The World We Live In

My brother's wife is due next week.  They will have their second girl.  And I had a thought this morning that sickened me.

"How lucky are they that they don't have boys?"

That thought sickened me for two reasons.  One, I should be happy that they have 1.99 healthy children, that they will grow up in a happy home, far from most of the struggles that we had to deal with in our youth.  They will grow up without the crushing feeling of wanting -- of needing -- and not having.  They will grow up without having to "make do."  I should be thrilled at that.

Two, it doesn't matter.  My brother's children are still Black, even though their mother is as fair-skinned and red-haired as can be.

It's a sad reality that it is open season on us, and increasingly has been since January 2009 (wonder what happened in January 2009 that suddenly made Black people a target?).  Since January 1st, 2009, according to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, 290 (and counting, because today ain't over yet)unarmed or legally armed African-American men and women have been either killed by, or in custody of law enforcement.  The majority of these cases have seen the officers escape indictment and keep their jobs, and those that have been prosecuted escaped punishment and are quietly swept under the rug.  And while the overwhelming majority of the victims are male, there are a not-insignificant number of females in there as well.

Last night, we were shown in brutal detail the police execution of two African-American men, legally armed, without just cause.  One man was tackled and restrained by four men, shot in the chest at point blank range, and then had his gun removed from his pocket.  The other was in a car with his girlfriend and daughter and shot to death in front of them.  These are images that won't -- that shouldn't -- leave our collective consciousness anytime soon.

I'm firmly aware that not all cops are out to get us.  The ones that aren't should stop protecting the ones that are, and until they do, they are part of the problem.  And to those who fall back on "All Lives Matter..."

Well, apparently not those 290.

"The Fact That We Have To Say It.."

The grand jury in New York decided today to not indict the cop who choked Eric Garner to death on a Staten Island sidewalk.  This comes a week after a grand jury decided to not indict the police officer in Ferguson, MO for shooting an unarmed Michael Brown.  This has led to the not-unexpected and not-unfounded outrage in minority communities about their treatment at the hands of police, how people of color are viewed as "problems before people."  Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York has come out and said publicly that "Black Lives Matter."

Here's a little background for those of you that don't know me: my two oldest brothers are now-retired NYPD.  My ex-roommate from about 10 years ago is my oldest brother's former patrol partner and a former member of a community affairs division.  I have no illusions as to how difficult it is to be a police officer, especially in a large city.  But there has to be some kind of way to deal with us that doesn't involve a dead body, especially if there's no threat of physical harm.  I'm willing to concede that the officer in Ferguson testified to there being some kind of immediate threat to his person; not saying I believe it per se, but it's what he said under oath.  Eric Garner posed a threat to no one.  At no point during the video of his chokehold nor the moments leading up to it was he in an aggressive posture, nor was he at all at an advantage.  He was on the ground in seconds gasping that he couldn't breathe.  Did the cop know that Mr. Garner was an asthmatic? Likely not, but should it have mattered?  Why did it escalate so quickly to "choke out?"

Mayor de Blasio had good intentions when he stated that Black lives matter.  His wife is a Black woman with whom he has two children.  But the President's response to that about an hour later is much more on point: The fact that we have to say that says we haven't come as far as we think we have.  So now what we have is a climate in which being "threatening" is enough for a Black man to die, without any concrete definition of what "threatening" is.  The way one dresses?  Walks?  Talks?  The kind of music one listens to?
Size and physique?  The way that the establishment interacts with us has to change, it has to.  We're Americans, and we're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty as opposed to threatening until dead.  The way we interact with the police has to change, because they aren't supposed to be our enemies.  Equal protection under the law, that's what we're promised.

I shouldn't be scared to be Black.  Someone shouldn't have to say my life matters in order to legitimize it in the eyes of law enforcement.  And we should have overcome this 50 years ago.

I Know I Said I Wouldn't Talk About It...

