A few weeks ago, I discussed my sentiments about our general dissociation with the trials and tribulations of the community around us. I expressed a reality that gradually we have become almost numb to seemingly common occurrences like school shootings or the senseless killing of Faheem Thomas-Childs, who died in the cross fire of a gunfight outside T.M. Peirce Elementary School.
I painted an image of myself staring blankly at the television and then mindlessly switching the channel from the news story of Faheem to a random sitcom to relay my personal connection to this detachment and desensitization. However, at this time, the reality of a desensitized community seems to be changing. I almost want to say this is a retraction because of the turn the city has made.
This Sunday, the city was to hold the Palm Sunday March to Save Our Children downtown. Though the march was postponed until next week in hopes of better weather, the event is projected to turn out more than 1,000 people. Faheem's mother, Patricia Arnold, and other grieving families whose children have been killed will lead the march. This event is a collaboration of several interests throughout Philadelphia, including many community activists, Governor Rendell and Paul Vallas, the chief executive officer of the city schools.
Since I wrote the column almost two months ago, I have been following efforts within the city that address what happened to Faheem; what happens all too often with other area shootings. I almost wanted to prove myself wrong and somehow find that I was speaking for the minority, and that on a larger scale, the wheels are still turning to find a way to protect a sense of community.
The idea that this desensitization that I felt on some level might represent a larger dissociation and a general loss of community was almost frightening. I still hear from my parents and advisers how neighborhoods in the past were like large families. I can't imagine this type of relationship.
Older comedians always joke about how if they did something bad, they would be punished by the neighbor down the street and the nosy neighbor next door before their parents even heard about it. Compared to this idea of the village raising the child, I feel like I grew up in a time where the village would get sued if it even tried to raise my parents' children.
Neighborhoods still exist in a sense, but there seems to be a distance between the individuals. More doors are closed, and there is less motivation to leave your house because of someone else's problem. However, the march that is to take place next week, along with efforts around its planning and publicity, have lit an optimistic flame.
Over 22 schoolchildren have been killed since September. Most of the killings were not highly publicized, merely blending into the background. My boyfriend asked me why the city is making such a big deal out of Faheem's one incident. Through watching the city's anger erupt and participating with community leaders in their discussions over fear, anxiety and vulnerability to these horrible incidents, I realize that an issue is being made for that very reason: because killings seem to be commonplace. Just one example: Raymond Dawson, an 18-year-old selling Valentine's Day balloons and flowers, was shot only two days after Faheem Thomas-Childs.
The most optimistic part of the organizing process is that the march is not only an achievement in and of itself -- in bringing out numbers onto streets and porches -- but it is the beginning of what promises to be a long and grueling, but rewarding, process, that of ending street violence in Philadelphia.
This war on street violence to protect our children and ourselves receives much of its optimism from the success of antiviolence programs in Boston in the 1990s. With this in mind, I almost envision a dramatic 1980s movie with activists in a church basement painting posters and banners that read "We Can Do It," and I get all tingly inside.
It might seem clich‚d to speak about a war on violence, perhaps enough to make people change the channel, but the optimism and motivation of a few have promised to affect the desensitization and dissociation of thousands, and the concrete representation of this fact is the March to Save Our Children. Two months ago, I looked at the school district, the negative statistics and the killings and felt as though I and the community around me had given up on protecting its children. But imagining thousands of people gathering together can't help but ignite my optimism and prove that Philadelphia might truly be ready to go to war. Why not hope?
Darcy Richie is a senior urban studies major from Birmingham, Mich. Strange Fruit appears on Wednesdays.
