I didn’t intend to write about this today.
But remember the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.”
It takes more than a mother and a father to raise a child in a world where too many fathers are absent and too many mothers are struggling to fill the hole these fathers left behind.
Is the violent behavior we are seeing in our streets a testament to our failure to build that village?
I can’t get the video out of my head of the young mother who was robbed and terrorized — twice — by a group of hooded and masked men who are likely juveniles.
Worse yet, at least three people — a bus driver and two motorists — kept going when the woman tried to flag them down after her assault.
And who can blame them given the carjackings and other crimes that happen far too frequently?
Thank God, the woman was not killed.
I can only imagine how difficult it must be for this young mother to stop reliving the trauma.
But where is the public outrage?
I must have missed the news conference with officials vowing to track down the people responsible for this heinous act.
I’m not naïve.
I know as long as there are humans, there will be good and evil, and we get to choose which path we are going to take.
But it is difficult to remain silent about how brazen criminals have become.
Homicides may be going down, but behind every crime statistic, there is someone who has been traumatized while doing the ordinary things of life.
The Rev. Oscar Crear, pastor of New Tiberia Baptist Church at 911 S. Kedzie, and a longtime activist and grief counselor who routinely witnesses the impact of violence on families, is trying to rebuild the village.
On Feb. 24, he hopes to bring together 100 mothers at his church to pray about violence, trauma and grief in their communities.
“We have lost about two generations, if not three,” he said. “I have buried three sons in one family.”
He added that he was collaborating with a church in Indianapolis to pray at the same time as the women in Chicago.
“The goal is for mothers to come together to strengthen each other,” Crear told me.
It would be a mistake to leave grandmothers out of the corporate prayer.
Lashawnda L. Pittman, the author of “Grandmothering While Black,” points out that more grandparents are currently raising their grandchildren than at any other time in American history.
Think about how difficult that has to be, especially when an infant boy becomes a disobedient teenager.
When young people get caught up in criminal activity, there’s enough blame to go around, Crear said.
“If I see you with $150 pair of gym shoes and I don’t ask where you got them from, it’s collusion,” he said. “We couldn’t bring anything home that my mother didn’t buy.”
I believe prayer can fix what goes wrong.
But I also believe, in some cases, parents should be held accountable for their child’s criminal behavior.
For instance, parents who turn a blind eye to their children who hide illegal guns in their homes and those guns are used in crimes, should be prosecuted.
The Michigan jury that convicted the mother of school shooter Ethan Crumbley of involuntary manslaughter could set a precedent in cases involving school shootings and mental illness.
“One of the things that I hope happens is that younger women form partnerships with older women, and that it will open the door for them to come to counseling to try and redirect their lives and their children’s lives,” Crear said.
That’s where the village comes in.
Young people can’t see the consequences of their actions until it is too late.
