TUESDAY, JULY 4, 2023
Today, we have several fewer: The city of Baltimore is full of good kids.
We started meeting those kids, in their fifth grade manifestation, in the autumn of '69. In the last few years before Covid, we had occasion to observe the behavior of some young adults who had plainly decided, it seemed to us, that they intended to be good people.
The world wasn't built for these particular kids. We're always amazed by their goodness.
Today, this city has at least one fewer such kid. Headline included, we include a passage from this news report in today's New York Times:
A Baltimore Party, a Hail of Gunfire and a Neighborhood Shattered
[...]
Krystal Gonzalez, whose 18-year-old daughter, Aaliyah Gonzalez, was one of the two people killed, said on Monday that she was feeling more pain than she had ever felt in her life. She said through tears that she had recently thrown a party for Aaliyah to celebrate her graduation from high school.
Aaliyah had been working at Starbucks, taking extra shifts and saving up money for a car, her mother said. For much of high school, Aaliyah had yearned to go to college out of state, but she changed her mind shortly before graduation, planning instead to enroll at Anne Arundel Community College near her home in the Baltimore suburb of Glen Burnie.
“All of a sudden, in senior year as it’s coming to a close, she said, ‘Mom, I don’t want to leave; I want to stay here,’” Ms. Gonzalez recalled. “She wanted to stay with us.”
Ms. Gonzalez said that she did not think Aaliyah had ever been to the [South Baltimore] Brooklyn neighborhood before, and that Aaliyah had been spending the night with a friend in a Baltimore suburb who decided to go to the party.
“She was such a good girl,” Ms. Gonzalez said. “She would analyze people—Why are they feeling this way? What can I do to help?—that’s who Aaliyah was. She was so, so bright and sensitive, and I swear this world did not deserve her. She was too good to be here.”
On Sunday morning, Ms. Gonzalez said, she woke up to her husband’s shout of “No!” after someone used Aaliyah’s phone to call and tell him that she had been shot. Ms. Gonzalez said she could not believe that the victim was her daughter and raced to the scene, only to be held back by officers who told her that she would not want to see her daughter’s body.
“We need to find who did this,” Ms. Gonzalez said. “It hurts so bad.”
“She was such a good girl,” her mother said. She wasn't going to Harvard or Yale, but we feel sure that her mother was right.
We always marvel at the goodness of these good and decent, overlooked kids. We also have kids who have lost their way and who have access to guns.
"“She was such a good girl,” her mother said. She wasn't going to Harvard or Yale, but we feel sure that her mother was right."
ReplyDeleteIt is one of Somerby's uglier traits that he would use the death of a beloved daughter to take a swipe at Ivy League colleges.
It would be nice for eulogizing women to be called something other than good girls. As if that is the highest aspiration a female person can have -- to be good and pretty and popular and to care about others. The emphasis on "good" in this story sounds like leaning over backwards to avoid any suggestion that she did something bad that contributed to her death. But being good is not the epitome of striving for women.
DeleteSomerby always talks about the good decent children he taught. Was that their chief virtue too. Being well behaved? I can see how a teacher might value that, since it is the teacher's job to maintain order and kids who are good following the teacher's directions. But how is that a virtue otherwise? Isn't it better to be creative, bright, hard-working, with goals and ideas and interesting projects, someone who contributed to community, was always willing to help others, someone who cared about the world's problems or was good at sports, or who love dogs? What are the real qualities of children and people that make them individuals who someone might mourn (or want to teach) beyond goodness?
This girl is portrayed as someone who was so good that she set aside her plans to stay with mama. Is that really goodness? I find this odd, especially Somerby's participation in calling these black kids good but overlooked. He has to be overlooking a greal deal himself, because no one thinks the best thing about children is that they are good. No one.
It reminds me of Eliza Dolittle in My Fair Lady, when Henry Higgins focuses his attention on her and she thinks she is going to be arrested: "Here now, I'm a good girl, I am!" she wails, over and over.
