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Adrian Gonzalez mattered
By adamg on Mon, 09/08/2014 - 2:10pm
Brendan Halpin knew Adrian Gonzalez, the 17-year-old shot to death early Saturday near Egleston Square. He is so outraged that he has to write an elegy for him:
Adrian was a person who mattered. His death is a tragedy, and the fact that it happens so often should make us outraged, not inured.
How do you feel about living in a country where stuff like this happens? What are you doing to try to stop it?
What I ask of you is to think of Adrian Gonzalez not as a statistic or as a representative of his ethnicity or his neighborhood. Think of him as an individual: a son, a brother, a friend, or as I do, as a cute, energetic, kindhearted third grader who never got the chance to grow up.
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Comments
Sorry for the death of Adrian Gonzalez, but elegy says it all.
Sorry for your loss Mr. Halpin but neither race nor money can buy moral responsibility. LBJ declared war on poverty 50 years ago. Note the Cadillac Escalades and flat screen TV's in many public housing projects. With public housing and Section 8 scattered all over Boston and the suburbs, the deadly violence is still largely concentrated in Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan. I have several minority Section 8 tenants with Boston Housing vouchers in buildings I own in the suburbs and with proper background checks, all is well. It's not about poverty, it's about a failure of large swaths of certain groups to conform to societal norms. Sadly, it will continue unabated. Keep voting Democrat.
Yeah, okay
Yes, Fishy the Demographer gives us the data-free story of it all, reality be damned.
Oh, flat screen TVs? Is that the new "cel phone" dogwhistle now?
http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/ele/4658480471.html
Did you really
just edit in a link for a 19' ten year old tv to try and prove a point? WOW, i never want to be invited to your place on Super Bowl Sunday.
Yes, I did
For good reason: I get pretty really sick of people like fishy hating on the poor by pretending that extremely common things that are freely available for very low prices are somehow wasteful luxuries.
Everyone knows the poor must
Everyone knows the poor must never have even a few nice things to enjoy ever, after all.
Luxuries
Things like top of the line cell phones, large flat screens and fancy cars are luxuries, not just "nice things." There's something very wrong when a person who's allegedly too poor to pay for food and shelter and has those necessities provided by taxpayers drives a $50,000 car, talks on a $600 cell phone and watches basketball on a $2,000 60" TV.
Yeah, damn welfare queens!
And you know there are large numbers of poor people doing this how?
You left out
they're good at eating fried chicken, watermelon, can sing really great and play sports real good!
Don't forget
.loose shoes and a warm bathroom as astutely noted by the great Earl Butz ages ago.
And when they get uppity like this woman http://youtu.be/DYLRusne_7o
Well you better run.
Can't be that naive
There are those who truly do need assistance programs, and there are also many who abuse the system. I do not know what the ratio is, but it does happen and it isn't that uncommon.
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/05/07/i-team-millions-of-dollars-in-mass...
One guess
One guess what the biggest reason they find it hard to "conform to societal norms" is.
Pick n choose
I can't decide if Adam's conscious decision to skip over the part you cited is laughable or insulting. I think it's somewhere in the middle.
OK, pal, here's why I skipped over it
When I link to a long piece that somebody else wrote, I face a kind of balancing act: I want to give the UHub reader enough of a sense of the piece to want to click on it, but not so much that the reader has no reason to go to the original article at all (unlike certain other aggregating sites we could name). This was a particularly tough article to figure out what to highlight here because I thought it was particularly well written and there were any number of sections I could've copied and pasted. Looking at the comments, I might have chosen another section, because the "third grader" thing would really only make sense if you read the entire article and was not a statement that this 17-year-old was in third grade.
You are doing fine.
Content craft is a new and emerging thing and you just offered up a nice glimpse of how it works.
Who knows if anyone will get it outside of other content people? And this crowd doesn't help by jumping at every chance they can to demand pinpoint specificity.
I like to use a context marker sentence to declare what something is, up ahead, but that is no guarantee everyone will 'get it.
We are inventing a communications future on the fly as as elements constantly move around in some fairly brisk dynamic.
You know what is really sad about your post...O-Fish
is that it has, as of my typing these words, 14 likes.
And, no, it is very much about poverty.
At 7:22, it's up to .....
38 likes. Pretty sad.
And now we are
at 59 likes. So. Sad.
Anons vote early and often
You see, if you have a log in you get one vote.
If you are an anon, you get to vote over and over again, provided that you are a sufficiently obsessive twit to go back multiple times and upvote your comment.
