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If you had asked Jane Creba on the morning of her death what the future held for her, what do you think she would have said? Similarly, on the same morning, if you asked the young men who would be firing guns on Yonge Street what they thought the future held for them, what do you think they would have said?

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Did that make her slaying that much different than the 78 others? Were they not someone's child too? Did they not have lives as well? "

This what I found most disappointing. Linda Diebal is an usually progressive writer. However like many other whites (left or right), she became overly sentimental over Creba's death because she was "everygirl".

From the article:"In our hearts on both sides of the border, we know what the solutions are. The real question is do we have the guts to address the issue of racism and make the necessary changes not just in our policy, but in ourselves?"

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Originally posted by The Evil Twin:
This IS the main issue. The author hits it on the head. The issue is not guns or gun violence (our murder rate is more or less the same as in previous years, and much less than the high in 1991). The real issue is RACISM and how most Canadians define themselves ("whiteness" seems to be one way of self-defination, which is why Creba became "everygirl"). An excellent article.

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Well-meaning people want to do something about gun crime. NDP candidate Olivia Chow expressed her exasperation to the Star.

“How many more innocents will it take?” she asks. “We all have to face this. It is our collective responsibility. If we have kids being killed in the streets by other kids, we have to realize that something is very wrong. They grew up in here in Toronto. How did they turn into hardened, heartless and brutal killers? ”

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I see a number of issues to be faced here. Gun-ownership is the least of them. Racism is secondary. Economics is the big, bad elephant in the room. And nobody is going to disturb it.

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if you asked the young men who would be firing guns on Yonge Street what they thought the future held for them, what do you think they would have said?

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I bet they'd take a minute to wistfully mourn that thanks to racism they couldn't fulfill their dream of being a middle manager with a mortgage and a practical sedan, then they'd probably say "well, there's always second choice: being rich enough to throw money around on gold jewelry, status cars, designer clothes and 'bitches'".

Then they might add "Oh ya, and I forgot. That guy that dissed my crew... I'm gonna kill him."

Once denied the opportunity to have a "regular" Canadian life of taxes and quiet obscurity, many of these young men seem remarkably willing to settle for the life of 50 Cent, which is pretty accomodating of them.

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Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:
That's one of the more repulsive things I've ever read on babble. Thanks, Magoo.

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Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:
That's one of the more repulsive things I've ever read on babble. Thanks, Magoo.

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
I bet they'd take a minute to wistfully mourn that thanks to racism they couldn't fulfill their dream of being a middle manager with a mortgage and a practical sedan, then they'd probably say "well, there's always second choice: being rich enough to throw money around on gold jewelry, status cars, designer clothes and 'bitches'".

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Peel away a little of that cleverness and my, my, my.

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Originally posted by a citizen of winnipeg:
Add me to the list.

Peel away a little of that cleverness and my, my, my.

Not a pretty sight.

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Sorry I'm not jumping on the "it's the racism" bandwagon or the "it's the poverty" bandwagon, but I simply don't believe someone decides to join a "crew" and start shooting up Yonge St. over an insult because they've been denied the opportunity to go to community college and be a mortgage-paying, TTC-riding, retirement-plan-contributing schlub like me.

And I'm not saying racism doesn't exist, or that POC aren't denied opportunities, or that maybe lots of POC might want exactly what I do out of life. I'm just saying I don't think that alone can cause someone to decide to shoot someone else over a perceived slight.

And if you're surprised at what I wrote, I'm a little surprised at what others have written as well. Here we have, or appear to have, two groups of individuals having a gunfight on Yonge St. that kills one person and injures several others, over what? Pride? Turf? The right to sell the most drugs in some neighbourhood, and thereby afford the best BMW? And rather than noting that these individuals represent a small, small minority in their community — a community that suffers under the same social conditions as these few — we rush to pin the "real" blame on Mike Harris, cuts to after-school programs, systemic racism, and poverty.

Again, I'm not suggesting these problems don't exist, nor that we shouldn't be fixing them. But what ever happened to simple greed, or plain old macho tough-guy bullshit? How is it that if you or I crave ostentatious luxury and are willing to kill anyone in our path to get it that's horrible, but if you're a gang member it's understandable? How is it that if I were to punch someone for looking at me funny I'd be regarded as a common thug, but if someone in a gang shoots someone for not paying them the proper amount of respect, that's somehow understandable?