Delete"We always marvel at the goodness of these good and decent, overlooked kids. We also have kids who have lost their way and who have access to guns. "
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't sound like this girl was being overlooked by anyone, especially not her grieving parents.
If anyone has been overlooked, it is the young people who did the shooting. Had there been some notice taken, they might have been deterred from this shooting. The NY Times notes today that the shooters in these mass killings are younger in age than in the past. That suggests that the kids who needed attention are the ones seeking out guns these days. But Somerby doesn't talk about that, or think about it apparently.
The "access to guns" is the real problem. Somerby somehow thinks Harvard and Yale are to blame.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of emphasis in this report about the goodness of this 18 year old who suddenly changed her plans to stay in Baltimore after high school. But there are also things that are being ignored. For one thing, is it likely that a black teen wouldn't know what kind of party and neighborhood she was going to? Would her mother not know that teens often say they are staying with friends (in the suburbs no less) in order to go out to places their parents would not approve of. Reasons why a teen might suddenly change her college plans, include nearby boyfriends who they do not want to leave, not sudden fear of leaving mom and dad.
ReplyDeleteIt is the job of parents to gently urge their kids to leave the nest and college provides a protected environment for doing that. Or maybe this girl wasn't going to college because she wasn't admitted anywhere but the local open entry community college, but the article wants to make her seem bigger than life. Somerby used to object to such puffery, but not when he is being mawkish over some child himself. Girls who are shot as innocent bystanders are always honor students in such narratives.
They have not yet caught the young men who did this shooting (more than one is being sought). That makes it more likely to be a gang shooting or the result of a conflict among party-goers that ended with someone going to get his gun. It could be that a fight was over this young girl, since she is dead and a 20 year old man is dead, and others are not. This could be a romantic triangle with a motive of jealousy and anger. We do not know because they haven't caught who did it yet, but this article pretends she was uninvolved when she may have been the focus. She may deserve no blame, but the press and her mother and even Somerby seem to be treating her like a child with the social life of a 6 year old -- an angel too good for this earth. We can think of such young people as good and decent without idealizing them to the point where they are no longer real people.
And Somerby has the nerve to object when school improvement in MS is called a miracle!
Well if you read the local papers, you’d know that:
DeleteA: The “party” is an annual event for residents in Brooklyn and the surrounding neighborhoods
B: The young woman was accepted to South Carolina State University and unlike the NYT version of the story, she was planning on matriculating in September
C: The police chief has inferred that the lack of police presence could be explained by intelligence failures by the BPD
Goodness, can’t you find the time to subscribe to the two local paper, Bob. You might get a clearer sense of what was happening in that courtyard last Sunday
Brooklyn Homes is public housing. We don’t know if this was a black-on-black crime or some misguided white youths looking to kill a bunch of black people, as in some prior shootings. Half of those wounded were under 17 yo. I don’t see any gang motive that would result in children being mowed down. This sounds more like a white supremacist white incel & friend(s) trying to start a civil war by shooting unarmed children.
DeleteCollege acceptances are provisional based on final semester grades. Maybe she failed a required course during spring semester. Or maybe she didn’t have the money and her family didn’t want to say so. Or maybe her mom has health problems. Whatever is true, it isn’t what the papers reported.
DeleteIn city after city, blacks are disproportionately the victims of murder. The common thread in these cities is Democrat governance. Baltimore, like other high murder rate cities, has long been governed by Democrats. This pattern is not a coincidence. Democratic policies lean more to protecting the perps and less toward protecting the public than Republican policies.
ReplyDeleteAt one time, people who espoused "Law 'n Order" were called racists, because blacks were disproportionately defendants. But, blacks are also disproportionately victims. Opponents of |"law 'n Order" do blacks no favors.
The mayor of Baltimore caused several unidentified young men to shoot and kill two young people and wound others attending a block party? How exactly did the mayor make that happen?
DeleteHow exactly is the mayor protecting these specific perps? They haven't even been identified yet.
