Unlike Trayvon Martin, Where is The Outrage for Amin Sumter?

He died, alone, on the corner of Harmon Street and Crescent Avenue in Jersey City just before midnight Thursday, July 18th. His family, friends and neighbors mourn his murder and demand justice, just as those in the over 100 cities that are now demanding justice for Trayvon Martin. His name was Amin Sumpter and he didn’t live past his 23^rd birthday.

Amin Sumter did not die at the hands of a white “security” agent for a apartment complex. More than likely, he died at the hands of what basically was, another young black male. “He knew who did it, but when (the police) tried to ask him, that’s when his eyes rolled back into his head and his mouth started trembling and he couldn’t say,” one of the neighbors said. That’s when he died from being shot down in the street. He knew who shot him, but before he could tell the cops, his eyes rolled back in his head and he expired.

So where are the plans for mobilizing for his justice? Where are the people whose outrage are demanding justice today for Trayvon Martin? Why aren’t they demanding the same justice for the capture of Amin’s killer and for the end of the epidemic of our young Black and Latino men murdering each other on the streets of our cities like they were in the teaming jungles of Vietnam or Iwo Jima?

It’s been said that many people in America are episodic and only react when they see countless others reacting and then only for a short while. Then they go back to sleep until the next “outrage of the moment”, then repeat the same short-sided steps over again. But where is the mass, sustained outrage for the young males who are gunned down on the streets by people who look just like them?

I have an idea, how about erecting a wall in Washington D.C., similar to the one dedicated to the fallen soldiers from Vietnam and have the names of the thousands and thousands of children and young men and women who have been killed by their so-called peers. Maybe we could call it the Fallen Murdered Youth Wall.

Maybe the shame, agony and heartbreak this powerful structure would bring to the many who see it might just move some more people into action.

This is NOT a movie or a video game--This Is Real!

This recent, horrific scene, from broad daylight gunplay in Trenton, N.J., is played out in just about every hood across America. Is it any wonder that innocent children and toddlers are caught in the crossfire. These punk thugs don't care about anything else but themselves. 

Is it any wonder that our teens are terrified to walk the streets, or go to a party, or have an argument these days. Is it any wonder that "good kids", who want to do the right thing and live peacefully, have to go and get a gun just to protect themselves?

In my opinion, until we as black and brown people show that we respect our lives and love who we are and will not tolerate us killing us, then other races will begin to respect our life also. Did George Zimmerman respect the life of Trayvon Martin when he shot him? It could possibly be that he was just following the "black lives don't mean anything' script that has been playing for many, many years by people who do not value our lives. Remember Latasha Harlins?

I argue that until this epidemic of black-to-black murder and self hatred stops; until we prove that we, as a people, value our human lives, then no other communities will put a value on our lives either.

Violence In Movies in the time of Sandy Hook

At first, when I heard the title to Stallone's new movie was called 'Bullet to the Head', I actually thought it was a joke. How could they, right after the Sandy Hook shootings and amid the insanity of violence in Chicago, possibly have the insensitivity and indifference to release a movie today with that title. Even if the movie's title was set way before the Newtown shootings, I figured they would, at least, change it.
I was wrong.

It boggles my mind how sheer arrogance such as this is purveyed without even a whimper from the same people who outcried the shootings at Sandy Hook. Let’s think about this clearly for a minute: we are experiencing an epidemic of gun violence in our streets and almost every week there is an incident of mass shootings and then Hollywood comes out with a mass marketed movie called ‘Bullet to the Head’.

It’s no wonder why our younger generation is confused and angry. The grownups; the people who are supposed to be the smart and rational ones, are showing an utter disregard for human suffering and showing that making money off of violence is more important. We are saying to our youth: “do as I say, and not as I do.”

Sheer hypocrisy.

How many mothers of murdered children will walk past a theatre or open up a newspaper and see the poster for this Stallone movie and not cringe with heartbreak. How many will relive the death of their child every time this trailer comes on T.V.?

Someone once said that violence in movies does not equate to violence in the real world. Then someone else countered with: if T.V. does not mold and shape reality, then why are there commercials? Corporations did not recently spend 3.7 million dollars for an ad on the Super Bowl for nothing. Statistics proved that when women began smoking in films back in the thirties, women began smoking in the real world. When Clark Gable removed his shirt in the movie ‘It Happened One Night’ and displayed a bare chest, the T-Shirt companies had a heart attack. Today, our children have become desensitized to murder and violence, because, in my opinion, they have seen countless forms of violence in the media.

