Chicago The Black Murder Capital of America

Anonymous Nathaniel Jackson ( above) was shot yesterday, by an anonymous man, on an anonymous westside corner, in front of an anonymous ghetto store, named Noah's Foods. 

So why all the anonymous's, when there is so much information about what is being described as a Chicago milestone?  Because, the corner, the store,  Nathaniel Jackson, will not be remembered outside their 15 minutes of fame at the top of Chicago's murder chain. 

Tomorrow as sure as the sun will rise, there will be another murder, more probably, murders ticking the body count up to 501 an above. 

Tomorrow, there will be no TV Cameras from Japan. The British Broad Casting Company (BBC)  will not intone with serious British accidents about conditions in Black America and President Obama, will not tearfully address the nation about the need for us to come together as Americans to end the carnage in Chicago and Detroit.  

 Tomorrow President Obama will not use the tragic fact that America's Black population is 13% yet  80% of those killed in Chicago, and over half those murdered in America, to launch The White House Office of Urban Policy. A promise he made to Black people when he launched his first campaign for President and thought he might actually have to campaign for Black votes.

 More Black people have been killed this year than troops killed in Afghanistan, yet there will be no resources or resolve to end this carnage except those brought to the Black community by the prison industrial complex who continues to thrive of Black on Black violence.

My fellow Americans, in our silence, we acquiesce that not only is Black life highly expendable but violent Black death is a profitable segment of the New American Economy, like the production of American steel until the 1980's.

I just wish we could be honest about it, to at least give Black children proper notice. In fact every day at the beginning of school, instead of a pledge of allegiance, all Black children should have to stand for a 
Pledge of Acknowledgement that their life has no value in America accept what ever value they or their families have for it, just  so they can't say they were not warned.   

Black Poets on Death's Corner 

-By Tyehimba Jess

Black boy bears diamond studded

black cap bearing legend of

black life spray painted

on brick corner wall: 

RIP L.C.

There is something that throbs there

where L.C.'s blood ran

on Flournoy and Spaulding

with the boys selling stones,

with the poets making poems,

with the wide eyed crack kids,

with the sky about to break,

heaved city at our feet,

broken world in our eyes.

Bruh, I never met you,

but I see you everyday still.

A streetcorner Eshu splitting

life and death in each deal.

Maybe you got capped for this one moment:

a circle of poets and mothers and bangers

and druglords holding hands

like a prayer would ease you into the concrete

a little more graceful than bullets.

So we could pause and understand

for a moment, and then say:

I don't understand.

Hold each other

a little tighter as the rain comes,

washes us away.