words- I hope this young girl pulls through.