I made a promise to myself that when the book came out, when I would start to promote, I would tone down the political stuff that came out of my head and ended up in my blog.  I would tone down my comments on racism,  I would stop spreading my unsolicited liberal opinion.  I made the conscious decision to make no comment on perceived injustice in this country, in the news, in any viewpoint.  I'm a fiction writer, not a political journalist.  I stopped watching the news, interested myself only in the sports pages.

Unsuprisingly, I've had very little to write in this blog for quite some time.

Then came the Jordan Davis trial.

I heard that Michael Dunn was convicted of everything but murder 1, to the outrage of most.  I didn't understand why, so I read up on the trial.  Horror crept into my mind.  We've got another Stand Your Ground case.

Short version:  White dude drunkenly tells SUV full of black kids to turn their rap music down.  Black kids politely (maybe not so politely) tell him where to go.  Drunk white dude goes thinks someone is pointing a shotgun at him, goes back to his own car, grabs a gun and caps off 10 times into the SUV.  Nine shots hit, one kid dies.

It makes me want to puke writing it.

I'm not even going to talk about the verdict.  That is it's own animal.  I'm going to rant for a second on the horrific racial injustice inherent in the murder and the racist nature of the SYG law in and of itself.  It speaks to an era we convinced ourselves ended when Martin Luther King Jr. marched on Washington.  It speaks of a mindset people declared over with the election of President Obama.  The idea that you can blast someone when you feel threatened is not universal.  Those kids in the car were threatened.  If they produced a weapon and shot Mr. Dunn, would there be any doubt as to the treatment they would receive in the legal system and in the media? There would be referendum on the violence inherent in rap music, a call to arms to stop this scourge to our youth, and oh yeah, those kids would ALL be put away for life.  Trayvon Martin was shot dead in his own neighborhood because a white guy, who we now know is batsh** crazy, saw his hoodie and decided he was a threat, and for half a minute people blamed the hoodie.

I think we can agree that a law is unjust if it is not or cannot be applied evenly, which was the driving force behind eliminating the "Separate, but Equal" thinking behind the Jim Crow laws.  The Stand Your Ground laws are of the same ilk.  It punishes people for being Black, assigns a threat level to being Black, makes it okay for citizens fearing a phantom menace to police you for being Black, and to what end?  So that we'll tip our caps to every white person walking by and greet them with a "Good mornin' suh" to put them at ease?  So that we'll keep to "our own" neighborhoods with people who look like us and therefore stay where we're supposed to be?

If you've never met me or spoken to me, I'm a threatening looking Black guy -- 6'4", 260 pounds give or take.  I like wearing hoodies.  I like rap music.  Have I signed my own death warrant? Like the quote says, "There ain't much I can do about being big and Black at the same time."

"Urban Legend" Research Blog, Part 2:

In my last post about my progress for my "Urban Legend" project, I delved into what it took to look like a hero, the protective gear a real-world hero would need to tame the streets of a mid-major American city.  Now we leave defense and go straight to the offense.  How do we beat the snot out of evildoers?  The way my masked hero deals out violent retribution says a lot about his personality, his state of mind.

I spoke at length with Renshi Desmond L. Diaz about the subject for two reasons -- one, he's my go-to martial arts expert (5th dan Goju-Ryu), and two, he's my nephew.  To fight crime on the streets of my unnamed city, he suggested Krav Maga.

Krav Maga is unique in that it's designed to be taught and learned quickly.  It's blunt strikes and counter-heavy nature was intended to make ordinary citizens into effective fighters for the conscripted war effort.  The Israelis train their soldiers in Krav Maga, and when you consider that 2 years military service is required of every citizen, you don't want to meet too many Israelis in dark alleys.



In the recent "Batman" movies, Krav Maga is the style Bruce Wayne uses to dole out brutal justice on the streets of Gotham.  These days, Krav Maga is more widely used, taught to military and law enforcement alike, which is perfect for my "could-be-anybody" vigilante.

I also asked my nephew what weapons my hero would need to carry and he broke it down in three words: blades, staves, and guns.  Personally, I don't want to have my hero carrying guns as it doesn't fit the personality I want for this guy, but as for blades, I like the karambit.

