Newark Shooting 2

It's funny when and what blog entries the "press" will pick up on. Anyway.
I noticed that there were people marching around the front of City Hall putting pressure on mayor Cory Booker to "do something". If I may, I'd like to disagree that the fault or even the bulk of the responsibility lies on the shoulders of Mayor Booker. First and foremost Mayor Booker just got into office. We can bicker about how and why he got into office, but the fact is that a segment of black people in Newark have been killing each other and innocent bystanders long before Cory Booker took office. The fact of the matter is that if one wanted to blame an individual in office for Newark crime that person would logically be Sharpe James.

Now I'm not saying that Sharpe James is responsible either, I'm just pointing out the futility of blaming the office holder for crime in Newark. Recently Mayor Booker brought up the situation in which the lack of jobs and ability for ex-con's to get jobs as a serious impediment to reducing crime in Newark. He has a point on this. It is the state of NJ that prevents ex-cons from holding jobs that they, due to their educational background, would most qualify for (Airport jobs for example). Given the high incarceration rates of black men in big cities due to the drug trade that many choose or are forced into in order to make money, the closing of employment doors is not a good way to reduce crime. But this is not my main problem.

The biggest problem for Newark and indeed many urban areas is this silly "snitchin" thing. As was exposed on 60 minutes for the world too see. A great many black youth (and adults I assume) think that not reporting a crime is a good thing. In fact it is seen as a "black" thing to do. I understand full well that this is an outgrowth of the civil rights and black power eras where black informants in the community were undermining real progress in black communities. Unfortunately this solidarity move has been co-opted my criminals, sucked into so called "Hip Hop" music and fed to our youth and is now a means to oppress the people in the very communities that many of these criminals live and work. The sad thing is that many of these youth have no clue that if one is not involved in committing a crime one cannot be a snitch or a rat. Fact is, that only a person involved in a crime can be a snitch. Everyone else is either a victim or a potential victim. Until that particular point is understood, no amount of protesting in front of Newark city hall or marches down streets will change things. once the community, the entire community, not just the activists, decide that they will have a zero tolerance for criminal, then it will continue.

On the governmental level there needs to be a serious change in how drug offenses are dealt with. There are far too many people who are involved in the drug trade because that is seen as a means of substantial income. No one here is asking that we condone the drug trade but we have to understand that people have the right to live and will do whatever they deem necessary to do that. If the perceived choice is between being homeless on the street and selling rock. Rock will be sold. if a person is already on the street due to addiction or what have you and there is no real place they can go to get clean, rock will be bought and people will get robbed. This is not rocket science. decent employment opportunities need to be made available to these young men. This is my beef with illegal immigration. It is simply not right to have people working on construction sites who are not even legal aliens, while there is rampant unemployment in Newark.

So yes, there is room for improvement on all sides, but we should not allow the existence of racist institutions to be an excuse for the silent accommodation of criminal activity.