This shooting occurred yesterday afternoon, about a mile from where I live. I first learned of it this evening in an email from our Alderman Joe Moore, who was a block away at the time, heard the shots, and saw the assailant fleeing. Earlier this afternoon, I read a piece posted by NPR about how the media cover mass shootings in Chicago differently than in smaller cities and in places where white middle-class Americans are easily able to imagine themselves going about their everyday business. One of the main differences in coverage is that the victims in Chicago murders tend to remain statistics, whereas we learn details about the lives of the victims in most of these other places. They and their families become human to us through the space they are allotted in the media. Here is a profile of this young man, Wil Lewis, a young artist who moved to my neighborhood just two weeks ago. Please do read about him, a young Chicagoan senselessly gunned down, like so many other of our young men have been. I may well have met Wil had he lived. We might have become friends. Who knows? I cannot even begin to imagine the pain his wife and family are feeling now. I love my city. I love my neighborhood, precisely because it is a place where young artists can still afford to live and work. Im so sick of the gun violence in my country and sickened for all the lives cut short, for all the families who have lost loved ones. My heart breaks for this mans life. No one deserves this. No one.
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 03:01:16 +0000
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