And of course there are other questions as well. How it is, for example, that so many people live in poverty, some in worse poverty than the shooters, and yet they don't feel the need to shoot up Yonge St.? And how is it that this lifestyle and this type of crime bears such an uncanny resemblance to a lifestyle endorsed by so many movies and music videos imported from the United States?

It seems as though there's a willingness (or a desire) to ignore simple (and sadly common) greed, callousness and thuggery as primary causes of this kind of violence, in order to substitute some other social ills and call that the cause. Honestly, I'm a little surprised that no anarchist-type has come out to blame it all on Capitalism somehow.

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Speaking of not-so-subtle racism.

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Huh. I hadn't thought I'd mentioned any race. Just gangs. Recall, we don't know the identities of the shooters yet, just that they're rival gang members. Isn't it OK to mention gangs, and the things we know they covet and that they're willing to shoot one another for?

Think about this again for a moment: we don't actually know who the shooters are, what their ethnic background is, what their family life was like, where they lived, how much education they have or whether they have jobs.

And yet we're comfortable assuming that they're POC, underpriveleged, have been denied opportunities and that these experiences must have driven them, somehow, to be on Yonge St. on Boxing Day firing guns wildly.

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
I hadn't thought I'd mentioned any race.

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you merely highlighted the racialized stereotypical icons of 'bitches', 'gold jewelery', 'bling' and '50-cent'.

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Have you read any of the backgrounder pieces on this? I don't have the link handy, but apparently the feud that took place on Yonge is spillover from a feud that's been going on throughout much of 2005, and one of the great tips as to what's going on and who's doing it has been an underground DVD that police managed to get their hands on, containing an assortment of rappers from one side taunting the other, boasting of possessions and turf and implying threats, and a second DVD responding to the boating, upping the threats, etc.

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
apparently the feud that took place on Yonge is spillover from a feud that's been going on throughout much of 2005, and one of the great tips as to what's going on and who's doing it has been an underground DVD that police managed to get their hands on, containing an assortment of rappers from one side taunting the other, boasting of possessions and turf and implying threats, and a second DVD responding to the boating, upping the threats, etc. How can we talk about gangs and gang culture in a way that won't introduce racialized stereotypes?

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Honestly, I'm a little surprised that no anarchist-type has come out to blame it all on Capitalism somehow.

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The first proof is that the drop in criminal violence in New York began
three years before Giuliani ascended to power at the end of 1993, and continued
at the same rate after he assumed office. Better still: the incidence of
homicides committed without the use of firearms in the city has been falling
100 SOCIALIST REGISTER 2006
slowly but steadily since 1979; only gun-related murders declined sharply
after 1990, after having taken off between 1985 and 1990 due to the spread
of the crack trade; and neither of these two curves displays any particular
inflection under Giuliani.20 The second proof is that the ebbing of criminal
violence is just as marked in cities that did not adopt the New York policy
of ‘zero tolerance,’ including those that opted for a diametrically opposed
approach, such as Boston, San Francisco or San Diego – where so-called
problem-solving policing strives to establish ongoing relationships with residents
aimed at preventing offences, rather than dealing with them ex post by
all-out penal repression.21 In San Francisco, a policy of systematic ‘diversion’
of delinquent youth towards job-training programmes, counselling and social
and medical treatment made it possible to cut the number of jail admissions
by more than half while reducing criminal violence by 33 per cent between
1995 and 1999 (compared with a 26 per cent drop in New York City, where
the volume of jail entries swelled by a third during the same period). And
for third proof, from 1984 to 1987 New York Mayor David Dinkins had
already implemented an aggressive and assiduous law-enforcement policy
similar to that deployed after 1993, under the code name ‘Operation Pressure
Point’, which was accompanied by a sharp increase in criminal violence,
and especially homicides.22 Whence it emerges that, contrary to the claims
of the promoters and importers of the ‘Bratton model,’ the policing strategy
adopted by New York during the 1990s is neither necessary nor sufficient to
account for the crime drop in that metropolis.

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It's the same point I was making before Boxing day, in other threads about violence: we're making this huge assumption that everyone wants what "we" want, and that it's the inability to have what "we" have that somehow drives people to join a gang.

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Ironic that you go on to make several assumptions yourself. Like this one:

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Sorry I'm not jumping on the "it's the racism" bandwagon or the "it's the poverty" bandwagon, but I simply don't believe someone decides to join a "crew" and start shooting up Yonge St. over an insult because they've been denied the opportunity to go to community college and be a mortgage-paying, TTC-riding, retirement-plan-contributing schlub like me.