JACKASS ALERT
jackass jackass jackass jackass JACKASS.
Unfair
To male donkeys.
Clarification please.
Just to be clear, Mr. Halpin is saying that being poor and/or minority increased Mr. Gonzalez' vulnerability to violence. You reply that moral irresponsibility, rather than poverty and race, is the issue.
So, is your argument that Adrian Gonzalez' death was the result of his moral irresponsibility? And that being poor and a minority didn't play a role? Since it would be morally irresponsible to make such an accusation against a murdered youth if it were unfounded, I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt and ask you to let the rest of us know: at what point did his irresponsible morals reach the tipping point that led inevitably to his death? What immoral choice did he make? And how was it that there were no mitigating circumstances to relieve him, as a 17 year old, of just a bit of culpability in his own murder?
And since poverty and centuries of institutionalized racial discrimination aren't factors, I wonder why those folks who live in the apparently morally irresponsible neighborhoods of Dorcester, Roxbury, and Mattapan don't just move to Beacon Hill or Back Bay? They're probably just not moral enough, right?
Just a couple of additional clarifications, please:
Could you enlighten us, Fish, about the Escalades and flat screen TVs? I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt again and assume that you're not just pulling baseless stereotypes about "welfare queens" and the like out of your behind in an attempt to minimize a 17 year old's death. In the spirit of that assumption, I'm confident that you can tell me both the percentage and the raw totals of individuals on housing assistance who own Escalades and flat screen TVs.
I'm also interested in hearing more about the "certain groups" you mention. Who are these groups? I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt yet again and assume that you're not just being a run-of-the-mill, online-comment-happy, dog-whistle racist.
Beautiful response.
Your good points and civility appreciated! I hope this opens eyes.
To be more detailed as to why you're a jackass:
"Sorry for the death of Adrian Gonzalez", "Sorry for your loss Mr. Halpin" - NO. You're not sorry about it. You think he deserved it, 'cause he's one of those Section 8 jerks who get low-cost housing and blow their money on Escalades & fancy television & probably drugs, too. His mom was probably a welfare queen, having more babies just to get more cash. He probably deserved it. One less minority to not "conform to societal norms" & cause problems.
Keep voting Republican, you horrid, malicious condescending old jerk. Who the hell are YOU to declare someone else lacking in morals, as you use the death of a CHILD as an invitation to malign him, his family, and his community?
ignorant people say stupid things!
I am the mother of the young man that you speak of! first of all i am not a welfare queen or am i a person that abuses the system! I work and pay taxes just as you do! how dare you speak of my son when you never even knew him or do you know me! people on here speak out of pure ignorance and are obviously lacking compassion and love for a human life! My son was a beautiful person inside and out!!! if you have nothing nice to say then stay silent!!! my family may not live in the suburbs but we are descent human beginnings that help those who need help, feed the hungry, respect and love everyone in our community... can you say the same? Tell me something Mr. Jackass.. when was the last time you checked in with GOD?
OMG Flat Screen TVs!
Next you'll be telling me they have CORDLESS PHONES! And microwave ovens!!!
Ha! Fish made a funny!
And at the same time he was spreading stereotypes about others, his final comment on voting Democrat and his moronic comment about Escalades shows the level of compassion that is endemic in the stereotypical Republican.
I wonder how many Sunday dinners at the Fish house are punctuated with complaints of how he hates putting up with all the niggers and spics that infest his apartment buildings in between courses of brown gravy laden red meat and cheap beer.
Google Street View is usually early morning, right?
Where are all the Escalades parked at that time? Taking a street view tour of the neighborhoods under Fishy's defamation yields a paucity of luxury SUVs.
Do these sneaky undeserving poors keep them in their upscale downtown garages overnight?
No...
They tend to hide them from predatory buy here pay here places that charge them exorbitant interest rates, who keep copies of the keys to said vehicles so that when their overcharged prey miss one bi-weekly payment, they can send a guy around the house to pick the car up and then resell it to someone else and the whole process starts over again with a different sucker.
You know, in case Fish missed the JD Byrider store conveniently serving the Dorchester area.
let's look at this accurately
The person who murdered Adrian was morally irresponsible. How unfortunate our blase attitude about the danger of widespread murder weapons made it so easy for the killer to get a gun.
Misprint?
First, my condolences.
However, we have a 17-year-old and a mention of his being a third-grader. Am I missing something?
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
No, he wasn't a third grader
The author is remembering him when he was.
