And Your Point, Please?

I'll admit it; Nick Coleman writes an occasional good column. He also writes, natch, some complete howlers, defamatory tripe that in a perfect world would be included in a journalism textbook under the "what not to do" section.

And then there are some, like today's outing, that just confound the reader.

What, exactly, is he aiming at?

No pun intended.

Coleman:

David and Susan asked me not to tell you their last name because they are afraid Minneapolis will follow them: They were recently enjoying a stroll with their young sons when bullets started flying and they had to dive for cover, hitting the sidewalk so hard that the whole family got bruises.

There is worse happening.

Last week, Darius Housch, 13, was sleeping in his family's living room beside his 3-year-old brother when a bullet came through the side of the house and hit him in the shoulder.

Ugh.

Back in the mid-eighties, when gang violence in Minneapolis was just getting started, a Minneapolis cop told me the safest place to be during a gang dustup is the target. This was after an incident where a group of gang members stood across a northside street from each other, blazing away and hitting precisely none of their targets - but hit a boy in an upstairs apartment half a block away, a solid 45 degrees off the line of fire, paralyzing him as I recall.

But do not be alarmed, people. Most bullets miss in Minneapolis, and even when they hit, the kill rate is low. Halfway through the year, 200 people have been shot (1.1 a day), but only 30 have died. Never fear.

As Mayor R.T. Rybak said last week, "Minneapolis is a safe city for those not involved in high-risk lifestyles."

Lifestyles such as sleeping or going for a walk.

I just...

...I dunno. I have read the column three times now, and I still don't know what he's getting at.

Is it a swack at Rybak? Because Rybank was statistically correct; the vast majority of the killings in Minneapolis (and Saint Paul) are of people involved in the drug trade, the gangs that support it, or its customers. Or, of course, people who have the misfortune to live 45 degrees off their line of fire. I'm one of them, by the way - in 1998, a couple of punks rattled off fifteen rounds from a .22 automatic (pausing to reload) at another drug-dealing punk directly in front of my house, late one night. The fusillade broke a window, hold my porch and my attic wall, and, as it happens, not the target.

So is the column sympathetic with those of us who live in the inner city and want to stay here? Who want to take back our streets (our streets from the scum who are shooting each other the innocent with impunity?

Well, no - you can't get upset at the shooters, because then Coleman will call you a racist.

Not everyone wants to stay the course:

David and Susan have cut back on their high-risk behavior by leaving Minneapolis. They moved to a suburb last week after surviving the April shoot'em-up near their home on the 3700 block of Park Avenue S. It was a sunny afternoon and they were walking with their boys, ages 10 and 4 (the little one was riding a trike), when gang-bangers across the street opened fire on a passing car, in line with them. Bullets flew overhead as the frightened family hit the pavement.

"I grabbed the 4-year-old while my husband grabbed the 10-year-old," Susan says. "The kids were screaming. These guys [the shooters] didn't care who was in the way. We lived in the neighborhood for eight years and worked really hard to make it nice. We were block club leaders and yadda, yadda.

"But the gangs aren't leaving and their presence is unacceptable. I wish we could have stayed. But with kids? Are you nuts? We had gunshots all the time, and what's sad is when you have a 10-year-old who knows what a gunshot sounds like. I didn't even feel it was safe to mow the lawn."

Maybe lawn mowing is one of those "high-risk lifestyles" the mayor was saying can get you shot. Like sleeping.

Ah. So they moved. But if they took their kids out of the Minneapolis Public Schools, were they racists, too?

If you choose to resist the scum, of course, by trying to deter their violence with the potential for a hot lead riposte? You're a baaaad person.

So - you don't dare resist the scum for fear of being denigrated as a gun-loving wingnut. You don't dare criticize the banger scum, for fear of being called a racist. You don't dare leave the city, for fear of being called a lilywhite suburban neocon wingnut.

What can a law-abiding Minneapolitan do?

WALK FOR PEACE

At 4:30 p.m. Friday, neighborhood groups plan to hold a "Rally and Walk for Peace and Justice" on the block where Darius was shot, gathering near the corner of 27th Street and 14th Avenue S. and marching to Lake and Chicago. Call 952-996-6490 for information.

Marching for peace.

That'll show the bangers.

By the way - isn't that an Edina or Eden Prairie phone number?

Posted by Mitch at June 29, 2005 12:15 PM | TrackBack