Serious questions

Our community has been shaken by a mass shooting unlike any we have experienced. Early Sunday morning, during the July 4th weekend, 21 people were shot and two were killed, a 20-year-old woman and a 21-year-old man, at a block party on the east side of the city.  Nine guns were found at the site and over 100 shell casings were recovered. Over the week 27 people were shot at parties in six separate instances. Since May, the Detroit Police have received 500 calls reporting disturbances.

Community responses reflect deep concerns felt throughout the community.

“The senseless violence in our city has to end.” 

“It crushed us.”

“It takes a village.”

“Legislation can’t instill values of peace and respect for life.”

“They haven’t lived a life yet.”

“We cannot arrest ourselves out of this.”

“We need peaceable school initiatives in every school, conflict resolution, anger management and critical thinking embedded in our schools.”

“We can do better.”

“We want you to make it home.”

Vigils have been organized and support is being offered to the victims and their families as they and their neighbors face the effects of trauma and tragedy. 

Detroit was not alone in tragedies over the holiday weekend. More than 100 people were shot in Chicago, 19 of them fatally. In one mass shooting on the South Side of Chicago two women and an 8-year-old by were killed. Shootings in California and Kentucky left four people dead and three wounded.

Detroit is unique in the response to the shootings by our officials. At a press conference the following day, Mayor Duggan, Chief White, Prosecutor Worthy and representative of Community Based Violence Intervention groups spoke. The official story, emerging from the Mayor and Chief is disturbing.

Mayor Duggan announced a crackdown on “illegal block parties” and saying the shootings happened at “intentional, preplanned events looking to attract people from miles away planning to party into the evening.” It seems in the hands of young people, the effort to have people from a variety of neighborhoods and surrounding communities is a nefarious act. It is of course the heart of the much-vaunted indicators of the “Detroit Comeback” reflected in events such as The NFL Draft, the fireworks and the opening of the Train Station. 

The implication is that young people should stay in their own neighborhoods and never gather in large groups. Duggan and Chief White attempted to make a distinction between back yard parties and traditional block club gatherings and those organized by young folks via social media. But the underlying message here is unmistakable. Young people must be controlled, because violence is likely to emerge. The message is to fear our youth, to accentuate the divisions between city and suburbs, and to provide a justification for an increased police presence. 

As many people in the community noted, increasing the police is at best a reaction, an after the fact strategy.

Neither the Mayor nor the Chief took the opportunity to ask the serious question of why this is happening. Why do young people come to a party carrying guns? Why is there no one able to de-escalate tensions as they emerge? Why does someone pull out a gun and start shooting into a crowd? What kind of disconnection has happened that we do not see ourselves responsible for each other? To each other?

These questions require much more of us that a tactical solution of more police in our neighborhoods. The killings in our city and around the country are a call to take seriously the extraordinary isolation our young people have experienced over the last 5 years and to look honestly at how little we are providing to engage their imaginations, creativity, and capacities for compassion and responsibility.

No one went to a party thinking they would kill someone.  No one went to a party thinking they would not come home. Our collective safety rests on our ability to see ourselves in each other. Care and concern need to be nurtured; they do not arise out of thin air. This should be the call from leadership and where we put our collective resources, energy and imagination.