100 Days And Forgetting Her Name

By John W. Fountain

Dateline: CHIRAQ—One hundred days later, and we don't remember her name. I am sure. It is gone. Vanished in this land, where the innocent die young, like a candle in the wind.

Pushed into the far recesses of our minds, away from the daily cares of our lives, out of conscious sight, safely miles and miles from our own front doors. Her name. We have forgotten.

Ours is a sin of omission, a defense mechanism. Selective amnesia, it is a byproduct of living in middle class–to-upper middle class sanctuaries, away from the bullets and murder that reign on the blocks of Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods. We don't care. Not really. Don't give a good goddamn.

Or else we’d do something. Relieve ourselves of excuse making and hand wringing. Of shrugging our shoulders and wondering aloud if this senseless murder is the “new low,” the one that will really finally make a difference.

It won't. Not until “we” collectively have grown sick and tired enough to do something. Finally.

Rwanda. The Holocaust. American slavery. Lynching. Neither just went away. They raged like wildfire, assaulted the psyche and soul, decency, and the spirit of humanity—until humankind decided we had had enough.

Think about it: We can find Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in the desert. We can stealthily penetrate another sovereign nation’s airspace, storm a fortress and capture Osama bin Laden. We can put a man on the moon. But we can't catch “Pookie” on the corner? We can’t bring an end to the killing, make the streets safe so that children can at least go to school without fear and that we can proceed with the hard work of community rebuilding? We can’t? Or we won’t?

Maybe there is too much payola in the pathology and perishing of the poor.

Former President Bill Clinton called his failure to intervene at the beginning of the Rwandan genocide one of his biggest regrets. “If we'd gone in sooner, I believe we could have saved at least a third of the lives that were lost...it had an enduring impact on me,” he was quoted as saying.

How long will it take? How many daughters, sons, mothers, grandfathers and other innocents must be slain? At more than 500 homicides in Chicago so far this year and more than 3,000 shootings, when will enough finally be enough?

Rahm, Obama, Rauner, the police, the church, there’s plenty of blame to go ‘round, plenty of folks to hold accountable for the lawlessness of Chicago streets, where black and brown children are afraid to make the oft treacherous journey to school and the just as treacherous journey back home. Afraid to go outside and play. Afraid to be near windows inside their homes—aware of the possibility of stray bullets.

War zone, young thugs without regard, absentee fathers, mothers who make excuses for wayward sons, the “Afro-stocracy” who have long since fled the block for the burbs and see this murderous scourge as “theirs” rather than as “ours”. We are all to blame.

But what the hell are we going to do about it?

As a former crime reporter for the Chicago Tribune in the 1990’s, I remember the 900-plus annual tally of murders. The latest outrage. The history of this city sinking to a new low with news of an unfathomable slaying in this the home of John Wayne Gacy, Richard Speck and Al Capone. Serial killers and underworld mob bosses have left their stain.

But the new urban gunslingers—serial killers—who fire into crowds of innocents; who murder on tree-lined blocks with the ease with which the milkman used to make home deliveries; who open fire as school children make their way; who have transformed the streets of black and brown neighborhoods into bloody killing fields; have left their own inerasable stain. And they have become a consuming cancer.

Call them “feral boys.” Call them thugs. Call them killers, young G’s, murderous, recalcitrant urban youths armed with war weaponry—whatever makes you feel warm and politically-correct-fuzzy inside. But know this: They are a menace—not just to the hood—but to society.

And we can all run, but we can’t hide. For you cannot control chaos. Chickens come home to roost, Brother Malcolm X said. None are exempt.

The answer is much more simple than complex. Less political, more pragmatic. It boils down to a question of our collective will to stop the killing that feeds an economic river that flows with black and brown pathology, imprisonment and poverty from which corporations and individuals, most of them white, benefit.

So it’s tick-tock; the gun’s cocked; another ghetto kid gets popped… The killing won’t stop. So we forget their names…

How else could we live with ourselves? Explain how we stood by and watched the genocide of a race of people and did nothing? How babies and little girls and boys were slain with assault weapons and residents in a world-class city in the most powerful country in the world were prisoners of war inside their own homes while miles away a glowing Ferris wheel turned on the daunting shoreline in this glistening magnificent city?

Here in Obama’s town. Land of The Boss Daley. City of Broad Shoulders—though apparently not broad enough to shoulder the weight of making its poorest neighborhoods safe for the children to simply play outside.

By the way, her name is De’Kayla. De’Kayla Dansberry. Slain at 15. Fatally stabbed in the chest by a 13-year-old girl. I wrote about her. A song for her: “An Ode to De’Kayla.”

I set my words to my friend trumpeter Orbert Davis’ wailing horn, created a video and joined Davis in his call to remember, reason and reflect on De’Kayla for “the next 100 days” and also on this insatiable plague called murder that continues to steal our daughters—and sons.

One Hundred days for De’Kayla. “Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone” was the refrain between my vignettes of blood-bathed tragedy and incalculable carnage .

Today, Sept. 18, marks the 100th day.

Her name is De’Kayla Remember? De’Kayla.

Say her name: De’Kayla.

With tears, on the 100th day of our vigil, I say her name. I will not forget.

Email: Author@johnwfountain.com

Website: www.author@johnwfountain.com