We talk about how violence affects our community, but we never discuss how it actually does. Here’s a look at how intricate it really gets.
A mother who just two days ago buries her son is not only depressed but also very angry. Still she gets up and goes to work where her and a co-worker (who is an older woman) get into a heated discussion. The co-worker says that all the young men in the community should be locked up and forgotten about.
This makes the grieving mother very upset. The work day is over and both ladies continue the conversation while waiting for a cab. The co-worker says to the mother that her son was no saint and only contributed to the violence that was going on in the neighborhood. In a blind rage, the mother pushes the woman down just as she was about to get into the cab.
The series of events that follow will change the entire community. Just as the cab driver was about to get out and help the lady, two youngsta’s ran across the busy street with stacks of bills in hand flagging the driver, telling him that they will give him $400 to take them a few blocks over. The cab driver looks at the co-worker and then at the money in the youngsta’s hand and decides to let them in. He pulls off and makes a quick right turn, but he nor the two kids ever see the guy they just conned out of the money behind them. When they make the turn, they run into traffic, the jewelry store owner who had just been conned pulls alongside the cab in his Navigator and shoots the whole cab up.
The two kids escape unscathed, but the driver of the cab catches a bullet to the head and dies instantly. A witness takes down the Navi’s license plate number and he is later convicted of murder. His wife sells the business and leaves town with her kids and another man. The cab driver who was already working overtime, felt he needed the extra $400 to help pay for his son’s college tuition. His death left his son to have to drop out of school to help his mother with the bills and his three younger sisters, one of which was an “A” student up until her father was killed. As a result, at 14 she started runnin’ the streets and became promiscuous. She ran into a cat that was 10 years older than her. At 14, she looked every bit of 19, so that’s what she told him. She ended up getting pregnant by him and her mom found out.
Mom had the man sent to the penitentiary for statutory rape. In the pen, he somehow started indulging in homosexual activity. Years later he came home not knowing he had contracted HIV. A loaded gun back in your community having sex with your niece, your aunt, your sister. This is how violence affects a community.
Now let’s look back. From a murdered son, a mom is mad enough to push a lady down who if she had’ made it to the cab, would have at least saved the driver’s life. Maybe the kids would have escaped on foot since they escaped anyway. The jewelry store owner’s wife and kids would not have had a reason to leave him and the cab driver’s son would have still been in school. Had he not died, his daughter would have never gotten off track and gotten pregnant at an early age, having a fatherless child. And the man who got her pregnant would have never contracted HIV had he not gone to jail. Thus he would have never unknowingly spread the disease through the community.
