Now What To Do About The Plaza?

Wow, just wow.

So the mayor and alleged community leaders had a meeting rally thingy at the Plaza last night and before they had even left there was a shooting that left three minors with non life threatening wounds. According to news reports the mayor was near enough to hear shots and see blood, and was pushed down to the ground by his security detail.

I have to admit I am almost burned out on the issue of mob violence/urban violence/Black on Black violence etc etc because it keeps coming back to the same group of issues. Please note that these are important questions, not necessarily the opinions of this blogger.

1. Parental responsibility or lack thereof. Kids as welfare payments and the way to earn a living.

2. Entitlements and multigenerational use of them; broken families with little stable structure. Values of life and property and civility not being imparted to young people by parents that may have never learned them well themselves.

3. The non-PC unspoken question that sits underneath many opinions: Are Black people inherently more violent than other people groups--or inferior in some other way?

4. Education, seen as almost every other people groups who came to America as the way out of the ghetto and poverty, has been a failure among Black people. Without a doubt the schools have been of poor quality but much of the thug Black culture has rejected education as valuable, and this actually has seeped into the culture at large.

5. Lack of people being held accountable for their actions--from the participants in the mob violence and melees to the parent/guardian of participants, particularly the minors to law enforcement and politicians using issues as political levers.

6. As one TKC commenter asked, what would have been the police actions if the groups or mobs had been majority White instead of Black? Would the laws already on the books (disorderly conduct, assault, MIP, traffic laws, littering etc.) been enforced with vigor with a White mob but were not because the mob was mostly Black and law officers feared lawsuits accusing them of racism?

7. As a Christian believer, I have to ask the question: Where is the church and the testimony of the power of God? Have the church's pastors and leaders been taken in by the siren song of connection to political power and government dollars and left behind the offensive preaching of the offensive Gospel of Jesus Christ?

On a practical point we must save our Country Club Plaza and that means uncompromising enforcement of the laws on the books. Make parents accountable for the actions of their minor children with fines and jail. Put mobbing hooligans in jail. I have not changed my view on this from the last time this happened.

There were so many great comments on Tony's Kansas City. Don't be surprised if one or two of them pop up on here as guest posts.