If ‘Bullet to the Head’ doesn’t get people fired up in life after Sandy Hook, then dammit, nothing will.

We Have Seen The Enemy--It Is Us

Day-care workers accused of urging toddlers to fight -- on video

Three Delaware day-care workers are accused of urging two 3-year-old toddlers to fight each other while the adults egged them on -- and videotaped it, police said. "No pinching, only punching," one of the adults allegedly coaches the children. It's the story that is setting the Internet on fire Tuesday, along with "toddler fight club" headlines. The suspects have been charged with assault, endangering the welfare of a child, reckless endangerment and conspiracy. They were identified as Tiana Harris, 19, and Lisa Parker, 47, both of Dover; and Estefania Myers, 21, of Felton.

According to police, "Hands of Our Future LLC Daycare has had their City of Dover Business License suspended pending a hearing." A call to the Dover Police Department was not returned before this story was posted online. But Dover Police Capt. Tim Stump told FoxNews.com that the video was "difficult" to watch: "One of the kids involved ran over to one of the adults for protection, but she turned him around back into the fight."

The children "were just wailing on each other," Stump said in an interview on NBC10, WCAU. "I mean punching, slapping, pinching, throwing each other into tables." The video allegedly shows the adults urging the kids to duke it out, with fists. The video is not being made public at this time, authorities say, because it's evidence. Police say that one of the children can be heard in the video saying "He's pinching me!," according to CBS Philly. One of the day-care workers allegedly responds, "No pinching, only punching," the TV station report. About 10 other children were looking on at the time. Although the incident happened in March, it only came to the attention of a police officer this weekend, during the course of an unrelated investigation.

By Rene Lynch

August 21, 2012, 11:19 a.m.

Stop The Violence, Now! The time for marching is over!

Every day, the names change, but the story is the same; another African-American or Latino child is shot down on the streets of America. In New York City, a 4 year old boy is killed in a crossfire. In Chicago, a promising young basketball player is shot down a week before he was due to leave for an East coast university.  In the Bronx, a father finds his beloved 14-year-old son shot dead in a park after he went out to play tennis. Our babies are being slaughtered on the nation’s streets daily, so where is the same outrage that we have for the mass killings like Aurora, Colorado and Virginia Tech?

Again, where is the outrage when it’s us killing us?

There are so many varied reasons for youth violence in America—from bad parenting to extreme violence in the media to lack of jobs and opportunities to a mass hysteria of self-hatred in the urban communities. Cities like Chicago and New York have some of the strictest gun laws in the country, yet it does not stop the almost daily killings. Some cities have gun buy-back programs periodically and take a number of guns off the street, but that also does not stop the killings. The controversial Stop-and-Frisk programs in a number of cities may or may not help, but many people are now calling for stopping-and-frisking automobiles from certain gun-friendly states as they enter cities like New York and Chicago to see if they can put a dent in the Iron-Pipeline of smuggled weapons into the streets that are sold to thugs for huge profits.

In today’s New York Post, columnist Peggy Noonan writes an article titled, ‘Horror Show, Neither Hollywood nor Washington does anything about violence in film’. In it she writes how one certain popular- with-youth movie a few years back opens with a number of people being shot point-blank in the head. Is it any wonder why Americans, especially our youth, are so desensitized to seeing extremely violent murder on the screens?

And speaking of Washington, I am extremely surprised the politicians are not speaking out more about this violence epidemic among our nation’s youth. In my opinion, if you are going to speak out when there’s mass shootings like Aurora, you should also speak out about the scourge of our young kids murdering each other. This should be one of the issues of concern in the upcoming presidential election.

What we need is a complete re-engineering of the thought process that promotes and accepts violence of any form: murder, domestic violence, sexual abuse, child abuse…etc. In actuality, what we are proposing is a re-boot, so to speak, of the degenerately immoralistic culture that we now live in. This will be an extremely difficult and time consuming endeavor, but the longest journey begins with the first step. While many of the media outlets and community leaders are holding marches and meetings, that are well and good, The Street Angel Project Against Youth Violence is proposing three immediate steps that we feel are in the right direction:

Step 1: Spreading the ‘Stop The Violence’ Peace Ribbon (1) and this article to everyone you can.

Step 2: Supporting our project by liking ‘The Street Angel Project Against Youth Violence’ page on Facebook.

