This op-ed by Bob Herbert in the New York Times left me stunned. Here is how the piece opened:
Driving through some of this city’s neighborhoods is like driving through an alternate, horrifying universe, a place where no one thinks it’s safe to be a child.
You follow a map in which the coordinates are laid out in blood. Over there, in front of that convenience store, is where Fred Couch, 16, was shot to death last December. The Couch boy went to the same school, Christian Fenger Academy, as Derrion Albert, an honor student who was beaten with wooden planks and kicked to death three months earlier in a broad daylight attack that was recorded on a cellphone by an onlooker.
The whole column is well worth a read when you have the time. Something clearly needs to be done. Herbert is right. There is no outrage let alone outcry in a nation of self-professed
I have yet to hear a single national politician make mention of it. Not even the former Senator and south Chicago community organizer from Illinois. That doesn’t let We The People off the hook. This isn’t a huge water cooler subject either. We allow such lawlessness to exist every day in ever corner of this self-professed nation of laws.
The question now is what are we going to do about it tomorrow?