As a parent
In Boston, whose child attended a wide range of schools with a very diverse student body, I've experienced what Mr. Halpin is going through to some degree. You know the kids in second and third grade and then watch as they grow up, sometimes with joy, sometimes with sadness, often with surprise. In 4th grade some peel off to the Advanced Work classes and then the exam schools or privates or Catholic schools. Their paths don't cross so much anymore. Some thrive, others don't. It can be heartbreaking to learn that the girl you knew as a laughing, rosy-cheeked eight-year-old is now struggling with serious depression or that the cheeky comic kid you remember from the bus stop got into drugs or dropped out of school or yes--got shot. Or shot someone. Or raped someone--that handsome, leaderly kid you always liked, in spite of his reputation as a troublemaker. I can understand the anger and frustration but I'd just ask Mr. Halpin to take it a step or two further. It's not as simple as race or economics though I'd be pretty certain that his kid, like mine, ended up at a high school that was less diverse than his elementary school. What do you do to help those kids who seem so full of promise at age eight but then drift, get sucked down sometimes, it seems? Who end up not only getting shot but end up shooting someone like Dawnn Jaffier--at age 18--and destroying not one but two families?
"It's not as simple as race or economics..."
No, but being white & not living in poverty sure as hell helps.
So...
Do you have a simple solution to poverty and race issues or just a simple comment?
Most of the kids in our elementary were poor. Most of them were not white. You can't act as if the mere fact of being poor and brown is an inescapable sentence to a short life that ends violently--that assumption is incredibly limiting and disempowering. It also belies the experience of the kids have gone on to do amazingly well. I also know plenty of white, MC kids who went off the rails in one way or another, though what most of those kids do have is a stronger safety net when things go wrong.
YOU can't act
as if it's not significantly harder for brown kids than it is for white (& poor than rich). Which is what you were trying to do with "it's not as simple as race or economics". That's all my comment was pointing out; your argument felt far too close to "it's not about race".
And YOU can't answer the question.
But you did a great job of trying to boil down my entire post into some kind of bumper sticker that you can then take issue with. Rah rah. Hey hey, ho ho.
I'm with you Sally
I think you've made your points very well in this thread, Sally, and I agree with everything you've written. Trickycrayon's comments just show he's as useless to engage on this issue as OfishL is on the other side of the spectrum. Everyone claims they want to talk about race, but half of them seem more interested in boiling the views of others down to a bumper sticker to take issue with (a you so rightly pointed out). Threads like this one don't give me a lot if hope that we will make progress on tackling these issues any time soon.
Sorry-
Didn't think you actually expected me to have an answer on how to solve poverty & race relations, as it's not an easy fix. Hence my avoidance of the question.
My only point remains that the way you phrased that particular line sounded too close to "it's not about race" to me. That's all! Not trying to boil your post into anything, just taking issue with a specific sentence.
It's a pretty demanding bunch here
..with excruciating accuracy standards in lieu of any other useful thing to contribute.
People make it too simple
It is environment, be it in the family or on the street, that determines a lot of this, rather than race or economics.
Yes, I have my two examples. As far as race goes, read either of Michael MacDonald's books about growing up in an all white, though poor neighborhood and see how things worked out for the kids that didn't get into Latin. As far as poverty goes, I will give as an example Dawn Jaffier. Not white, but grew up in an environment where she was able to triumph until sadly struck down. As a third, bonus, example, Jared Remy grew up out of poverty and judging by his prison affiliation with the Aryan Brotherhood, fairly white, but things definitely went off the curve for him at some point.
As I will repeatedly say, I will not judge Adrian Gonzalez. Never met him. I just don't like that even has Halpin tries to give some depth to this, people are falling into typical stereotypes.
Then you oversimplify, too
The fact is, race and economics are intertwined in a society that marginalizes people and works to push them into particular environments on account of their racial heritage.
You aren't going to dance around that, or pretend that it doesn't exist.
Yes, but
As Adam points out, economics is a big driver of violence, regardless of race, but economics in of itself can't be blamed.
As far as race being a factor in the marginalization of people, I would love to say that it is not true. I could look at my neighborhood and at the racial, social, and economic diversity and say that in fact this whole idea of the "ghetto" where people are stuck is a bit of a fiction, as Fish was trying to say. However, be it some kind of self segregation (why are people from Dorchester all moving to Randolph and Brockton?) or some overall pressure from "the man" (why aren't there more black people living in, I dunno, Weymouth?) there does seem to be concentration of poverty and segregation.
You calling out on me is true. But I didn't write the elegy. I would have left it with remembrances of a young Adrian Gonzalez. By trying to find some larger reason why he is dead, one wanders into a minefield of ideologies.