Step 3: Calling for the hundreds of thousands of churches across the country to act as “Safe Havens” and open their doors to our youth for at least one night a week where they can peacefully enjoy being kids again.

Like a frog in water that boils slowly, it took awhile for this problem to become an epidemic and it will take awhile for all of us, working together, to get things to change for the better. I am hoping to connect with and brainstorm with other concerned Americans who are fed up and want to make an impact for change. Together, we can come up with more solutions for this massive problem.

One thing is certain:

My concentrated efforts and vigilance to STOP THE VIOLENCE will only increase until this epidemic of carnage among our young, our future, is under control.

Peace and Blessings,

Robert Batista

          (1) We are not the designers or originators of the “Stop The Violence” ribbon pictured.

Statistics Don't Lie--More Men Of Color Are Victims Of Guns

Last night, I caught the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg on the 10 O'clock news. He was speaking at a church in Brownsville, Brooklyn and said something that shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. He was speaking about the NYC Police Department's Stop-And-Frisk policy and said that 90% of all homicide victims in the city are either African-American or Latino. I was stunned.

Then my mind replayed the series of news events I've seen over the past few days. A young man shot in a liquor store robbery in New Jersey, the Auburn University student shootings over the weekend and the murder of 23 year old Oscar Duncan (pictured), a youth minister and singer known as "Choir Boy" out in L.A. last week.

"Pastor, 23, nicknamed 'Choir Boy' after choosing Church over life of crime, killed by gang who harassed his girlfriend 

By Richard Hartley-Parkinson for The DailyMail Online

Oscar Duncan was shot dead in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, by four men as he stood in the street near his mother’s house moments after returning home from Bible study. A youth pastor and singer nicknamed 'Choir Boy' after he chose a religious life rather than one of crime has been killed by gang members who had harassed his girlfriend. Duncan was a youth minister at the Greater Zion Church Family and, despite growing up in the crime-ridden Oakwood area of the city, he stayed out of trouble and had a clean record.

Moments before he was gunned down with a single shot, investigators believe his killers were jeering at his girlfriend, according to KTLA. A $50,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killers who pulled up in a white vehicle containing four African-Americans. Duncan approached the vehicle to see who was making remarks to his girlfriend when he was shot dead.

As well as being a pastor he worked at the Venice Boys and Girls Club where he has been a member since he was six and throughout his earlier life he was an upstanding youngster winning Youth of the Year in 2006.He was Venice High School's football team captain and won homecoming king. His family said that in a tragic twist of irony, he had dedicated his short life to keeping children and young people away from the dangers of gangs."

I think back to Dr. Joy De Gruy Leary's ground-breaking book, 'Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome' which argues that we are experiencing the "Residual Impacts of Trauma on African Descendants in the Americas" and cannot help but believe that at least part of this seeming self-hatred that is causing our self-annihilation and self-genocide is embedded in our psyche and goes back to the horrors of slavery. Once we find the root of the problem, we then can find ways of tackling and solving it. Watch Dr. Leary's video and learn more.




 

Our Kids Our Dying For Their Phones

There are a growing number of dangerous predators out there who are robbing and sometimes killing young people for their IPhones, Androids and other Smartphone devices. I constantly tell my kids and their friends, if someone tries to jack you for your phone, give it up. It is not worth getting hurt or losing your life over. There are too many numerous stories like Hwang Yang's (pictured) a chef at the Museum of Modern Art who was gunned down in the Bronx. As he lay bleeding on the ground, the gunman flipped him over, and grabbed his IPhone from his pocket.

Robber fatally shoots chef in Bronx, steals iPhone

Hwang Yang, 26, was returning home from his job at Museum of Modern Art's restaurant The Modern

By Barry Paddock, Erik Badia, Nancy Dillon, Shayna Jacobs AND Rocco Parascandola / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Published: Thursday, April 19, 2012, 10:16 AM

A hardworking young chef was gunned down in the Bronx early Thursday by a brutal thief who kicked his motionless body, stole his iPhone and then casually strolled away, sources told the Daily News.
Former Sunday school teacher Hwang Yang, 26, was left bleeding in the middle of a leafy Riverdale street around 12:30 a.m. - a bullet lodged in his chest - as his adoring mom fretted he was late returning to the family's home just two blocks away, police and family sources said. Yang had just finished a shift at his new job as a cold-plate chef at The Modern, the upscale French-American restaurant at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

Parents, please tell your loved ones: We can always get you another phone, we can never get another you.