Dead Like Me
Groups To Host “Lie-In” At War Memorial Plaza To Draw Attention To Murder Epidemic
By: Anna Ditkoff
Kimberly Haven, executive director of Justice Maryland, a criminal-justice advocacy organization, was wrapping up an interview with an out-of-state reporter recently when he asked her about the city’s perceived lack of outrage over the city’s out-of-control homicide rate. Haven really gave the issue some thought.
“There is outrage,” she said. “It’s just not a directed outrage. You can’t agitate and you can’t get people outraged without giving them an action.”
On Oct. 28, Justice Maryland, Associated Black Charities, the NAACP, and other organizations are holding an event they hope will provide that action Haven referred to. The groups will arrange to have as many volunteers as there have been city homicide victims to date this year (as of press time, that number was 244) lie down in War Memorial Plaza in view of City Hall and Baltimore Police Department headquarters. Each person will hold a number that corresponds to a homicide victim. The idea is to put human faces on the homicide statistics.
“It’s an attempt for us to recognize that we’re talking about citizens, we’re talking about people who have died,” Haven says. “When you look out and you see whatever that number is laying there, that’s human, that’s lives that are taken out of our community. And then it’s followed up with the `what do we do to not put another person laying there?’”
At the rally people will be asked to sign a pledge of action card, promising to actively fight for an end to violence in Baltimore.
Both local and state governments, he (Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, president of the Baltimore City branch of the NAACP) says, have failed the city by failing to act on the crisis. “All of them run on an education platform, on a crime platform, and some of these folks have been in office 10, 15, 20 years,” Cheatham says. “They have to accept some responsibility.”
He also said…
“But they cannot find a solution unless they have the community involved in that solution,” he notes.
Cheatham made a couple of good points here, but I’m sorry this lie-in idea will not work. If folks are not moved by the stories that are covered daily in local newspapers and news broadcasts, they are not going to take time off of work to see a bunch of Black folks laying in a plaza. As I have said on this site several times before, if we are looking to generate some quick outrage on this issue, get rid of all law enforcement officials of color and make their replacements White males with a southern draw. Toss in a couple of nooses and the outrage will come. Yes I am being a little funny here, but it would get the immediate results these individuals are looking for.
In my experience, there is certain point within each individual where they are forced to say “enough is enough”. That contempt is usually initiated when a person takes the time to listen to the stories of those who have lost a loved one to violence. I don’t know about you, but watching a grown man cry over the death of his son and how much he loved him gets me all the time. This is exactly why I regularly post the stories of families who have lost loved ones to homicide on this site in an effort to get at least some of you out there motivated to do what you can.
You know, we used to make fun of the old mothers out there that took the time to read the obituaries or better yet, go to the funerals of those they never knew or met. Perhaps they were on to something.
