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Where children see their siblings in coffins rather than cradles

Chapter 38

 

 

  

The most indescribable and distressing suffering I have met is that which befalls the children whose experiences of depravation and crime help to mold and cripple their minds and entire being for life.

  

  

Not only those forced to imitate begging dogs to survive the violence of our system.......

  

  

- or those trying to get a penny polishing our car windows.......

  

  

- but even more those children whom we directly murder with our negative thinking about them which they already in early childhood have so internalized that they are convinced they have no future.

  

  

What impression does it make on children when they experience their sisters and brothers being shot and killed in the street?

  

  

When I was teaching a school class in Harlem I discovered that there was not a single one of the pupils who had not experienced shoot-outs in the streets, where bullets hit even the most innocent child.

  

  

They refused to believe that I came from a country with no guns. "How do people defend themselves?" they would ask.

  

  

And what impression does it make on a young mother to have to say farewell to her four-year-old son in a world in which it is hard to tell the difference between a cradle and a coffin?

  

  

Come and see how well despair
is seasoned by the stifling air.

  

  

See your ghetto in the good old
sizzling summer time.

  

  

Suppose the streets were all on fire,
the flames like tempers leaping higher,

  

  

suppose you'd lived there all your life,
do you think that you would mind?

  

 

And it might begin to teach you
how to give a damn
about your fellow man!

  

 
 

AND IT MIGHT BEGIN TO TEACH YOU

HOW TO GIVE A DAMN ABOUT YOUR FELLOW MAN ! 

 
 

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