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Hartford Courant - June 18, 2006
Families lament violent losses in city
IN RALLY AT BUSHNELL PARK, GROUP LED BY MOTHERS SEEKS ANSWERS
by Colin Poitras
Four years after her 20-year-old son Randy was
shot to death while sitting in a car on Barbour Street, Henrietta
Beckman still hurts.
And every time she hears about another fatal
shooting in Hartford, Beckman sympathizes with the mothers
and brothers and family members who mourn the loss for she
knows the victims extend far beyond those who died.
On Saturday, Beckman was joined by about two
dozen other family members and friends who gathered under
the Bushnell Park Pavilion to honor those they love and lost
to violence with speeches, music and prayer.
It was a somber reunion this second annual
Day of Remembrance. And organizers conceded the turnout was
much lower than last year, perhaps a sign of the emotional
fatigue that has gripped this city where 20 people have been
shot, three of them fatally, since May 24.
Beckman and the other members of Mothers United
Against Violence who organized the event tried to make sense
of the violence that has enveloped the city.
"It's been four years since my son was shot
and it seems like it's the same stuff continuing; what they
are doing now is what they were doing then," said Beckman,
noting that her son's slaying remains unsolved.
Beckman said young people need to be held accountable
for their actions and parents need to get more involved in
their children's lives to keep them out of trouble.
Elijah Hooker, 26, said cuts in school funding
for special programs such as music education and a lack of
jobs have left young people disinterested in learning and
with too much idle time. That, he said, can lead to bad habits
and violence. Hooker's stepfather, James Washington, was killed
in 2002. Washington was affectionately known as "the candy
man." He operated a small convenience store in Hartford's
North End and was gunned down in a robbery.
State Rep. Marie Lopez Kirkley-Bey, D-Hartford,
called the increasing violence among disenfranchised young
people a "national epidemic." She said the solutions must
go beyond law enforcement crackdowns.
"In order to win this war, we have to win the
war on poverty, which we never did," Kirkley-Bey said. She
said schools, politicians and parents must do more to keep
children engaged in learning to give them a better chance
in the future and to stop the cycle of poverty and despair.
`We are putting out generations of young people
who can't read and can't even fill out a job application,"
Kirkley-Bey said.
(Copyright The Hartford Courant 2006)
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