On the evening of Oct. 9 2017, just before 11 p.m., a 13-year-old boy was shot in the head, fortunately not killing him, but giving him brain damage that he will live with for life. There were three shootings on that night, with increased fire around the time and place where the boy was shot. The boy’s family wanted him and themselves to remain unnamed; however, the community of Little Earth was provoked to protest for the family, and for the boy who was hurt. Around January of this year, two men were identified and placed in custody for the attempted murder of the 13-year-old. After stating that they were going to court for trial, the story does not continue.

On Feb. 12, 2018, at about 10 o’clock in the morning, a woman was injured in a shooting in the Little Earth neighborhood. It happened on the 2400 Block of Ogema Place, in the midst of four or five gunshots, reported from an eyewitness. There have been no perpetrators found or identified, and the story does not continue.

Just a few weeks ago, on Mar. 25, 2018 at 12:20 am, another shooting happened on the same 2400 Block of Ogema Place. 19-year-old Alexander LaGarde was identified and pronounced dead, and 14-year-old Diego Calazda was found wounded, however not fatally, only needing hospitalization for about six hours. CBS Minnesota and KSTP news outlets had heard of and covered the story on the day of the incident, with the respective headlines, “Man Killed, Boy Injured in Overnight Shooting,” and “Little Earth Community Holds Vigil After Man Fatally Shot.” KSTP was the outlet that had also covered the two other shootings I mentioned, with about three articles for the first shooting and one for the second. They followed up with the story of Alexander on the 28th, when the man who was responsible for the murder and assault had been identified. CBS wrote early in the morning of when the shooting happened, on the 26th when Alexander was identified as the victim who had died, and then again on the 28th, when a warrant was put out for the arrest of 18-year-old Juan Antonio Vasquez, Jr., for one account of second degree murder and one account of second degree assault. He also had a charge for carrying a weapon in the first place, being a juvenile, and one who has been convicted before. On Apr. 11, CBS MN published a fourth article about the story, stating that the perpetrator “was arrested Wednesday morning in Naytahwaush.”

The Star Tribune and US News also were outlets that covered the story the day it happened, but they didn’t follow up at all, and the Twin Cities Pioneer Press only covered the story on the 28th, when both the victim and the perpetrator had been identified. None of the three outlets published anything following the arrest of Vasquez, as of yet, and neither has KSTP.

What I find most interesting about this story, is the fact that people keep stopping, just when they start to listen. Our country right now is in the midst of figuring out where we stand, as a unified community, on the issue of guns and the violence that they bring with their existence. And yet, we know for a fact that gang violence is enabled by guns, and we haven’t done anything in the media or in the government or even in our social resistance to give recognition to that, let alone solutions. It’s nearly hysterical to me, that despite gun violence and gun safety being among the top political topics of our day and age, especially at Hamline, and despite shootings across the country (and world) getting coverage that reaches even the Oracle’s headlines, shootings and gun violence in gang-ridden areas still gets condoned. We let it slide like it’s okay in that setting, for those people, because we aren’t there and we aren’t them, and they do it to themselves, so we can’t help them. We act like those people at Ogema Place are so different from the kids at Sandy Hook, or from the people at Marina Vista Apartments. Why do I hear more about shootings in other states than I do about the ones that happen not ten miles from where I live? Where we all live?

I’m not concerned for my safety. I’m concerned for the justice these people deserve. The attention, at the very least. Every minority community that exists in our country gets ignored like this, even though they face every problem that mainstream America faces tenfold – plus a hundred other problems that we don’t even have to experience. We have to deal with the sorrow of our fellow humankind being slaughtered in mini massacres across the world, but they have to watch their friends and their children and their loved ones die, day after day, just because we don’t want to pay attention to them, because we have ‘bigger problems to deal with.’ How can we say that, when their problems are our own? When their problems are in fact probably the epitome of our own? We need to tell their stories, because despite how resilient, protective, and generational gang cultures are, they are dangerous to those who live them, and we need to let them be themselves and live the way they want while simultaneously protecting everyone’s livelihood. That starts with listening, and with letting them know that we have the same concerns and fears that they do. We fear the same fates, we turn away from the same horrors. We all want to protect ourselves – perhaps with guns – and at the same time we all want to make sure that dangers don’t get into the hands of unstable people, who can stand to do harm to others. We are fighting the same fight – why do we keep ignoring that?