Roger Ebert and Martin Luther King jr: dead on April 4. SJ Dodgson MJoTA 2013 v6n1 p20130405
80%
of Americans want background checks; probably as many want to stop guns
moving across state lines; and as many want to limit the amount of
bullets that can be added to gun magazines. However, the crazies that
wag the tails of too many lawmakers believe that any of the 3
fundamentals of the proposed gun laws would somehow launch a war of the
government (which is we the people) against the people (we the people).
From
where I stand; not passing these laws is war against the people; and
daily little children and teenagers are being buried across America.
------------------------------
1988
was 17 years after the Camden riots that had anyone with means fleeing
to the suburbs, like my town, Haddonfield, which is 5 miles east on
Haddon Avenue.
In 1988, I had 2 little boys, was pregnant with my 3rd son and on Sundays climbed into my Chevy Monza to drive the 5 miles to Camden, and volunteered with the homeless breakfast program run by Camden County Episcopalians.
I
believe the program's prime mover was Dr Lambert B Jackson, a faculty
member in the arts at the New Jersey state university (Rutgers) in
Camden, who had teamed up with the Rev Martin Gutwein, priest of Camden's St Paul's Episcopalian Church.
Together
these young fathers, who were activists for change, convinced a whole
lot of Episcopalian white folk from the suburbs to donate cash and food
and show up on Sunday mornings to cook for and wait on homeless sons and
daughters of Africa who lived on the streets of Camden and
Philadelphia.
We knew that the Sunday breakfasts were well known
in Philadelphia: and Sunday morning had a stream of homeless men and
women walking from Philadelphia, close to the Liberty Bell, across the
Benjamin Franklin Bridge into Camden, past the Quaker Meeting House,
past Camden Town Hall with Walt Whitman's words engraved in stone "I see
a city invincible".
In 1988 was there every Sunday during the
summer except for the 2 Sundays I was traveling to and from London for a
conference I had co-organized at the University of London. On how
carbon dioxide controls our bodies. Ah yes. Carbon dioxide: you fed my family for decades.
On the 2nd Monday in September, 1988I gave birth to my 3rd son. A vegan. My 3rd son was not born vegan; that came much later.
And nothing was vegan about the breakfast. Eggs, pancakes, bread, orange juice, an apple or banana. And plenty of it.
Most
of our guests were men, but we had some children, and some women. An
old lady with a tiny, tiny baby; the next time I saw her she told me the
baby was dead. She had been born premature, her mother was on drugs,
the old lady was her grand mother. when I now think that even her carer
had to come to us for breakfast, I know that the baby girl never had a
chance.
I had never seen a
child with teeth rotted from drinking sweet carbonated drinks, what we
call sodas in Philadelphia. He was 11 years old, and he volunteered with
some other children to set up the breakfast. He was part of a large
family, and they came every week, and stayed for church and Sunday
school.
For a few weeks, not long, I tried to teach Sunday
School, but we all gave up. The children could not read, had no interest
in hearing stories from the Promised Land, and saw me as a strange
creature from another planet. I remember asking 5 children who they
were, what their fathers did. "He daid". "He in jail".
Jail was a
big industry in Camden. After the flight out of Camden, the 3 big
employers fled or scaled down: Campbell's Soups, RCA and ship-builders.
So in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a big jail was built on the banks
of the Delaware River that separates Camden from Philadelphia.
25 years later, Dr Lambert Jackson has been dead 12 years from cardiovasculasr disease, the Rev Mr
Martin Gutwein is still holding up a wall against poverty and
desperation in Camden, all the children have grown up and are making
their own way in the world. Or are dead.
Camden is the gun murder capital of the world. It is a small city; no-one lives there if they can live anywhere else.
During the 30 years I have lived 5 miles down the road, Haddonfield has only had a single gun
homicide: when a daughter of Sicily, brought to this country to be a
wife, was kicked out of her family house so that the husband could
install his new wife. The evicted wife shot him dead. An African man, in some African communities, would have explained that she would always have the status of his first wife, and they all need to live happily together.
Crimes
of passion, upset over not being paid enough for a small job or
supplies, anger at anyone whose idea of parenting is to let young men
and women fail school and have no hope, and suicide while taking out
another so they don't die alone. Guns and despair are too available in
Camden, and too deadly.
And guns are, and have been, too available and too deadly all across the United States.
On
Apr 4, 1968, bullets from guns killed Martin Luther King jr. A death
too often seen in sons and daughters of Africa. On the same day 45 years
later, cancer killed Roger Ebert, a death too often seen in sons and
daughters of Europe: cancer killed my own British father in 1988.
Martin
Luther King jr and Roger Ebert had a lot in common: they were both
American citizens, well-educated, both passionate about what they did,
both wanted to appeal to the hearts and minds of all through mass media,
both married to daughters of Africa, and they died on the same day.
Roger Ebert was able to die at 70, of disease; guns made sure that the Rev Martin Luther King jr did not live to be 40.
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