The karambit is a Filipino weapon that was originally used for raking roots and threshing plants.  In proper hands it is possibly the deadliest knife available.  The curved blade was inspired by the claws of big cats (tigers, panthers, lions and such).  It's lightweight, easy to conceal, and as shown by the video possesses a certain degree of up close and personal bad-assery.  Batman would be proud.

As staves go, I like escrima sticks.  A friend of mine trains with them and his giddy approval is contagious.  Again, they go with the easy to conceal, easy to carry, and in the proper hands, can be a gleeful tool of attitude adjustment.

So the personality I'm seeking to craft for my hero is one of an up-close killer of killers, one who deals with these people in a manner suggests that they have done something to him personally.  And who knows, maybe they have...

The Debate Worth Having

Earlier this week, George Zimmerman was acquitted for murdering Trayvon Martin in Florida.  In the time between then and now I've run the gamut of emotional responses, starting with anger and outrage, and coming to a point of depression and disappointment.  I realized that I could not be a reporter in this case, as the very personal nature of it would color my writing.  So a week's gone by and now I'm in a clearer head space.  While it may not be as newsworthy as it was a week ago, it's time to weigh in on this subject.

The question, however, is which take is the right way to go?

I could rant on (and on and on) about the fact every argument in the American judicial system is based on precedent, and the fact that Mr. Zimmerman decided to profile an unarmed Black kid, initiate a confrontation, pick a fight, lose the fight and shoot the kid makes that sequence of events okay legally.  When this happens again (and make no mistake, as Americans we are nothing if not repetitive of our mistakes), defense can now point to this as legal precedent.  There has been somewhat paranoid talk of it being open season on young Black males, but with this legal precedent the argument seems a bit less irrational.  This is concerning to me because, well, I'm told I'm huge and there seems to be an overabundance of dark alleyways in this country.

But that's not the tack I'm taking.

I can comment on how unevenly the "Stand Your Ground" law has been applied in Florida as a Black woman fending off her abusive husband and didn't hurt or kill anyone in the act has been sentenced to 20 years in prison while Mr. Zimmerman goes free.  The best case scenario in any personal defense legislation is that the conflict is defused with minimal injury and no loss of life, and yet Marissa Thompson is going to spend the next 20 years in prison.  George Zimmerman will not see another day behind bars.

But I'm not going there either.

In the week since the Trayvon Martin verdict, protests and rallies have sparked bot pro and anti George Zimmerman.  The thing I'm going to say is that George Zimmerman is not a cause.  Neither is Trayvon Martin.  They are people.  One a terribly misguided individual who felt empowered by a stupid law, another a terribly unfortunate young man who died for what amounted to a questionable wardrobe choice in a strange neighborhood.  They are not causes.  They are not to be supported or decried.  They are the obvious representation of a very broken system in which we categorize and classify based solely on preconceived notions on what a criminal looks like.  The real debate worth having is about the concept of a fair and impartial jury, especially when jury for a big case has been inundated with media information by the time they are called that they have opinions already formed.  The debate worth having is  in how we grant the 15 minutes of fame on someone who has to remain anonymous for talking about why she made a decision on the value of one man's life over another.

But like you, I'm tired.  This whole thing has been exhausting.  And all I want to do is turn the page, change the channel and get some rest.

The Band-Aid

There has been new legislation put to the House floor regarding violence in video games.

*sigh*

Weeks ago, after the Sandy Hook tragedy, there was a call to at least have a conversation about some of the things involved that led to Adam Lanza taking a gun to an elementary school.  The NRA said they would add something meaningful to the debate.

They didn't.

Instead of blaming the proliferation of assault weapons in this country, the NRA heaped blame on our violent tastes in entertainment, video games and movies to be specific.  In the same breath, he suggested arming our teachers, but let's stick with one thing at a time.

