December 26, 2024

Philly needs new solutions to prevent gun violence. Not conversations. And not parties.

Jim Crowley #JimCrowley

After putting it off for years, I finally got around to participating in the Beer Summit put on by Global Citizen, the nonprofit group that organizes the Martin Luther King Day of Service.

Billed as a “conversation on race, class, and power,” the annual gathering — which began in 2009 when President Barack Obama convened a “beer summit” at the White House with Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley, after Gates’ arrest — was virtual this year, so I could watch the recording at my leisure.

There was lots of good commentary. As Temple University’s David Brown pointed out, “The whole notion of the Beer Summit is to bring different people from different perspectives along and [focus] on a common challenge in a community.”

This year’s theme was gun violence sparked by white supremacy.

Jason Johnson, a Morgan State University professor and MSNBC TV analyst, kicked things off by pointing out that the summit was taking place on the seven-year anniversary of the death of Sandra Bland, who was found hanged in a Texas jail cell in 2015 after being arrested for a minor traffic violation.

» READ MORE: 14 people were shot, including 4 juveniles and a mother accompanied by her kids, during 24 hours in Philly

“So when we talk about gun violence coming from white supremacy, we have to put that in the context that we have a country that has consistently fed itself on violence against Black people,” Johnson said. That violence includes a lack of consequences for people who perpetrate that violence, he added, such as the many murders that go unsolved.

As I watched, though, my mind drifted. Not because this topic isn’t important — it’s arguably the most important topic in the city right now — but because I’d heard much of what was being said before.

I’m all about Philly. And what’s been on my mind more than almost anything else right now is all of the blood that’s being shed every day in this city. So, although I recognize the value in having discussions like these, what we really need right now are solutions.

Case in point: The Philly Beer Summit took place on July 13. And in the 24-hour period from the evening of July 13 through July 14, a total of 14 people were shot, four of them children. Do we need any more evidence that talking doesn’t cut it?

On the evening of July 14, during this 24-hour stretch, Councilmember Curtis “Mr. 4th District” Jones held his annual white linen fund-raiser in Belmont Mansion, which as a friend of mine sarcastically posted out on Facebook “was bangin’.”

This was the 14th Beer Summit; Jones has held his party for many years as well. And Philly just logged its 300th homicide of 2022.

Our old ideas for preventing gun violence aren’t working. What Philadelphia needs more than anything are some big, new ideas about what can be done to stop all of the bloodshed.

We need something more innovative than reinstituting stop-and-frisk, which is a tried-and-discarded method that proved to be racially problematic because of the way it was enforced.

We need something more impactful than raising the curfew for minors.

And we need something much more practical than bringing the National Guard back into Philly.

The one thing that stayed with me after watching the Beer Summit was the story of one of the city’s 300 victims of gun violence, Zachariah Owen Julye, told by his father, Kent Julye.

“We don’t want our 19-year-old, 6-feet, 5-inch, big smile, warm-eyed African American male son to be just No. 258 murdered in Philadelphia,” he told participants over Zoom.

He and his wife had tried everything to keep their son safe: Sent him to private schools, talked to him about protecting himself. But on July 2, they got the call that all too many Philly parents are getting.

They raced to the address on Third Street in Northern Liberties where Zachariah had been at a party and approached an officer to ask about their son. The officer walked away to check and then came back to them with the awful news that Zachariah was dead. He reportedly had left after guns were drawn and was waiting outside for a friend when he was fatally wounded.

His family had done all they could to keep Zachariah safe, but it wasn’t enough. Now, they want justice.

“It’s too late for my 19-year-old son,” Julye told listeners. “His future is snuffed out. It’s over for him. But I’ll be damned if I sit and be quiet and not do anything about that.”

It’s time to stop talking and start doing more and come up with new, innovative ideas to stop all of these shootings. Because what we’ve been doing simply isn’t enough.

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