You Can't Have Social Justice Amid Social Collapse

NOTE: This post is about conditions in New Orleans but it could dlscribe many urban areas. When your Black police superintendent tells the public his agency is arresting career criminals but your Black District Attorney isn't prosecuting them, it's time to sit the DA down and ask him, Brother, do citizens need to sue your office to make it do its job?

Otherwise, Black and other Working Class crime victims are being told in so many words their lives don't matter. My safety advocacy began in an era where Black crime victims lives didn't matter and it seems we're returning to that sad state of affairs, under a different premise. You don't right historic wrongs by giving a pass to criminals disinterested in that history nor lives and property of people they victimize. You can't have social justice amid social collapse. It's hard to reform ruins. Too many young Black men and women here are wounded and murdered by armed felons with lengthy violent crime histories; too many women are being beaten and sexually assaulted; too many cars stolen and windows broken whose owners can't afford to lose or repair to just let career criminals keep doing this uninterrupted. It's not the ghost of Jim Crow possessing people to commit all this crime. We must reconcile past injustice with present injuries.