Fact: Violence is pervasive in our entertainment culture.  We see too many movies -- and, yes, video games -- that make gunplay cool.  The neighborhood movie theater in Flatbush, where I grew up, closed in 1999, a week after the premiere of The Matrix prompted some knuckleheads to shoot up the movie theater.  No one to my knowledge was hurt, but it wasn't exactly common knowledge either.  There could be reasons behind that, but I'll save that for another rant.  The makers of Call Of Duty pump out a new version of the game every year, and that is met with fanfare, and long lines of people camping out to be first to buy.  There are very few statements I agree with from the NRA regarding the debate; the nod to our culture of violence is it.

The issue at hand, though, is whether restricting violence in video games is the answer.  As of 1994, in the wake of the Mortal Kombat hullabaloo, game developers were submitting games to the ESRB, a self-regulating board who would determine the level of maturity or objectiveness in the content of the game, and assign a corresponding rating.  Games with violent or other adult content are emblazoned with a giant "M" for mature.  It is then the responsibility of the consumer to either buy the game or not buy the game.  If the consumer is a parent, then they make the decision to buy or not buy the game based on the appropriate rating for their child.  The new legislation mentioned at the top of the blog makes submission to the ESRB mandatory, and game ratings enforced by monetary penalty:  sell a game to someone of inappropriate age, get a $5,000 fine.  I agree with this as well.

What I don't agree with is the notion that real-world violence stems from video game violence.  Since the majority of gamers are under 18, and most likely have games bought for them as gifts by their loving parents, shouldn't it be the responsibility of the parent to (a) screen the game for content inappropriate (by reading the label) and/or (b) educate their children to the difference between fantasy (on screen) and reality (off screen). If we fear our children are being brainwashed into being killers by these damn video games, then undo the brainwashing by stating that the game is just that... a game.  It's not real.  It's not how people should act in a civilized society.  Failing that, the prudent thing to do is DON'T BUY THESE GAMES FOR KIDS!!!  Make them wait until they can buy it for themselves, by either getting a job and learning about the real world, or saving up for it and learning about the real world.

Restricting violence in a video game is a band-aid.  It is at best a stopgap measure to address a byproduct of the problem.  The bigger problem is that it's still easier to get a gun than it is to get a drivers license.  The issue is still that you can get an automatic weapon at Walmart.  The biggest issue in my mind stems from the changing dynamic of the American family.  But that's the subject of another rant.

Little Lights

This is going to be a long one.

This past Friday, a terrible thing happened, and 20 little lights were extinguished, along with 6 who would guide them.  A school got shot up.  As I write those words, those words that I've been avoiding writing for several  days, I still get a little choked up.  I struggle with the notion that it happened, and I can't help but think of how this horror could have been prevented.  I still am rather disgusted.  I still am angry.  This should not have happened.    And yet...

This event, this horrible happenstance, opens the door for certain conversations that we have long avoided about the realities of our own culture.  The absence  of those 20 little lights shine a beacon on what's tragically wrong with us in oh so many ways.  If there's any good at all to be taken from this, it's that certain accepted paradigms about us as a people are going to be taken to task, for better or for worse.  Our gun culture, unique in the world for it's stubborn persistence and its effectiveness in killing innocent people, will be looked at.  Our media ideals, where we have more and more eschewed news for entertainment, will be looked at.  Our views on mental illness will be looked at.

The debate going on immediately, and rightfully so, is about gun control.  The 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms for all US citizens. As an interesting sidebar, the 3rd Amendment gives us the right to not have soldiers quartered in our homes.  That part is important because at the time it was written, British troops had the unfortunate tendency to camp out in the homes of random citizens under orders from the crown, with the citizens of the country unable to do anything about it.  In order to prevent that from happening again, the founding fathers put into legislation this right for all Americans to be able to refuse quartering by force if necessary, and of course, allowing for armed revolt if necessary.  No invading soldiers in the home.  This little bit of history is constantly glossed over in gun control conversations that involve the 2nd Amendment because times have changed.  For starters, the US military is the elite of the world, largest in numbers and most effective in killing power, a development the founding fathers surely could not have envisioned.  We're not shooting soldiers, not without swift, immediate, and likely final reprisal.  Secondly, the founding fathers could never dream of the destructive killing power of the guns we have today.  Single shot smoothbore weapons were the order of the day, musket balls and the like.  Chambered weapons were still a good eighty years away, as were guns that you could wield with one hand. I believe that if those great minds who wrote the Constitution were alive today, they would make a case to clarify and adjust the amendment for today's time.  After all, who really needs a scoped, automatic, military-grade rifle to hunt?

