Did you even hear about this shooting in South Seattle?

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I am beginning to think that there is no suffering that forces us to take sustainable care of the well-being of our black community.

I would have expected our apathy to end after dozens of parents and children, afraid of being killed by a stray bullet, fled to cover when gunfire broke out during a Youth League football game in Judkins Park on September 25.

I would think that the killing of three people not even a day later near a bar in Des Moines would lead us to take the necessary steps to end such tragedies.

In a county where tens of thousands stubbornly marched and shouted as loud as their lungs would allow, after the extrajudicial murder of a black man in Minneapolis, they would surely be unanimously repelled by the fact that here in King County nearly half of all gun homicide victims would be are black, although blacks make up less than 7% of the county’s population.

But no.

There is a vicious myth that blacks will only scream about gun violence if it is carried out by police officers. As if our suffering was easing because a loved one died at the hands of civilians and our grief was limited to complaints against law enforcement.

We cry out loud. But who can hear us?

“I never wanted my daughter to experience this trauma,” said Terrell Elmore, coach of CD Panthers, a youth football program that has operated in the central district of Seattle for 25 years.

On a day in honor of the grandparents, with two minutes to go in a game between 8-9 year olds and 10-11 year olds waiting on the sidelines to play the next game, a young woman fired rounds starting near the park.

Elmore joined a number of parents who were forced to snap up nearby children and seek shelter. The incident left his 10-year-old daughter, a panther cheerleader, and many other children visibly shaken, upset and crying.

In response, the Panthers created a plan of action for future events and determined where children and parents should gather. The need for this measure, especially in a city that boasts of its progressivism, is a clear and simple tragedy.

But their place of implementation is another reminder of what shootings cause alarm and which shootings cause indifference in this city.

“There is no urgent need to find solutions for these young people to be sure, and from my point of view it’s disgusting, to be honest,” said TraeAnna Holiday, whose 7-year-old son plays Panthers for CD.

There would definitely be a sense of urgency if the filming took place in a neighborhood like Windermere, Denny-Blaine or Laurelhurst.

“There is no way these families can sit back and say, let’s get some support and keep our children safe,” said Holiday.

It was referring to last Saturday, October 2nd, when the CD Panthers organized a homecoming event attended by hundreds of Panther families, past and current players, and community members. The homecoming was the last game of the season for the Panthers and involved a private security guard hired by the parents. More importantly, there was an overwhelming show from more than 200 members of the Seattle black community who had gathered to come so that their presence could be seen as a symbol of support for black youth.

As nice as the day was, it was only one day.

I understand the outrage over the hackneyed omissions of our elected officials, who at this point seem to be a typical response to these incidents: “We must lay down our arms.” “We have to invest in communities” “We have to stop the violence”

We should reserve more indignation, however, as we have numbed ourselves from the pain of part of our urban population. By inaction, by asking no more than an appropriate response to these incidents, we fail one another.

“After something like this happens, black people are used to drugging themselves because they have to. We can’t respond like that. It’s not healthy for anyone, including our children, ”Elmore said.

Elmore was proud of the black community’s support on Saturday, but he wished the rest of town had followed suit. There isn’t much a parent and coach can do for a child who has been shaken by violence.

He urges professional therapists to volunteer for the Panthers (something he says would have happened in a place like Mercer Island) so that the city has more upstream programs that are sustainably funded, and most importantly, for the solidarity of the City.

For me, this solidarity is based less on police work to fight violence only, but more on community responsibility and effectiveness.

It relies on us to call for nothing less than full funding of initiatives like King County’s Regional Peacekeeper Collective. Building on the county’s declaration in June 2020 that gun violence is becoming a public health crisis, it focuses on interventions between all parties involved in gun violence to prevent their younger siblings from getting used to violent incidents, and to help families, to provide ongoing support to those affected by these incidents.

It is based on refusing to ignore the needs of certain communities and waiting for their problems to go elsewhere for others to address.

There is no one left. We are in this city right now. You see the worth of every single neighborhood, every single community, and every single child as indistinctly of your own.

What wouldn’t you do for your child?

Marcus Harrison Green
on Twitter: @ mhgreen3000. Marcus Harrison Green is the founder of the South Seattle Emerald, which focuses on telling the stories of South Seattle and its people. Born in Seattle, he writes a monthly column co-edited by Emerald and The Seattle Times. Contact Marcus here.