A tale of two cities: Hartford and Cheshire
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The Cheshire killings have gotten a lot of press and so today, activists in Hartford held a press conference. Undercurrents has the story and the statement:
We are here today because we are outraged, shocked and saddened by the recent deaths in our state. We grieve with the Hawke-Petit family in Cheshire as well as with the numerous families throughout the state of Connecticut who have had to deal with the senseless murders of their loved ones.
We are also here to question the disparity of value assigned to certain lives. It has been observed that murders in Hartford, where the median household income is $22,140, garner none of the fanfare that the tragedy in Cheshire, a town with a median household income of $85,664, has received.
We are sure that the horrific nature of the Cheshire home invasion contributed to the local as well as national media coverage of this tragedy. And we are sure that this tragedy hit home for many people who live in neighborhoods similar to the one that the Hawke-Petit family lived in. But we are unsure as to why murders that are just as random and senseless in our inner-cities don’t garner the same attention or outpouring of grief. Xion Davidson and Kent McLaurin were gunned down and killed less than a month ago, and their murders have been all but forgotten by the major news outlets, yet we are inundated daily with stories of how the murders in Cheshire are affecting the lives of the people of Connecticut.
Have we as a society become so far removed from each other that we can only identify and grieve over the lives of those who share our own background?
We are not suggesting that there was any malice on the part of anyone who identified with or grieved for the Hawke-Petit family. What we are saying is that institutionalized racism and classism have led to a society that assigns different levels of value to different lives.
We believe that any loss of life due to violence is a tragedy and should be treated as such.
We believe that ALL human lives should be valued and that any premature loss of life should be mourned by the community, not just those who identify on a personal level with those who have been murdered.
We believe that the deaths of poor people of color are just as tragic as the deaths of rich white people; material advantages should not imply value or worth.
We are not trying to pit one tragedy against another; this would be pointless and disrespectful to anyone who has lost a loved one through violence. We are trying to make sense of a society that is willing to ignore certain murders, while elevating others to near mythical status. We are trying to bring together a community that is so fractured that we are willing to value the privileged over the disadvantaged. We are looking to work with all Connecticut residents who feel that all lives are important and all senseless violence needs to end.
There was some media there, although none but two bothered to arrive on time. I have to say, this report from WFSB is weak. The Courant doesn’t have anything, but it does have this story about the almost $500K authorized by Gov. Rell to put all paroled burglars on GPS monitoring. As Michael Connelly at CorrSent puts it:
The first response in CT to the horrific triple murder by paroled burglars there apparently is to put all first- and second-degree burglary parolees on GPS, roughly half a million bucks a year. And I predict there will be no similar crimes in the near future, just like there had been none in the near past, so the GPS will be deemed successful. Science is wonderful.
Read the entire report by Undercurrents… it should, at the very least, make you go… “hmmmm”.
What do you guys think? Do people across the State identify with this more because it happened in a suburban neighborhood? The crimes aren’t any different than what has happened in cities around the State. Is it a race or class issue?
Two names for you, Gideon, Channon Christian and Timothy Newsom.
Also, the three murder victims in New Jersey are getting a lot of press.
The fact is that the two Hartford murder victims were likely engaged in robbing people and they picked the wrong person to rob. And while I agree that people shouldn’t be hunted down like one of the victims was, I find it hard to feel sorry for people who likely were victimizing others.
Wow.
You’re making three very strong assumptions:
1) That those two killed in Hartford were part of a robbery gone bad. That was the initial report, but has since not been repeated. In fact, no one knows what happened.
2) That no one who is killed in Hartford is an innocent victim (because the point of the press conference wasn’t two specific victims versus Cheshire – it was to bring attention to all Hartford victims).
3) That some lives (those engaging in crime) are less valuable than others.
You’re right, I don’t know that those two Hartford guys were engaging in robbery, but given one of the victims’ criminal history and the fact that they were wearing face covering, it certainly suggests that they may have been out robbing people.
As for all Hartford victims, I do care about all murder victims.
As for criminals, no, I don’t think that their lives are as valuable. Sorry.
It’s also true that if murders were happening on a daily basis in Cheshire, we’d grow numb to that too and the reporting would stop.
No honest person believes that the daily Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, NYC, Compton, Camden etc… murders are underreported because the victims are black, that’s just race-baiting.
If the inner-cities were populated by red-haired albinos, and the history of these inner-cities was what it is, we’d have stopped reporting on every murdered red-haired albino too.
A related test:
You’re an average white Connecticut resident. You come out of a downtown (wherever) club and need to walk a couple of blocks to the nearest subway. On one side of the street, between you and the subway entrance, are four black men in suits with briefcases standing and talking. On the other side of the street are four young white rowdy males with a loud boom box, low-slung jeans, gang ‘tats, etc…
Which side of the street would you take to get to the subway? Is it race or behavior that’s going to be your deciding factor? It’s behavior every time, in every situation, isn’t it.
It’s not just the underreporting, but how the reporting is being done. I’m not sure that anyone is saying that this is entirely race-related either. The point of the press conference was that all life is valuable, and that when crime happens in urban areas, the victims should also be mourned. The discussion was about the treatment of urban crime, and yes race ties into that, but so does class. Part of the press conference involved the community activists having a real powerful discussion on how class and race are linked…too bad that segment got edited out of all the mainstream media’s reports.
Not every crime victim in Hartford is black. Not every person who lives in Hartford is black. These assumptions that I’m reading about need to be carefully evaluated.
Also, the two murders in Parkville have been discussed respectfully on Colin McEnroe’s blog. The mesh mask found over one of the victims’ faces? His mother thinks it was probably what he wore to cover his braids.