Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. - Cyril Connolly
Thursday, January 17, 2008
A Good Kid
There has been an enormous outpouring of grief and outrage over the death of Zecariah Hollback, and the Baltimore Sun has been covering it.
At the vigil, Marvin "Doc" Cheatham, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, pleaded with city residents to help police catch Hallback's killer.
"This was a good kid," Cheatham said, "a good kid who was doing good things with the Algebra Project. ... He was killed senselessly. ... If a young good child like this can be killed - not a bad child, not a kid doing something wrong - then it could happen to any one of us."
A lot of the city's violence is explained away as criminals just killing other criminals. Do you remember when the CityPaper's Murder Ink column would list the criminal records of the victims?
From the article: "But I know quite a few drug dealers, too, and the fact that the public thinks the death of good kids is more horrific than the death of drug dealers is a large part of the problem, in my view," Gillen wrote. "The public thinks: 'Usually it's just dealers killing dealers or addicts killing addicts, so why care very much?'"
A lot of the city's violence is explained away as criminals just killing other criminals. Do you remember when the CityPaper's Murder Ink column would list the criminal records of the victims?
From the article: "But I know quite a few drug dealers, too, and the fact that the public thinks the death of good kids is more horrific than the death of drug dealers is a large part of the problem, in my view," Gillen wrote. "The public thinks: 'Usually it's just dealers killing dealers or addicts killing addicts, so why care very much?'"