The bespectacled gentleman to the left is Joe Scarborough, MSNBC host and former four term Republican Senator.  He was an ardent defender of the right to bear arms.  After last Friday's massacre, he changed his mind.  (Watch the video. the speech is actually quite moving.)  Our culture regarding guns employs the fantasy of one man, alone, defending his land and his family.  Our firearm based entertainment employs this belief.  What they fail to realize is the reality: that putting a gun in the hand of an average, untrained, and scared civilian is going to get him/her and others killed.  Movies purport the notion that all shots fired find their target, and when they do, death (and usually justice) is quick, clean and swift.  Reality check: it doesn't work that way.  Famously in the early 2000's, 6 trained NYPD officers fired 41 shots at a suspect and only managed to hit him 8 times.  Untrained, frightened people with guns would muster a far inferior hit rate.  The other part of our gun culture that needs to be addressed is ease of access.  In many states, firearms are easier to obtain than a Driver's License.  For  Driver's License, you have to demonstrate physical ability and proficiency in operating a vehicle, and in some cases you can only attempt to show that proficiency after logging extensive hours from approved trainers.  You also have to show proficiency in each vehicle you intend to drive-- separate licenses for trucks, boats, motorcycles, and cars.  To obtain a gun in most states, all you need is a Driver's License and no criminal record.  In some states, the criminal record thing is negotiable.  Like with cars, just being here shouldn't automatically allow you access to a projectile weapon.

There is a thought process of late that says that teachers, principals and school personnel should be armed. Really?  Is that the kind of world you want to raise your kids in, that the teacher is strapped in a school?

Shortly after the shooting, a response attributed to Morgan Freeman was circulated via social media:

You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why.

It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.

CNN's article says that if the body count "holds up", this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet. Because they don't sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you've just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.

You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news.

It, of course, came out after the fact that he didn't say it, but whoever did has a point.  We glorify the shooters, the Dylan Klebolds and Jared Loughners, the Adam Lanzas and the Trench Coat Mafias.  We may not glorify their actions, but we make celebrities of them, independent of the victims.  Their suicides are massively played up, and if they're brought to justice, their trials are far from subdued.  In the effort to make their deeds infamous, we make these people-- ultimately, these criminals -- famous.  So why wouldn't a troubled person-- whose personal troubles make right and wrong muddy in favor of being noticed-- shoot up a school?  Or a movie theatre?  Or a hospital?  Or a Congresswoman's campaign stop?  The media coverage will get them noticed.  Over the last 30 years, news has gone from informative to sensationalist.  We went from informing on the events of the day, to an invasively voyeuristic entertainment system that focuses on the trivialities of life for famous people.  This is the news.  It's not supposed to be entertaining, it's not supposed to be sold.  Its purpose is to inform the public conversation.  No bias, no context, just information.

Much is being made of Adam Lanza's mental problems as the story develops, specifically his Asperger's syndrome.  And once that tidbit of information came out, there was almost a public sigh of relief, like "Oh, whew, okay.  He's crazy, he had Asperger's, so that's why it happened."  What this shows is a tragic ignorance about mental illness, and that ignorance comes from avoiding what it means to be mentally ill.  Asperger's does not necessarily make people prone to violence.  It's a social disorder, meaning the way one interacts with other people is somewhat skewed by normal standards.  Conversely, people with Asperger's tend to show extreme interest and proficiency in specific tasks and subjects.  We usually observe high levels of intelligence in people with these types of social disorder.