The issues are indeed complex...
however, poverty and its effects (I kindly suggest that perhaps you to read up on Toxic Stress Syndrome), very much do come into play.
I've confused myself
Yet I won't edit myself.
Yes, poverty is a big driver. People can escape poverty, but it's not easy.
Just how easy
http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/
In Boston, if you are born into the bottom 20% of the income distribution (family income of $26,000/yr or less), then your chance of getting into the top 20% of the income distribution ($109,000/yr or more) as an adult is less than 11%.
Well said.
The death of Dawnn Jaffier is going to haunt me for a long time. She was clearly an extraordinary young woman but also someone who was, no doubt, going to help so many other young people in Boston--her loss is going to echo in a thousand ways.
Jared Remy is an example of
Jared Remy is an example of privileged rich kid who should have been jailed as a teen but instead slapped on the wrist until he murdered his girlfriend / mother of his child in broad daylight in front of witnesses.
AND Jared parents who used their money / influence to keep him out of jail and keep the abused victim from testifying - are suing for custody of the motherless child. Prime example of how money and priviledge get a different rules.
Good point
However, the theory is that race and economic conditions somehow affect outcomes. Sure, in the short term, Remy was able to use family influences (allegedly) to avoid the effects of his criminal activities, but compare that to what might sadly happen to the murderer of Adrian Gonzalez. People will stay silent. He (and we assume it is a he) will be free to walk the streets. The rules of the street will trump the rule of law. The cycle of violence will continue.
In the end of the day, it is the same thing, just from opposite sides. Except, of course, that Remy is thankfully behind bars, unfortunately too late.
Plenty of poor people of all
Plenty of poor people of all ethnicities don't join gangs and randomly murder each other. It's a major issue of character or lack thereof not race or economics.
Yes, they do, but don't let your ignorance of history stop you
You always find gangs in poor areas. There were gangs in Charlestown when it was all white and poor, there really were "gangs of New York" that were all Irish (and Jewish, too - Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel didn't just emerge out of nowhere as fully formed mobster). The history of poor areas is full of the history of gangs. And some of them don't stop when they grow up - just ask all the survivors of Whitey Bulger
America is about a regular gangster parade
..marching through its mawkish centuries.
You could start with Lord Jeff Amherst and his small pox blanket sales routine to wipe out the competition.
The revolution was an argument over sales turf. Someone long ago explained it to me as a series of ethnic gang dynasties that began with free-booting WASPS and each new arrival group had to swab shit and suffer as a kind of passage right.
It is a story of hustling some racketeer grubstake until you can 'go legit'. And that motif still ripples through the seedy side of business all the time.
Anything to the contrary is some worthless fairy tale and the real miracle is that so much good happens despite this ridiculous flailing.
The only really admirable people here showed up on a transient land bridge long before Euromutts ever drifted this way seeking gold and cod.
And then there are those who would have been thrilled to stay home. These two are the foundations of what we have for a conscience and what we can do to improve it.
I may be reading it wrong but...
I think Anon's point was actually that there are criminals and non-criminals across races and ethnicities and that it IS a choice/character issue rather than something tied inherently to race, the way certain people would have you think that certain groups inherit a tendency towards "criminality" or violence.
And I still disagree.
Economics is very much an issue.
And I still think you're missing the point
or at least the intention of the comment. Yes, obviously poverty is a huge driver of crime but not every poor person turns to crime or gangs or violence. And of course as we've seen over and over again, poor kids who turn to crime tend to hurt other poor kids--often it seems as if the "good kids" are the ones who get caught in the crossfire.
I have issues with thinking like this
Specifically, while he goes on about how good Adrian Gonzalez was and how people should be safe in front of their houses, the latter should be true and the former I will take his word for, he makes this note, right after what Fish notes-
I have to admit it, when a kid, male and young regardless of race, is killed in a place known for violence, my tendency is to assume that they did something leading up to the killing, which is wrong and ignorant. However, the quote above is quite ignorant and quite wrong. If the idea that it is okay that levels of violence can persist in areas based on the race and economic conditions therein, we are in big trouble as a nation. The same was true in Charlestown in the "Code of Silence" days as it is in parts of J.P. today.
At the end of the day, I don't know Gonzalez, but it is helpful to remember that he has a family and friends who loved him.
You got this correct.
"If the idea that it is okay that levels of violence can persist in areas based on the race and economic conditions therein, we are in big trouble as a nation."