Beware of the word "disproportionately". There are more black people in that Brooklyn Housing development than in Baltimore and more in Baltimore than in the rest of the nation. That makes this sound like an exercise in "blame the blacks" and also "blame the Democratic mayor." If it were anything else, David might have some specific suggestions for keeping people with guns from shooting people with them.
Murder rate in FL where they have "law and order": 9.7 per 100,000.
Murder rate in CA where they approach law and order with compassion: 6.4 per 100,000 (includes that yucky San Francisco).
Murder rate in IL where black people run rampant in Chicago: 9.1 per 100,000. How can that be?
Murder rate in TX where everyone owns guns and there are not enough good guys to go around: 8.2. Not sure if that counts as "law and order" or chaos, but it is a red state.
Murder rate in Maryland: 12.2, but is this typical of blue states?
Murder rate in New York, definitely a blue state: 4.8 per 100,000.
Murder rate in MA, definitely a blue state: 2.3 per 100,000.
Murder rate in PA, a blue state that went for Trump in 2016: 9.2 per 100,000.
Murder rate in WA, a blue state where it rains a lot: 4.5 per 100,000.
It doesn't look like your theory is correct David, looking at the actual murder rates in various blue vs red states. How do you account for that?
Don’t confuse David with facts. He’s been repeating the same BS since 1975
DeleteThese cities are the top 5 in homicides in the nation in 2023 so far:
DeleteMemphis, Tenn.
New Orleans, La.
Baltimore, Md.
St. Louis, Mo.
Detroit, Mich.
Only one city is in the North, Detroit. Its mayor is a Democrat, but the state voted for Trump in 2016.
The mayor of Baltimore is black and a Democrat. Here is what he has done about guns and homicides since election in 2020:
"During his mayoral campaign, Scott vowed to "reduce homicides by 15 percent each year in my term, getting us to below 300 homicides in my first year as mayor"[40] by studying the flow of guns into Baltimore and implementing violence reduction strategies.[20] He also rallied on reforming police spending after leading the charge to cut $22.4 million from the city's $550 million police budget, half of which was for "unallocated" funds.[41] Despite this, Scott's first budget, introduced in April 2021, included a $28 million increase in the city's police budget. This proposed increase was met with criticism by Baltimore residents.[42][43] Scott pushed back against this criticism by asking people to "look at the full picture behind violent crime rather than the "simple conflict" that leads to the loss of life."[44] His budget was approved without amendments on June 8, 2021.[45] In April 2022, Scott again proposed a $5 million increase in the city's police budget,[46] which was met with further criticism.[47][48]
In January 2022, Scott implemented the Group Violence Reduction Strategy in the City's Western Police District. This program targets outreach to individuals who are identified as being likely victims or perpetrators of gun violence within the city and stresses community based policing strategies. The four central tenets of the program are the reviewing of gun violence incidents, direct outreach, life coaching, and strategic policing. In December of 2022, Scott announced that the district had seen a 33.8% decrease in gun violence. It was also announced that this program would be expanded to other districts in 2023 and 2024.[49]
In February 2022, Scott was named one of 10 new co-chairs of Mayors Against Illegal Guns.[50]
In May 2022, Scott and the Baltimore Police Department launched the Strategic Management and Alternative Response Tactics (SMART) initiative. The goal of this program is to free up city resources by redirecting non-emergencies and mental health crisis to other services, while limiting false alarm calls. The program then in turn hopes to allow officers more time to engage positively with communities and build trust.[51] [52]
In June 2022, Scott filed a lawsuit against Polymer80, alleging the company flooded the city with ghost guns that have contributed to bloodshed in the city's streets.[53]In the same month, Scott also signed a bill to implement a Police Accountability Board as mandated by the States' General Assembly. The bill allows up to two former police officers to serve on the 17-person board that will recommend action against officers with alleged misconduct.[54]"
Note that he had reduced homicides by 33% by 2022. Look how he did it. It had nothing to do with getting tough with black people on the street.