So what now?  Obviously there was something wrong with the kid.  The answer to that is that we may never know what exactly was going through his head in the days leading up to last Friday.  Maybe that's the point.  Working in healthcare, I've noticed that mental illness is used as a catch-all for a lot of things that aren't so bad.  I'm not saying that Clinical Depression or Bi-Polar Disorder don't exist.  I'm saying that the large majority of people who claim it don't have it.  Mental illnesses have been for a very long time over-diagnosed, over-medicated, and under-treated.  The response to depression is to give brain altering chemicals.  Bi-Polar disorder treatment involves mood-stabilizing medication.  ADHD sufferers get Speed.  But how many of these people actually have these disorders?  There's nothing you can see in a CAT scan that shows depression, or bi-polar, or whatever.  Again, this is not to discount the people who suffer from these illnesses.  I've seen the people who do, and these meds are life-saving.

Tell me if this sounds familiar: You're watching TV when a pharmaceutical ad comes on. "Do you feel down?  Less energetic?  Like you don't want to get out of bed?" 

You think,  "yeah, sometimes."  

"Then ask your doctor about Pill X!"

For most of us it ends there, but then there are the people who do have a talk with their doctor and do get a sample of Pill X, which after using they feel amazing, creating a false set of symptoms they must continually treat.  Think about that for a moment.

These are a sample of the conversations that we will be having as a people over the next few weeks and months as we figure out what happened and and how it could have been averted.  Not all of it is useful, or pointed in the right direction, but all of them are conversations we need to discuss.

Politics: In Case The Revolution Comes

Living in Brooklyn in the early 1990's meant dealing with gun violence.

In Flatbush at night, shots were frequently fired into the air and sent many of my friends diving for cover, even in the relative safety of their own homes.  Gunshots broke through windows and splintered doors, and it seems that almost nightly there was news of someone dying in a violent shootout somewhere in the borough. suffice it to say, it wasn't exactly fun.  Fast-forward 20-some years: the Second Amendment is touted as one of our most sacred of rights, that the threat of losing the right to bear arms is tantamount to the dissolution of civilization itself.

Take away our guns, and the terrorists win.

Before branding me the liberal that I am, let me say out loud and on the record that yes, I do understand that there is a difference between the guns that were fired on the block back home are different from the guns that everyone else is talking about.  Those guns were obtained "illegally" and likely were bought to perpetrate some evil crime or something or another.  The guns that the "good" people are talking about make everyone safer; after all, good responsible folk don't go around shooting people randomly, do they?

Living in the Pacific Northwest has been an eye opener to me.  New York State's gun laws are restrictive and nearly oppressive, being highly punitive to unlicensed weaponry.  Assault weaponry is banned, particularly in New York City, and the emphasis is keeping guns out of the hands of unbalanced people, and off the streets for potential criminal activity.  This makes New York State, despite the proliferation of illegal firearms in the State, one of the safest places from the threat of firearms.  By contrast, Washington State's culture regarding firearms is a bit different.  The laws are more lax, the attitudes are more lax.  Should it be surprising, then, that according to the FBI's unified statistics on crime, there are more violent crimes by handgun per capita in Washington State than in New York?  It shouldn't be but I bet people are shocked.

Now here's the question I want people to answer for me.  I understand why we have the right to bear arms, but why do we have the need to bear arms?  The answer I hear most is for protection, which seems kind of absurd to me.  I mean, only scared people need protection, and only scared people are likely shoot other people.  Why do people need to carry guns outside of the home?

I am, obviously, a big supporter of strict gun control.  I've seen too many funerals of too many friends from too many shootouts.  I believe the Second Amendment was made in a time of war, where the last thing anyone wanted to do was be unprepared in the event of an invasion by the British.  The times have passed, and unless we're waiting for the Revolution to come, we don't need to be armed like that.

I do believe the Federal Government should impose strict gun control laws.  I believe that there should be a yearly cap on the amount of firearms and ammunition produced for anything other than military and law enforcement purposes.  I believe that the right to carry in public or conceal and carry is ludicrous and should be repealed.

Unless, of course, the Revolution gon' come.