On September 20
of last year, three-year-old
Chazarus Hill, Jr. met a violent death at the hands of his
23-year-old father, provoking an outpouring of
grief and outrage in Oakland, California. Neighbors and family
members say they repeatedly warned the local social service
agency that Chazarus was being abused. Five months later, agency
officials absolved themselves of any blame in the case, claiming
they did everything they “were supposed to do.” On March 15,
the child’s birth-mother and grandmother sued Alameda County
Child Services and the Oakland Police Department “for not acting
on warnings the boy was in peril,” according to the Oakland
Tribune. The
following article was written by Daphne Muse shortly after
the death of Chazarus
Hill, Jr., for broadcast on Pacifica radio station KPFA’s Morning
Show.
I
cherish living in a city surrounded by acres of Redwoods, miles
of amazing shoreline
and thousands of people who work so very hard for a better life
for their children and themselves. I’m also a founding member
of the “East 23rd Street Posse for Peace in Oakland and around
the World.” But the ongoing annihilation of life continues to
sear my spirit. Before the body of number 92 had barely cooled,
Oakland's 93rd homicide was sacrificed at the altar of violence,
only two blocks from my home. And then on the heels of
those horrors came the murder of three-year-old Chazarus Hill,
Jr. His 23-year-old father has been charged with one count of
murder, two counts of child abuse and assault on a child. Chazarus,
also fondly known as Cha Cha, allegedly was beaten when he did
not give the correct answers in a counting and alphabet game. This
tender little spirit lived in a home where his grandmother and
stepmother bore witness to the seemingly relentless abuse and
battering and in a community where neighbors took appropriate
actions and called both the police and Child Protective Services. Those
neighbors stepped up, trying to keep this little boy’s emerging
life from being claimed by the repeated brutalization of his
father.
In
2002, 113 homicides were recorded in Oakland, California, a
33% increase over 2001. This
year alone, there have been even more recorded murders than occurred
by this time last year. Unlike the neighbors who did all
they could to intervene on behalf of Chazarus, too many neighbors
are frightened out of their wits or disconnected from community
to provide information that could solve some of the mounting
killings in Oakland. The lack of viable and sustainable community
police relationships doesn’t serve us well either.
In
many instances the
killings, and attending drama, have become a kind of sport and
entertainment comparable to what the gladiators did during the
first Roman Republic in the 6th century B.C. and that's
now being done in Iraq. The killings, and the teddy bear and
Hennessey shrines immortalizing these mostly young black men,
infuriate me. Why was their manhood interrupted? Why couldn't
they have become wizened elders after whom schools, sporting
arenas or affordable housing complexes would be named? Why
didn't their hands demonstrate the skill to create, invent or
hold the surgical tools to save lives instead of positioning
Glocks, 380 Colts or Berettas made to snuff them out? Did
walks along beaches, taking a scout troop fishing or attending
their child's school play – life's simple pleasures – constantly
elude them? Black men kill too many of each other too often
for reasons that have everything to do with societal madness
made personal. I saw a similar play on black-on-black violence,
when I returned home to Washington, D.C. in 1967, after graduating
from college in Nashville, Tennessee.
In
the twenty-six years I've lived in the Fruitvale District of
East Oakland, I’ve heard
the sky burst with the repeated fire of shotguns, smelled the
rancid post mortem vapor of an expiring soul and felt the lingering
spirits of those who struggled to gasp for that last breath before
dying. On one occasion, I took one of the handmade quilts
passed down in my family and covered the bullet ridden body of
a man who lay dying in the middle of an intersection, half a
block from my home. I've also seen mothers and grandmothers
come to the places where their children and grandchildren were
gunned down and sob from the core of their souls trying to wish
them back to life.
The
almost three decades of the terrifying sounds of gunfire piercing
the sun drenched
day, starless night or crack of dawn skies has subsided significantly
in the community where I live. In the last two years, the
sound of gunfire and sirens has gone from an almost weekly riff
on the backbeat of life, to an occasional sound puncturing the
dense fog that often settles across the Oakland Hills like a
shroud.
It's
been months now since I've seen clusters of sometimes handsome
young men with
intelligent eyes "on call" clinging to corners like
roaches on a stove. Some of them were round-faced little
chocolate boys who used to come to my house on Halloween for
my annual book giveaway. Too many of them grew up to become brutal
men claiming corners, killing others fresh out of puberty or
being killed at the hands of family members, once upon a time
friends or homies from their infamous posses.
For
more than twenty-six years, six black men lived on my block. Four of those men regularly
got up, went to good jobs and managed to avoid the local weapons
of mass destruction that claimed so many others. One of
the six, a retired gardener who spent 30 years working at UC
Berkeley, mentors the neighborhood odd jobs man. And one
of those six men was a legendary dope dealer whose life was snuffed
out more than ten years ago. While I applaud the efforts of
now hundreds of black men who have organized to provide the emotional
support, love and care many of these young men so desperately
need, despite their rantings to the contrary, I'm equally disheartened
by the lack of conflict resolution efforts on the part of those
who provide national leadership and drive public policy or appear
on the big screen.
Revenge
circumnavigates our society on a daily basis. Fifty Cents’ festering feuds with
dudes who can’t shoot straight and George Bush's latest campaign
to avenge the dissin' of his daddy compound efforts to bring
these young men to any table to learn how to speak a language
that clearly identifies the rage, while acquiring the skills
to place that rage into something creative, productive and life
affirming. Driven by the conviction to build solid communities
where children play, attend good schools and go out into the
world and pursue wonderful dreams, thousands of mothers, teachers,
ministers, longshoremen, students and boys on the cusp of puberty
continue to press forward to provide alternatives to the violence
beyond the hyperbole of hope.
But
we also continue to live on the edge of the next round of gunfire
and the almost
certain annihilation of a spirit connected to a mind that could
have developed a cure for cancer, written a Pulitzer Prize winning
novel or become Oakland's father of the year. On those
days when I used to stand at the bus stop awaiting my public
transit limo to take me to conduct research at UC Berkeley for
a book I’m writing on Pulitzer winning-poet Gwendolyn Brooks
and teach my class in children’s literature, I look around wondering
if any of the young men clinging to the corners would one day
lay down their guns, board that bus and go to Berkeley to get
another kind of learning groove on.
Chazarus
Hill, Jr. never even got to go to kindergarten, let alone college. Maybe
his spirit will be honored one day when one of those young
men, with
intelligent eyes, clinging to the corner, puts down his gun,
picks up some books, earns a degree and works with fathers like
Chazarus Hill, Sr. to prevent them from abusing and killing their
own or anyone else.
Daphne Muse is a
writer, social commentator and poet. Visit her website, www.daphnemuse.com.
Her e-Mail address is [email protected].
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