'In a country where stuff like this happens'
all due respect and RIP to the young man, but 'stuff like this happens' at an alarming rate in only certain neighborhoods in urban areas. It does not happen at a daily, alarming rate anywhere else. And yes, it's very disturbing on multiple levels that this urban violent crime wave has been going on for about half a century now, with no real let up in sight. It is one of the root causes of middle class urban flight, and the decay and downfall of many urban areas of the country.
the fact
The fact that 15 people and counting think this kid deserved to die because poor people have the galleria to own TVs says a lot about the actual forces at work that contributed to his death.
This is Very Sad
Have the police or media yet determined what motivated his killing? To me, this is the most important question. Although it is understandably irrelevant to his family and friends, and their loss is tragic and horrible, the question is really the one that we as a society should be expected to investigate and, once determined, should be expected to mitigate against in the future. Although the loss of this person's life is justifiably mourned by the author of the elegy, unless the killer was motivated literally by the desire to kill someone, or anyone, who lived in that neighborhood, this boy was not shot because of where he lives. In fact, unless it is learned that this was a random murder or that he was accidentally killed, or that the murder was insane in some way, in all likelihood his murderer was motivated by something to kill him. Finding out what motivated this crime is what we are responsible for doing because to say that he was murdered because he was latino or because he lived in that neighborhood is not only untrue, but it does not offer any solution to the real problem. If the solution implied in the elegy is that we, as a society, need to put systems in place to make sure kids are motivated to stay on the strait and narrow I agree, but, sadly, implementing that solution has confounded us forever, not just since LBJ's war on poverty began.
This website reeks of white
This website reeks of white and liberal guilt.
Aw, I feel so bad now
My only consolation is knowing that you'll find comfort over at the Herald.
Guilt?
Nope.
Desire to prevent the murder of kids that are like our own in many ways?
Yep.
Desire to follow in our longstanding Judeo-Christian and American cultural traditions of working to improve life and health for those who didn't win the birth lottery?
Yep.
I think the term you need to learn is empathy. Empathy is not guilt.
Our???
Swirlls you need to chill on that one cause thats a pretty ridiculous statement you just made there
Funny how you find religion
Funny how you find religion whenever it suits you.
Ha!
I was merely pointing out that empathy is a pretty important piece of the religions that many of those who whine about "white guilt" claim to follow.
What "Our"?!!
Judeo-Christian traditions?!
Yikes, Swirls, you went way off the bike trail on that one.
White and liberal guilt?
Here's something interesting about people who like to whine about "white guilt":
When minorities bring up systemic racial inequalities, the same people who complain about "white guilt" call it "playing the race card". Either that or they use dog whistle racism to suggest that those minorities don't want to take responsibility for themselves. It's a catch-22. There's a dismissive epithet for anyone who points out the substantive problems relating to race and equality that need to be addressed.
I don't feel "guilty" but I'm able to recognize facts: minorities in America have had the deck stacked against them for centuries and it takes
1) a clear-eyed awareness of ourselves individually and as a society,
2) a thoughtful approach to social justice, and
3) the social will to change.
"Guilt" doesn't factor into any of that. And dismissing those who are concerned with a more just society as being mongers of "white guilt" is just a tool to avoid the topic. And it reeks of defensiveness.
You forgot #4
4. Not murder each other in the street and have a basic respect for human life.
Though I suppose your flowery speech about a "just society" is just as actionable.
Hey there!
Leave Whitey Bulger and Steven Flemmi out of it!
Why?
You wouldn't be trying to make my statement purely about race, would you? Just curious because I detected undertones of snark and couldn't help but notice the race of the two men in your example.
If your point was that Whitey and Flemmi were from neighborhoods on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, and the level of violence inherit in those communities that we read about daily on here, then we agree.
I dont have an answer (unlike some on here who think they know everything). I just have a hunch the answer isn't going to be packaged neatly into three bullet-points. Its undoubtedly more complex than that.
Though I'm leaning towards you were more interested in making me look like a racist.
Accepting Contradictions
Why must everything be one way or the other? Life is usually not that neat and tidy. It might have something to do with demographics, it might also have to do with some bad choices. Perhaps he managed to be both a "good kid" and a kid who fell in with the "wrong crowd", that would describe a lot of young men. It might have been targeted at him specifically, or it might have been one of those things where you just take out a guy from such-and-such a block to get revenge. Unless some witnesses come forward or suspects are arrested we'll probably never know.
Even if you make all of the most likely case scenario assumptions you're still left with a human tragedy that none of us would wish on any family. Not every case is going to neatly slot into the positions you already hold.