Obama; Tucson vs. Chicago

Dear Friends;

While I commend President Obama for going to Tucson and honoring those who were brutally and viciously shot down by a sick gun man, I condemn him for not doing the same in Chicago when over 500 black teenagers were shot (in one year) as a result of senseless brutal gang violence.

When the parents of the Black Star Project (a program to stop gang violence in Chicago) asked President Obama to come to Chicago in 2009 to talk to black parents and black teens about the killing of many innocent school-age black children who were  victims of gang violence, President Obama refused to come and instead sent Eric Holder his Attorney General and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.  The decision to send the Attorney General and the Secretary came after several months of appeals from the black parents.  When President Obama's representatives arrived, they refuse to meet with the black parents in the inner-city, instead they held a brief meeting outside of the communities where the senseless violence took place.  I understand that some of the parents couldn't make it to meeting because of its location.

He was there in Tucson for six individuals whose lives were prematurely taken away and for the others 10 or so who were also victims, but he was not there for family members and parents of the 500 black teenagers who were shot down in cold blood and many killed during just a one year period.  Irony of this, is that all of this took place in Chicago, the same city that Obama boasted that he was their community organizer. 

This is what Essence Magazine had to say ( can see this part of an interview on the internet with Jesse Jackson)

ESSENCE.COM: Over 500 schoolchildren in Chicago were shot and at least 36 died during the last school year. You mentioned before that kids in Chicago feel hopeless and angry. Has the "Obama effect" and knowing there is now an African-American president had any impact on them at all?

JACKSON: Do you know what seeing your friend shot does to the spirit of a child? You go into any first- and second-grade classroom in Chicago and ask, "Do you know anyone who has been shot?" They will all raise their hand. It's great for us to have a Black president, but it was short lived for these kids. His being President has done nothing for them. There is a psychological and emotional boost but they have gone right back to their reality of having to claw their way through every day. They don't need a moral boost. They need strategies that are going to improve the lives of Black families.

If you really care about Children, and those who are victims of violence, then care about all of them, not just some of them.  They are all God's children.  Was his appearance in Tucson a sincere expression of compassion or merely a political photo op?

Rev. Wayne Perryman