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Here we have, or appear to have, two groups of individuals having a gunfight on Yonge St. that kills one person and injures several others, over what? Pride? Turf? The right to sell the most drugs in some neighbourhood, and thereby afford the best BMW?

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Afford the best BMW? Why not a Mercedes? Why not a Dodge minivan? Interesting you decry later on in your screed that you're amazed anarchists haven't blamed capitalism and here you are providing ammunition for the argument. Conspicuous consumption (BMW) supply and demand (the drug trade). Watch your OWN speculating before casting accusations at others.

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And I'm not saying racism doesn't exist, or that POC aren't denied opportunities, or that maybe lots of POC might want exactly what I do out of life. I'm just saying I don't think that alone can cause someone to decide to shoot someone else over a perceived slight.

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Ok, then what do you think it is? What in your estimation causes someone to become so devoid of any concern for their own life or the lives of others that they draw and fire on each other on a crowded street in broad daylight?

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How is it that if you or I crave ostentatious luxury and are willing to kill anyone in our path to get it that's horrible, but if you're a gang member it's understandable? How is it that if I were to punch someone for looking at me funny I'd be regarded as a common thug, but if someone in a gang shoots someone for not paying them the proper amount of respect, that's somehow understandable?

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Did I or anyone hear say those words "its understandable" about the methods used in the shooting. The whole POINT is that we are grappling to understand it and looking for the root causes that underlie a hopelessness that drives young people in dire circumstances to these methods. I don't CONDONE by any means the methods used by gang members but what do we do about it? My point was that you can be like the US and create a giant prison population or rely on capital punishment and you will NOT put this genii back in the bottle and you know it.

You mention "greed, callousness and thuggery." Explain then for all of us how these attributes began to manifest themselves in gunfire on crowded street corners. How DO people become greedy, callous and thug-like? What drives them to these ends. Are they merely evil? Why were there not so many of these evil people shooting up Toronto's streets in the 80s? Or most of the 90s for that matter?

Make you deal - you don't engage in simplistic arguments and I won't try to either, OK?

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And of course there are other questions as well. How it is, for example, that so many people live in poverty, some in worse poverty than the shooters, and yet they don't feel the need to shoot up Yonge St.? And how is it that this lifestyle and this type of crime bears such an uncanny resemblance to a lifestyle endorsed by so many movies and music videos imported from the United States?

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First question: some do, some don't. We're concerned with those that do or will because as I alluded to above, their numbers and ferocity seem to be growing. Second question: I made the same point in my article. Look it up. We agree on this.

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Huh. I hadn't thought I'd mentioned any race. Just gangs. Recall, we don't know the identities of the shooters yet, just that they're rival gang members. Isn't it OK to mention gangs, and the things we know they covet and that they're willing to shoot one another for?

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We know one caught and charged with pointing an illegal handgun during the shooting:

One of two people arrested at Castle Frank subway station a short time after the shooting incident on Yonge Street is driven into Toronto Police 51 Division station Monday night. Police laid firearms charges against a man and a teen, but said the charges were unrelated to the shootings.
HENRY STANCU/TORONTO STAR

That's an old cutline - police continue to think these two will lead to others involved in the shooting.

And this: Toronto Sun

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Community residents said many of the gunmen involved in the Yonge and Dundas Sts. shooting have gone underground in Brampton, Mississauga and Vaughan.

Some community and church leaders spoke yesterday about establishing a truce between warring gangs.

"A truce can be attained through intervention," said Rev. Don Meredith, chairman of the GTA Faith Alliance.

He said church leaders will reach out to gang members and troubled youth.

The alliance is also trying to find 400 people to mentor 400 mostly black youths.

And from the report on AM640:

Sources tell AM 640 Toronto there will likely be more arrests to come, as the massive sweep to root out gangs continues. Officers are working with other units to find up to 15 gunmen, who are the subjects of border alerts. But members of the black community say most of the gunmen involved in the Yonge Street murder have gone underground in Brampton, Mississauga and Vaughan.

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Let's not be silly here Magoo. Figure the odds.

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And yet we're comfortable assuming that they're POC, underpriveleged, have been denied opportunities and that these experiences must have driven them, somehow, to be on Yonge St. on Boxing Day firing guns wildly.

