Forty Five Years Later

   Here in Chicago, when I was ten years old, there were a lot of things going on, and the vast majority of them weren't pleasant. A war was being conducted in Vietnam, and some of the older brothers of my friends had either been drafted to go to war, or had enlisted in order to fight along side their friends who had been drafted. During my birthday celebration, television news had interrupted the regular programming to declare that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. Shortly thereafter, rioting and looting erupted on 63rd street, as pent up rage and frustration overcame many, many people, and the tension had to be released in some manner. A short while later, I watched as a platoon of National Guard soldiers with rifles and an armored personnel carrier marched their way West on Marquette Rd. towards Cottage Grove. I suppose it was meant to be a "show of force", but in reality I knew at 10 years of age that there were so many combat veterans in the neighborhood, (with substantial weapons available), that if there had existed any animosity within the community towards those National Guard soldiers, they could've been wiped out within the first 10 minutes of their march. No one had any problem with the National Guard soldiers, per se, and they performed their task without incident. Both before April 1968 and through the 1970's, street gangs flourished throughout my neighborhood. Initially, their goal was to band together to protect their neighborhoods from attack by gangs from nearby streets. This took place in a similar fashion to tribal wars in other parts of the world where poverty is rampant, and alliances are made, broken, and rebuilt repeatedly. The persons that governed the city just didn't seem to be able to answer the question as to why this was occurring. The truth of the matter was that they didn't really care how many of us died, so long as we stayed in the poverty plagued pockets that had been allotted to us. When racial discrimination, educational deprivation, physical separation, lack of economic opportunity and hunger prevail, socially acceptable behavior flies out the window, and the reality of  "survival of the fittest" holds sway. A British film I saw in the 1970's illustrated this concept perfectly, it was called "The Lord of the Flies". The ascendance or decline of any society rests upon the manner in which we treat all of our fellow human beings. The U.S. Declaration of Independence proclaimed that "All men are created equal". In the day to day conduct of human affairs the prevailing respondent attitude all too often seems to be "So What?" In rebuttal to those who falsely believe that any adversity can be overcome through dedication and hard work I submit this question: How can one who is barefoot, undereducated, unemployed, and alone, pull himself up by his bootstraps?
   Here in Chicago on September 19, 2013 a vehicle carrying young men on a mission made its' way through a particular neighborhood. Their mission was deadly serious in nature. Someone from a rival gang had either attacked a member of their gang, disrupted their illegal revenue generating activity, infringed upon their territory, or engaged in any one of several behaviors whose consequences involved sending a crew of gunmen out to exact revenge. Thirteen people who were simply enjoying a warm night at 10:00pm were shot by these men.
     Forty Five years later, the environment of governance in both the U.S. and in Chicago has undergone some substantial modification, but, as it's been said time and again, "The more things change, the more they stay the same".
     During the riots of 1968 my teacher assigned us the task of writing a poem which described our attitudes at the time about being African American. This is what I submitted:
   How can you tell that I am Black? Look at the lashes across my back. Look at the naps all in my head, look at the roaches run across my bed. How can you tell that I am Black? Look at the lashes across my back!
Here's that omnipresent link to my book, "Personal Security Techniques"
http://www.fastpencil.com/publications/4182-Personal-Security-Techniques