When Deshaun Swanson became another shooting victim in Indianapolis Sept. 19, he was with his mother at a memorial event to mark the passing his buddy’s grandmother, who lived in their neighborhood. Deshaun was killed in a drive-by shooting, as bullets ripped through the house, fired from the outside for no reason that could ever be justified.
He was 10 years old.
It’s rare for one newspaper columnist to write about the work of another. But a column written by Matthew Tully of the Indianapolis Star last week, a few days after this child was killed, deserves comment.
Tully expressed intense frustration, almost a panic, at the violence that permeates some of his city’s neighborhoods. He wrote about “a local and national epidemic of violence.”
“He was younger than most homicide victims. But the epidemic in recent years has claimed many other young lives — one way or another. Teenage victims. Teenage suspects. Teenagers whose lives swirl around violence. It’s almost becoming routine,” he wrote.
“But 10 years old? My God. I can’t put my head around that. As a parent. As a person. ...”
His description of how he felt Sunday morning after learning of the shooting suggested he could see a monster, but his arms aren’t long enough to grab it and stop it.
“I didn’t know what to say after seeing the news alerts,” he wrote. “I wanted to write a column Sunday morning, but I couldn’t put a coherent sentence together.”
After spending some time at a park with his son, he called both candidates running in Indy’s mayoral race to see what they’d say. He called them “thoughtful” and “realistic.”
It was near the end of the column that I decided to write about it at my next opportunity.
“Please don’t think this is just an Indy problem. Or a problem that can be ignored by those of us who live far from where the violence rules. This is an Indiana problem. It belongs to all of us,” he wrote.
“Too many children are vulnerable to the dangers of violence and dysfunction. Too many children are being lost. And we are not doing enough about it.”
In Bloomington, shootings like this don’t happen. At least not yet. We have our own epidemic — sexual assault of young women. Five were reported in the first four weeks of the school year. You can bet that five is more like 50 or 500 in reality, the others going unreported.
But this column is not about that. It’s about the Indiana problem described by Tully: a problem of violence, often involving young people, that continued in Indianapolis last week. A 16-year-old was shot during a drive-by; a 12-year-old implying he had a handgun was arrested in an attempted robbery of a Walgreens; seven pharmacies were robbed in one 24-hour period by suspects believed to be 18 or younger. Youth violence, Indiana’s problem, has many layers and no simple answers. But some things can be done.
More urgency is needed to provide quality preschool programs at taxpayer expense to get kids off to a good start. Gov. Pence just got a pilot program passed in this state, but the research showing the value of such programs is decades old.
More schools need the kind of funding the MCCSC gained through a referendum so they, too, can fund preventionists, interventionists, literacy coaches and counselors and provide wide opportunities for all kids. But the state put that burden on local communities, so those that can afford more get more, and those who can’t, don’t.
Indiana and the rest of the nation need to address the growing wage gap that is enriching some while leaving others with few if any prospects for advancement. That kills hope.
More mentors need to get involved and participate in after-school programs to give young people something productive to do, along with adult role models.
The use of graduation coaches, as we have in Monroe County, needs to be increased, but also provided stable funding. Even in Monroe County, that proven program lives a paycheck-to-paycheck-style existence.
We need to figure out how to put more teens to work, giving them the skills, experiences and tools to improve their lives.
Yeah, I know. It’s much easier to identify the needs than to meet them. But we’ll never get there without reaching the place Tully found himself in last week, when he wrote:
“Another child has been lost to violence and hate, and so many others remain at risk. We have to do more.”