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I don't think I said that in my column. Other people can speak for themselves here. I specifically wrote:

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When you do not see yourself represented in the mainstream, whether it be on television, in the classroom or the boardroom, one can assume you're not fully thought of a member of the broader community, whether it's Los Angeles or Toronto, the United States or Canada.

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The term is marginalisation. Why would these youths join gangs if the world was their oyster like Ms. Creba?

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Have you read any of the backgrounder pieces on this? I don't have the link handy, but apparently the feud that took place on Yonge is spillover from a feud that's been going on throughout much of 2005, and one of the great tips as to what's going on and who's doing it has been an underground DVD that police managed to get their hands on, containing an assortment of rappers from one side taunting the other, boasting of possessions and turf and implying threats, and a second DVD responding to the boating, upping the threats, etc.

How can we talk about gangs and gang culture in a way that won't introduce racialized stereotypes?

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Wait, I thought you said we didn't know the race of the shooters? And yet here you make an allusion about racialized stereotypes. Apparently, in answer to your question, you can't.

How 'bout a little more?

Canadian Press, January 3

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Pressured to move after the brazen shooting of Jane Creba lifted Toronto's total of gun deaths last year to 52, police and senior bureaucrats from Ottawa, the province and the City of Toronto agreed to meet Wednesday to discuss strategies to curb gun violence.

But a spokeswoman for the Coalition of African Canadian Organizations complained that leaders from Toronto's black community were not invited and suggested that campaigning politicians are only moving to act now because Creba was white.

"We have been calling for a summit for the past three months," Sandra Carnegie-Douglas said at a news conference.

"We've had over 40 black youth die as a result of gun violence, and we have not seen our government react in such an immediate and strong way."

"And so we wonder, if it was a black youth that was murdered on Dec. 26, whether or not they would have moved as quickly. We don't feel that they are taking our issue as seriously as it ought to be taken. To us, it is a continuation of the different way in which we are treated as black people in this country."

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Jim Coyle from yesterday's Star

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A start, maybe, is for Mayor David Miller to speak frankly about all aspects of the project.

He should stop insisting that the alacrity with which yesterday's high-level summit meeting was organized after the Boxing Day shooting death of a 15-year-old girl had nothing to do with the fact she was white, lovely, vivacious, popular and accomplished. The tipping point in this city was always going to be when gun violence spilled into the world of the white middle class. Just as the black community is being asked to accept certain difficult truths, white Toronto should own up to that. It's doubtful that white Toronto will ever forget the name of Jane Creba. It's doubtful that most of white Toronto could remember the names of three of the black youths killed last year.

It's impossible to count the times and ways it has been privately said in recent years that as long as the killing was confined to certain neighbourhoods and certain sorts, few living at a safe distance from the fray would be much bothered.

It's probably in the nature of how people look at things. Either we compare. Or we identify. We say, "We're not like that, it could never happen to me." Or we say, "That could have been my little girl or boy." That identification, as all politicians know, is the engine for political pressure and action.

The mayor should also ensure that, every day and in every way, leadership from Toronto's black communities is involved in brainstorming sessions such as that held yesterday. Black Toronto has paid the biggest price for the gun violence. Black Toronto has the most at stake. And to precisely the extent that it is part of the problem, black Toronto must be part of the solution.

If the best counsel comes, as always, from those with experience, it seems also to contain approaches from all sides of the debate. And just such wisdom was offered yesterday on CBC Newsworld by Dr. Gary Slutkin of Chicago's CeaseFire project, which he said has contributed to significant reductions in shootings and killings in that city.

Better policing and tougher justice is probably needed in troubled communities, he said. But it is not enough. "Law enforcement keeps trying to do more and more and more and be harsher and harsher, but it actually does not make the change."

What's needed, he said, is a huge public education effort aimed at building social disapproval of violence. There needs also to be disapproval expressed from within the community itself. And surprisingly — or maybe not — it's a message best carried by those once involved in violence themselves. "In other words, their peers."

The shift toward acceptability of violence — a trend noted among the young across the U.S. by pollster Michael Adams in his new book American Backlash — "is not driven by just bad people," Slutkin said. "This is driven by a social phenomenon where it becomes accepted, in fact praised, to do the violence."

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[ 06 January 2006: Message edited by: Américain Égalitaire ]

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Originally posted by N.R.KISSED:
It is interesting that even progressives like our friend Keith fall for the Guiliani crime myth

Link

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Didn't fall for it.

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