James Brown’s song “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)” is about black love and respect for one another. When we commit crimes in our communities, we strengthen the long umbilical cord of social injustice against us. The question then becomes: Do we identify with those who have died to cut the cord of social injustice, or those who continue the social genocide of black love and respect? Let’s get back to our roots. 

Gerald P. Casey
Boston

Ending street violence is everyone’s responsibility

As the murder rate rises, the victims get younger. The last murder victim of 2006 was a 14-year-old middle school student gunned down on Dec. 22, 2006. Boston’s first killing in 2007 was another 14-year-old on New Years Day, and the second was a 13-year-old shot up to seven times on Jan. 13.

During a recent trip to the Dunkin Donuts at Boston Medical Center, I noticed the young girl who waited on me wearing two pins with the faces of two different boys. When I asked her what the pins represented, she told me, “They’re friends of mine who were killed.”

How do you respond to that?

Recently, Pastor Bruce Wall called on the city of Boston to declare a state of emergency in Dorchester’s Codman Square. According to the mayor, the answer is the community doing its own policing.

Gangs, guns, violence and drugs aren’t confined to Codman Square. They show up across the city — in some places more than others. The majority of the shootings have occurred in a 2 1/2 mile radius, encompassing Mattapan, Dorchester and Roxbury.

Police Commissioner Ed Davis plans to expand community policing, focusing on prevention rather than simply responding to crime. Plans are in the works for community advisory groups in each police district. He believes the obstacles before Boston are challenges “we’re facing as a community together.”

The issues impacting Boston’s youth and communities are nothing new. If Pastor Wall wants an emergency call to go out, it needs to be delivered by all of our churches up on the pulpit and in the public square.

Community leaders, parents and the kids themselves must come together preaching peace and justice. Talking about it is one thing; taking action is something else.

Empowerment starts in self. That was Dr. King’s message. We can’t always blame someone else because we have the power to change things for the better. We’ve always had it.

Things can’t and won’t get better by themselves. Doing nothing changes nothing.