By K Webster

In our neighborhood in November a teenager was fatally stabbed by another teen. It could have easily gone the other way, or the moment could have passed with just an exchange of harsh words. But a flash of anger/frustration/fear and one of them is dead and the other is left to live with that act. How did it get like this? How many years of discouragement about your chances to live a big life? How many times being humiliated? How much meanness from grownups that is then batted back and forth amongst your peers? How much poisonous talk about each other’s people? How much scarcity of resources — of housing you can afford, of work that matters, of schools that have the ability to pay attention to who you are? Where did we stint on kindness, on respect? What did it take to allow two young people to get so lost?

No parent alone can stop the onslaught that faces our children. No community is immune.

Nearby the neighborhood sits Wall Street, tinseled, but no less bleak.

We need to figure out how to stop this from happening to our children. A community, working together, just might be able to. But we’d have to mean it.

I don’t know how you do justice to a life that ends like that, but I can’t let it pass as just another line in the Police Blotter. I wrote this that night:

Cornflowers From the Police Blotter

I woke up thinking about cornflowers. They’re blue.
Do I got that right?
Nothing special. A weed? Blue.
Light blue?
Weedy.

*   *   *

Last night I held the head of an 18-year-old boy who lay on the street. Knife wound to the chest.
I hear screams and see people running.
I go to the spot they are running from and see a young man stretched out on the sidewalk.
Dozens of young people mill around, fearful. Some cry.
I cover him with my jacket and sit down at his head.
Another woman comes and keeps pressure on his wound.
His cousin sits down.
His eyes dart. He tries to sit up. We tell him to stay down.
I speak quietly, gently.
I want to build a quiet place for him to try to stay alive in. He listens intently.
I tell him: Your cousin is here and she loves you. I call him “sweetheart.”
I say: Stay still, help is coming. You are good. Everyone here loves you.
Don’t close your eyes.
Sirens. I hope it’s an ambulance.
His cousin is bent over him.
She cries. She tells him she loves him. She asks him not to leave. She is wonderful.
He can barely breathe. Sharp tiny hole in his chest.
Life escaping through such a tiny hole.
His eyes turn, searching. I keep my eyes on his.
I keep my voice kind and quiet. I talk. I wipe his forehead. I stroke his head.
We tell him to hold on.
His cousin finds his cell phone. Call his mother.
The ambulance comes after too long. Medic working madly. He knows this isn’t good.
He tells me to keep the boy’s head still. I do.
I talk to him: Help has come. You are fighting this well. You are good. You are a good, good young man. Your mom loves you. We all love you.
For this moment, I care for him with all my heart.
I try to say what his mother would say, do what she might do.
I want this boy to know how precious he is to her, to the world, to me.
But his eyes are fading.
They put a neck brace on him, put him on a board and take him away.
His cousin isn’t allowed to ride with him, but the police promise to take her to the hospital.
I collect my jacket from the ground.
Later that night, I call the police station, but they won’t tell me anything.
I understand. I check online.
He died.
When did he leave? Was it that moment when his eyes opened wide for a second? Surprised. Then that glazed look.
I can’t stop crying. I don’t want to.
He was so young.
He had such a sweet, young face.

*   *   *

His eyes were brown. Don’t know why I dreamed about cornflowers.
I’m thinking cornflowers are beautiful actually.
That pretty light blue.
Astonishingly beautiful, actually.
Precious beyond words.

Webster is co-chairperson, M’Finda Kalunga Community Garden, in Sara Delano Roosevelt Park

By Alphie McCourt

It had been a hot June Saturday in New York City. This was the kind of weather which usually afflicts us in late August. In the early afternoon, Lynn, my wife, and I did some errands. At three o’clock we went to a deli up on Broadway. Lynn had a hot dog. I ordered a corned beef sandwich, ate half and brought the other half home.

In the early evening, Lynn went to the kitchen to prepare a salad. I sat in my daughter’s room, still cooling off. Allison was sitting on the couch.

With the twilight coming on, my mind wandered and I brooded aloud.

“The U.S. is beginning to resemble Britain, in another time,” I said to Lynn, to Allison and to the cat. “The U.S. is coming to represent the only stability in an increasingly explosive world. And our own society is not too stable. It will be very difficult to create stability abroad when we can’t seem to find it at home.

“Our prisons are a case in point. They are a blot on our conscience and a blight on the landscape of our democracy. All too well do we know what happens in our prisons. Along with the prison authorities, we must turn a blind eye to gang control, drug dealing, rampant racism and rape as a way of life, not to mention the festering religious fundamentalism which grows like weeds within prison walls.

“But the situation in our domestic prisons is always overshadowed by more-pressing matters. There’s the economy, one or another war, the Academy Awards, the Super Bowl, the space shuttle or some governor who got into trouble because he had sex with his black socks still on. A few years ago, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib took the headlines for a while. After that it was detention without trial in Guantanamo Bay, and now the forthcoming civil trial of a number of accused detainees, which is to take place in Manhattan.

“As firm believers in human rights, we are duty bound to concern ourselves with human rights violations, everywhere in the world. We certainly are. More important, we are Americans, and Americans have a big heart and we are genuine in our concern. The world was horrified by what happened at Abu Ghraib and we will be judged by what we do with the prisoners housed in Guantanamo. Once again, the world is watching.

“And while we’re doing that, maybe we should give some attention to the abuses in our domestic prison system. We are told that we have the highest number of prisoners of any nation in the world and the highest percentage of prisoners per capita. Why don’t we do something about it now? Are we too busy or too distracted? Or is it because we consider the majority of prisoners to be inferior to us or that they are the wrong color or the wrong class? Do we believe that they deserve to be treated like animals? Some people do, but most people believe in justice and a fair deal. Are we indifferent? I don’t think so. I think we are just distracted, with too much to deal with in our personal lives.

“In line with that, I think we are suffering from fatigue, that we are worn down and worn out by the immediacy, by the intensity and by the sheer volume of all the demands made upon us. Stretched, at home, to the limits of our endurance, from abroad, at the same time, we are both beseeched and besieged. There are only twenty-four hours in the day and, as they say, the squeaky wheel gets the oil.

“I’ll tell you, Lynn, the abuses and deficiencies within our prison system are a major problem. But we could deal with them. Yes we could but, unfortunately, these problems are only symptomatic of so much that is amiss in our society. We need to pay more attention at home, to establish priorities, to make everything a priority. And we must begin now because, if we continue to focus all our attention elsewhere, one day we will pay. Our chickens will come home to roost and they will be bigger than eagles, larger even than elephants.”

“You are right,” Lynn said. “Yes, indeed. I agree with you, one hundred percent. Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. Now, about the sandwich: That half a sandwich you brought home? Do you remember where you put it?”