Showing posts with label Ghetto Grim Reaper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ghetto Grim Reaper. Show all posts

Monday, February 4, 2008

Not in My Park

Louisville has seen its fair share of violent crimes against children. Not surprisingly one of ideas to combat the problem in "Possibility City" has been a memorial spearheaded by the ubiquitous grim reaper, Christopher 2X.

Well that children's memorial and its planned location, Wyandotte Park, have hit a few bumps in the road. Namely another community activist leaping before he looks and upsetting a neighborhood that doesn't want to be stigmatized as the cities hotel for child murderers.

Read more here
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I’m sure every city has a local activist like Christopher 2X, who hops from tragedy to tragedy under the guise of "healer" or "community activist". or "hood prophet". They are not true community organizers who substantively combat issues by mobilizing constituents from the grassroots up. Instead they’re TV personalities who find an occupation in the web of death. Give him credit, he created a legal job for himself. We can employ many descriptions for this position: misery pimp, ghetto grim reaper, or undertaker-activist.

You pick.

One would think, however, that eventually this shameless ambulance chasing that leads us nowhere would stop. Or at least shrugged off for something more substantive. I guess sooner or later someone: a journalist worth their notepad, a real community organizer, or the general public, will question the productivity of this sort of activism. Until then...

Thursday, January 10, 2008

More Murders Metro

I'm not into the murder news, but after coming off a record homicide rate last year (highest since 1996), which was punctuated by the brazen murder of Donald "Big Don" Boyd, it's important to note that 2008 began with a series of murders. We're not even finished with the second week of January.

Louisville is reaching a tipping point. Over three-fourths of the homicides in 2007 were African-Americans and according to police reports three-fourths were drug related. So much for being a duffle bag boy.

The latest incident was two fatal shootings in less than a day. If we're serious about addressing or reducing violent crime we'd better come up with new strategies. Presently we have airbrushed t-shirts, banning liquor stores and the Ghetto Grim Reaper.