There is a war currently being waged in a predominately Black and poverty stricken neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois named West Washington Park. The battle grounds are located between 56th and 65th street from Cottage Grove to Martin Luther King Drive. This war has not garnered much media attention except for the obligatory short paragraph in the Chicago Sun-Times and other media outlets. Between Wednesday and Sunday, five people were shot in the 6400 block of South King Drive, the block I reside on. All were under the age of 26 and all were Black.

Urban terrorists have taken over inner-city minority neighborhoods in Chicago and no one is safe. It does not matter if you reside in Beverly or Chatham: no family is immune from gun violence. My heart breaks for the families of who have lost loved ones to violence because I am a mother and can imagine the pain and agony they must go through on a daily basis. But I often wonder how much we as a community is responsible.

I have lived on the South Side of Chicago my entire life and I have noticed a sharp decline in values and respect amongst some Blacks, particularly the younger set. I have seen children as young as 5-years-old cussing like drunken sailors while adults were in the near vicinity cheering them on. Young Black adults dismiss the idea of a college education as foolishness and concern themselves with the consumption of mass goods, expensive alcohol, and having as much sex as possible. There is no respect for life and dysfunction reigns on a daily basis. Generation Crack has come of age and they are nothing nice.

When crack cocaine hit the streets of urban inner-cities, it decimated entire communities. I lost a brother to cocaine addiction and I know several families who have suffered because of crack cocaine. An entire generation of children who were born during this era is now young adults and they have not been taught anything. Momma was either on drugs or chasing behind a drug dealer and the children were left behind for the grandmothers, aunts, and the foster care systems to take care of. Fathers were too busy trying to become the next Nino Brown and have abdicated all responsiblity for their offspring.

Everyday I live in fear that I will receive a phone call informing me that my chidren have gotten caught in the crossfire of this gangbanging nonsense. Between the hours of 2:30pm and 3:00pm Monday through Friday, I wait anxiously for my son to come back from picking his little sister up from school. He is a nineteen-year old who has not been to jail, graduated from high school on time, and who picks his little sister up from school without any prompting from me. My ten-year-old is a smart little girl with a zest for life who loves the Disney Channel. Two children who have brought me nothing but joy and pride and it would kill me if something happened to them because they had the nerve to step outside of their home. This fear that I go through on a regular basis fills me with helplessness and anger because at this time, I cannot afford to move and I am stuck living in a war zone, praying to God that my children are not casualities.

My question for the day is this: when will a group of people who have survived the horrors and degradations of slavery, the failure of Reconstruction, and the dehumanization of Jim Crow segregation, and other injustices will finally take a stand and reclaim their children? Black people have gone through too much for our communitiies to dissolve into total anarchy. We are on point to lose an entire generation of young Black males and no one gives a damn. Not the politians, not the media, not even their own people.