Over
the Juneteenth weekend, 9 people were shot in Harlem. Among them was
Darius Lee, an aspiring basketball player from the mostly black
neighborhood, who was the only one killed in the mass shooting. The
wounded included two women and six men in a shooting that began over the
filming of a rap video.
Over 40 shots were fired.
Elsewhere
in the Big Apple, a gunman ran up to three men in Queens and opened
fire with a rifle, wounding two and killing one. Dwayne Whyte was
arrested in the shooting.
"When is enough going to be enough? When we gonna put these guns down?" a community liaison asked after the Harlem attack.
"The
emboldened individuals responsible for this are exactly who our
officers are battling every day to make our city safe," NYPD
Commissioner Keechant Sewell said.
The New York mass shootings were one of a number of shootings over the Juneteenth weekend.
In Washington D.C., the “Moechella” illegal street party “celebrating black culture and protesting gentrification” turned into an even more illegal firefight with one killed and three wounded.
“We
have a child who was killed today at an event that did not have any
proper planning for the number of people who were here and with guns
involved,” DC Mayor Muriel Bowser complained.
But Chase Poole, the 15-year-old boy, had his own gun on him and had been shot twice before, including once this year.
One of the wounded was a D.C. cop.
Moechella organizers posted a
statement thanking everyone for coming to the "Juneteenth activation"
and declaring that Moechella is a "symbol of black culture in dc and is
built on the foundation of peace."
“At some point and time, we
have to say enough is enough," a neighborhood activist said. "It's not
enough to wax poetic about what police do to Breonna Taylor, or about
what happened to George Floyd if we don't also have the same level of
care and concern for what's going on in our communities."
In Los
Angeles, Juneteenth came to Obama Boulevard as two were shot in a car
near a Target store, killing a 17-year-old boy but leaving two
4-year-olds in the back seat unharmed.
In Philly, nine Juneteenth shootings wounded six and killed three.
One of the deadliest incidents happened at a cookout where the crowd
was watching an NBA game before a drive-by shooting killed one and
wounded another.
On the southwest side of San Antonio,
Juneteenth was marked with a drive-by mass shooting at a family BBQ.
Seven people were shot and two of them killed.
"I did hear some of the kids screaming, 'that's my dad, that's my dad'", one witness described.
There had already been a previous drive-by shooting at that same house back in May.
In Columbus, Ohio, three people were shot
during Juneteenth as "two groups of males" got into an argument and
"pulled handguns and began shooting at each other." The Columbus
Dispatch describes shootings in the area as a "not uncommon occurrence."
In
Chicago, where the lack of shootings would be more uncommon, 47 people
were shot in honor of Juneteenth. The victims included an 11-year-old
girl. A 16-year-old boy was also shot in the arm and a 17-year-old girl
was grazed by a bullet. Fredrica Coleman, a black 36-year-old woman, was shot and killed.
At
the Tysons Corner Mall in Fairfax, Virginia, Juneteenth was rung in
when rapper No Savage allegedly opened fire at the mall during an
argument before driving away in a black Cadillac. The Washington D.C.
rapper was easily identifiable by a neck tattoo that reads, "SAVAGE".
Three shoppers were injured while fleeing the shooting.
In Baltimore, five people were killed and 10 wounded over Juneteenth weekend.
That neighborhood has seen 8 murders in the past few months and two just on that block alone.
“My
boys know the difference between gunshots and fireworks. They shouldn’t
have to know the difference,” A local woman whose children were playing
not far from where a previous murder victim died, said.
Graffiti on the scene read, “NO SHOOT ZONE #168.”
One of the Baltimore dead was Trevon White, the owner of a soul food eatery, who had given an interview before the shooting.
"Baltimore City is a great place to open a business," he claimed.
Shortly thereafter he was dead.
In
Indianapolis, three people were shot at a gas station, but witnesses
refused to cooperate. The city has hit a new record with over 100 murders in less than six months for only the third time in its history.
In New Orleans, 14 people were shot over Juneteenth weekend. Two of them have died. In Milwaukee, there were 14 shootings that wounded 15 and left 3 people dead. In Detroit, there were two shootings
in a single park in which four victims, all black, were shot, one of
them fatally. In Nashville, a man with tattoos over his eye and on the
back of his neck opened fire at a garage at Rep. John Lewis Way.
‘Good trouble’, this isn’t.
The
media made much of Biden creating Juneteenth National Independence Day
last year and the celebrations this year. There are articles on how to
celebrate Juneteenth without "cultural appropriation". But it might be
better to celebrate it without violence and mass shootings.
Slavery is long since over, but black communities across the country remain in thrall to crime.
It
isn’t “systemic racism” that threatens black people, but everyday
violence that takes no holidays, that erupts just as regularly on Martin
Luther King Day and on Juneteenth, and on streets named after Obama and
Rep. John Lewis. Externally the solution may be police and a functional
criminal justice system, but internally the change has to come from
within.
It’s been a long time since black people needed to be liberated from white people.
Activists
act as if the critical issue is a liberation from some nebulous
external force, systemic racism, white supremacy, white privilege, or
unconscious bias. Black Lives Matter activists and successful
politicians, businessmen and generals claim that they feel threatened by
police. But the sad truth is that, like the rest of us, the enemy and
the threat comes from within.
The only meaningful liberation that
still needs to happen on Juneteenth is a moral revolution. Until that
revolution comes, Juneteenth will be a bloody reminder that the
liberation that matters is not that of the body, but of the soul and the
spirit.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
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