Read on Twitter
I'm seeing check-on-your-peoples posts and hearing about shots fired just about every day lately. And it's always heartbreaking when you finally learn about who didn't make it home. This young man was gunned down in Jefferson Park the other night. https://www.gofundme.com/f/paying-tribute-to-nabor
He had just turned 24. He had no gang affiliation, but when you're Black or brown & live w/in gang territories your mobility is constrained all the same. You get pressed. You could be killed in a case of mistaken identity. Or you could just be hit by a stray bullet.
As his cousin notes, even in gentrifying neighborhoods, the residents of color are still beholden to a different set of rules that white folks are largely oblivious to. https://twitter.com/orangutanagram/status/1338997111283613698
What white folks do tend to do is call the police a lot, however. Which tends to subject everyone in that neighborhood, gang-affiliated or otherwise, to more intense scrutiny and harassment...making them feel they have even fewer places to turn. https://twitter.com/orangutanagram/status/1338997112772591616
I haven't published a lot lately because I've been working on a set of longer pieces on the legacy of underpolicing/overpolicing and how that's been left out of the conversation around how we reimagine public safety and reform policing.
As I've said in a number of threads this year, the fact that folks have been harassed for generations by police about who they are, where they are going, their parole status, etc. every time they, their family members, or their friends step into the public space...
...but are underpoliced in the sense that they can't call on police without they or their children or grandchildren being subject to an interrogation and criminalized or disrespected or dismissed has left youth feeling like they have to find ways to fend for themselves.
Gangs provide that security in the street, that surrogate family, or that way to feel respected when everything coming at you from the city and law enforcement tells you you own nothing and are worth nothing...it's a way for many to take back some sense of power.
But their communities and families pay a really heavy price for it, and the cycle of trauma continues.
Young men trying to stay alive tell me they can't stand at the bus stop too long. Can't walk to the corner market. Can't visit a friend or go to the park or their job w/out taking a long circuitous route to avoid passing thru particular hot spots. Or this https://twitter.com/orangutanagram/status/1338997121056264195
I said 'go to the park' above, but the truth is a lot of parks - or at least certain sections of parks - are off limits bc they're controlled by gangs. Either way, you're exposed and it can be an uneasy experience depending on where you are... too few walls to hide behind.
Or the police can spot you hanging out there and harass you more easily.
After spotting Ed Mendoza's thread about his cousin I logged into our @streetsblogla account and saw we'd been tagged in this breathtaking abomination of a tweet. It was about another shooting, but made me 
out loud all the same.
out loud all the same.
There is such privilege in assuming that tinkering with the public space to fit the access you can already take for granted is the solution to the legacy of segregation, repressive policing, and the other deep structural harms that constrain the mobility of Black and brown folks.
Just for reference, the red marker is around the area where Nabor was killed. Slow streets (blue dashed lines) can be seen just a few blocks to the east.
There's always more to say about these issues. But please support Nabor's family. https://www.gofundme.com/f/paying-tribute-to-nabor
