11-11-11 The Night I Can't Forget

I have been debating whether or not to write about what happened to me and more importantly others Friday night. This blog always strives to not be a diary about my life but an exploration of what is actually important. For that reason, despite the incident being person, I put my thoughts below in hopes it furthers a dialogue so desperately needed.

Friday night on my way home from work I saw someone get stabbed. No more than maybe a foot or two away, I saw the face as one child stabbed another. I saw the young man who was stabbed's shock as he realized what had happened and blood started to pour out of his chest soaking the front of his entire shirt. I remember the face of the other child, the look as he no longer had any humanity for himself or the person he was trying to injure.

It's a moment I haven't been able to stop running through my mind since.

via Boston Globe:

A man suffered life-threatening injuries last night when he was stabbed downtown near the Boston Common, police said. Officer James Kenneally, a Boston Police Department spokesman, said the stabbing occurred at about 8:30 p.m. in the area of Temple Place and Tremont Street. The man was taken to Tufts Medical Center, Kenneally said.

I was walking by the fight on the way to take the bus to my car and I remember thinking I should just avoid this and it will run itself out. Then that horrible thought stopped myself instantly, there were so many people around, surely we could break this up by stepping in. I mean children fighting is surely important enough to stop so it didn't escalate beyond everyone's control. So I yelled stop. I saw some people try to pull the kids a part. But it didn't last it kept escalating. There was a moment I thought about just leaving fearful what might happen and wanting the violence to just be over.

But how could anyone walk away as our children were beating the crap our of one another?

Then it happened, as the girls were in the middle of the street beating up this mother of a two year old, a Child thinking himself a man, said "take this nigger," and stabbed a young man in the chest.

At first I thought he just punched him in the stomach, but as I quickly saw the blood spilling out through his shirt and onto the street I realized the worst had happened.

After he was stabbed I made the call to 911, something I admit was much harder then it should have been but I was so nervous and the buttons so small on my Blackberry what was an instant felt a lifetime to get them on the phone.

An EMT who was walking by helped me keep pressure on the wound. I took off my backpack to put my sweater on the wound. And then it was over, the ambulance came the police blocked off the area and we were left with what we saw. I mention this last part I think because I have to hope that our quick action to put pressure on the wound saved this man's life. I need the vanity of this to be true I think to expel some of the guilt for failing to miserably at breaking up the fight. I need it to be true to add some purpose to what still feels like a helpless situation.

Why write about it?

I first remember when the police gathered us to take our statements, that I hadn't noticed the 2 year old in a stroller. But there he was in tears looking up clearly scared and confused. Then the woman who was beaten on the ground told the police that the man stabbed was her husband.

What made me decided to write about this was when she said where she lived. A family homeless shelter.

Poverty is violent. The worry that you don't know where you will live or how you will eat tears at your body. Not to mention that when you don't have a roof over your head, protection from people who prey on other people is hard to come by. I used to work as an intake social worker at a family homeless shelter so seeing a child in tears, a mother and wife sobbing as her husband was fighting for his life hit a tragically comfortable memory.

A child who no longer has any self-worth, a group of children who see no humanity in other people, listless with nothing to do these children who started the fight with this working homeless family are our failed castaways. When a child has given up on himself and everyone else we have to ask, how have we failed? Yes, people make their own decisions, we should hold a person to account. But there is a difference between vengeance and justice. Justice requires self-examination just as these children have failed, we have also failed them.

Not just them, we failed a young family. How have we created a society where a young family can work and not have a place to live is tragic.

Friday was a tragedy I keep reliving. It was our lost humanity on display from the violence to all the people all who stood by and watched it. A moment, I can't stop thinking about.