Don't worry Dave in Cal, white people committed 20,000 gun suicides in 2019, and black people only committed 1,500. That is way more than black people shooting other black people and white people combined. White people are fucking nuts.
DeleteJust remember that if the friends of the good, decent girl organize politically against gun violence Paster Bob will snap out of it fast, and start belittling them as spoiled brats, as he has done in these situations before.
ReplyDeleteSeveral commenters used statewide statistics. That's faulty analysis. Murder rates vary enormously by neighborhood -- much much more than than vary by state. I recall once looking at statistics. Cities in a given state can have murder rates that differ by a factor of 100 IIRC.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, most anti-crime policing and prosecution is local. St. Louis MO results have nothing to do with Independence MO results.
This doesn’t redeem your incorrect remark.
DeleteCA has more big cities with crime and yet MD has a much higher homicide rate.
DeleteThe reason you can compare cities with states is because the figures are all adjusted by population size (the per 100,000 part of the rate). This lets small states be compared with large ones and small cities compared with larger ones. Don’t treat people here like morons.
Of course places differ. We are pointing out that red states are worse for homicides than blue ones and that Democratic mayors don’t have higher murder rates. Look at DeSantis & FL’s horrible stats in their red state.
DeleteThe highest gun death rates occur in rural parts of red states.
DeleteViolent crimes are primarily a function of poverty and lack of gun control, neither of which are significantly impacted by policing and prosecution.
As it turns out, David, it is your “analysis” that is inaccurate.
We get it David, you are a racist. You do not have to rub our noses in it.
Apart from the fact that DIC's remark about the party affiliation of mayors and gun violence is straight out of Fox and Friends (or some other Rupert Murdoch orifice), what does it say about the level of intellectual maturity that a person could think the matter is so simple? This is the mindset of a contemporary Republican. Simple, illogical, and nonfactual.
DeleteRemember DinC's last good-faith comment, opinion, or argument?
DeleteMe neither.
As usual the only research that the "scientists" will do involves increasing big pharma profits. They will never cure anything as they can make more money by keeping people reliant on drugs, and they will do everything possible to discourage others from trying other medications like herbal medicine but thank God i never listen to them despite all they did to convince me that my husband ALS has no cure when he (my husband) was diagnosed 7 months ago . Am happy to inform you all that my husband is free and completely cured of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) after using Dr. Osunbum ALS herbal formula, the formula works like magic . Always learn to follow your heart refuse to be discouraged there is no problem without a solution . My husband is back on his feet stronger than before thanks allot peter. contact Osunbumi for her ALS herbal formula via drosunbuminaomispiritual@gmail.com you can call him or chat live with him on whatsapp via 2348070894186.
DeleteSame old, same old.
ReplyDeleteEasy access to guns in this country, including allowing teenagers to purchase automatic weapons, is a problem that has been masterminded by the NRA and republican congressmen who line their pockets with with NRA money. For DeSantis and his republican legislature it makes perfect sense to allow Floridians to carry concealed firearms without permits. Just don't go to a republican fundraiser with one of those thing; that is illegal, The answer to gun violence for them is more guns carried in public. This is the trash heap of elected officials, of which there are many in the republican party. No other civilized country glorifies guns like the US.
ReplyDeleteAs usual the only research that the "scientists" will do involves increasing big pharma profits. They will never cure anything as they can make more money by keeping people reliant on drugs, and they will do everything possible to discourage others from trying other medications like herbal medicine but thank God i never listen to them despite all they did to convince me that my husband ALS has no cure when he (my husband) was diagnosed 7 months ago . Am happy to inform you all that my husband is free and completely cured of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) after using Dr. Osunbum ALS herbal formula, the formula works like magic . Always learn to follow your heart refuse to be discouraged there is no problem without a solution . My husband is back on his feet stronger than before thanks allot peter. contact Osunbumi for her ALS herbal formula via drosunbuminaomispiritual@gmail.com you can call him or chat live with him on whatsapp via 2348070894186.
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