A Life Cut Short

This is one of those days.

Those days where, as much as you love and believe in what you do, you wonder if its really worth it...

I believe in young people...

I believe in kids from disadvantaged backgrounds...

I believe in kids ability to be resilient and rise above the adversity in their lives...

I believe it because I know what its like to grow up in a place that people think nothing good comes from. I know what its like to have people doubt your ability to “get out”.

I believe because people believed in me. And now I try to give that belief to others.

But on days like today, days when I hear about a 16 year old kid getting gunned down in the street. A kid that I knew, that I watched grow before my eyes, a kid that had his problems but was just coming of age to a point where he was really working to better himself, only to have those attempts, and his life, cut short.

I wonder...Does it all matter? Does any of it really work?

I met him when he was just a shot chubby little kid charged with a ridiculous “crime”....Disturbing school assembly for a little food fight. I saw him grow up...and the trouble he got into grew as well. Yet he was always respectful to me.

One day his mom came to me...She told me that she needed to get him out of here. That she was worried about his well being in the increasingly violent neighborhood he was in. She worried about the bad influences. She wanted him to move with relatives down south to get a fresh start. So myself and the DA worked together to make it happen. We felt good, like we helped a kid get out of a bad situation.

Last I heard, he was doing well down South...

At some point, he came back. Mom had to move back. He was right back in the same hell he left. Still he went back to school here...and he tried to keep the good progress going.

One day he got into a fight at school...Now when we were kids, you fought, and you lived to fight another day. Today? These muthafuckas kill you if you get the best of them in a fight.

I’m sick of it. I am sick of seeing young lives...too often young black lives...snuffed out before they can begin. I am tired of kids not able to even complete the growing pains of being a teenager. I am tired of people who think that a bruised ego is enough to kill someone.

I knew him. I knew his family. I tried to help. I really did. In the end, a mother still had to bury her child before he could reach the age of adulthood.

And I am wondering if my passion for this work is really worth it...