Thanks to TrueHoop (and no thanks to TNT.tv or NBA.com which gave no indication there were NBA telecasts on Monday), Poor Man's Commish saw this...
Charles Barkley from TNT last night: “If (Dr. King) were still alive today, as a person who preached non-violence, would he be disturbed at all the violence we have going on in the black community? It does a great disservice to Dr. King with all this black on black crime going on in our communities.” Remember, I wrote back in the first dreamBlogue entry that I would delve into the scariness of the numbers that our very own James Love fell victim to.
I've been waiting to find the right time to bring this up and thanks to Chuckie, now is the right time.
Only about two to three weeks ago as another Christmas and New Years passed, you and I were sitting around in the tranquility of our homes and families, while my Bloglines local news feeds were showing me this on 12/31 about San Francisco and this on 1/4 about Oakland.
Did you take a glimpse? Basically, the two articles not only reported on people getting shot over the holidays, but also said that there were...
- 85 homicides in SF in 2006. Watching the SF Chronicle's local RSS feed everyday, let me tell you, almost every homicide report involves someone younger than 30 and gun violence.
- 148 homicides in Oakland in 2006, with 91 percent caused by handguns. That's one hundred forty-eight, of which ninety-one percent was gun violence. Sheesh.
As promised, let us compare this with the casualties in Iraq, courtesy of the Iraq Coalition Casualties website...
- There have been over 3,000 U.S. military deaths since the war started.
- This is an average of over 800 fatalities per year in Iraq.
Now, let's make the following totally unscientific assumptions. Why are they unscientific? Because this data cannot be found anywhere on the web! I've looked long and hard. This is really a disappointment. If you find something, definitely let me know...
- Let's assume half the homicides in major U.S. cities result in the death of a teenager or young adult.
- Let's assume the roughly half we've earmarked consists almost entirely of gun violence. If you subscribe to local news feeds, you'll find out soon enough that this is not an assumption that's off-base.
- Let's relate this to the state of the NBA. Let's take the 30 cities the NBA spans. Some are bigger than SF or Oakland, like LA or NYC, and some are smaller, like Charlotte or Memphis. In fact, SF or Oakland might be considered a "small" city, relatively speaking. Certainly not the enormity of, say, a Houston.
Okay, are you ready? Here we go...
- 30 cities x 148 homicides using Oakland as the example, then take half of that = 2,220 deaths by gun violence to young adults across the span of the NBA's thirty cities.
- Okay, Oakland's number was too high. Let's go with SF's 85. Thus, 30 cities x 85 homicides, then divided by 2 = 1,275 deaths by gun violence to young adults across the span of the NBA's thirty cities.
- Iraq's U.S. military death toll = over 3,000 in a span of three-and-a-half years.
- In a span of three-and-a-half years, the number of teenagers or young adults killed by gun violence in the NBA's thirty cities will be
4,463 if you use San Francisco's 2006 figures, or
7,770 if you use Oakland's 2006 figures.
The kid scorekeepers you sometimes see at the scorer's table marking down your points, the stats on our website that have been hand-updated by some of these kids, you know, THEY LIVE IN A WAR ZONE.
I just proved it in numbers.
I'm sure there's no need to go show you first-hand. I certainly wouldn't be volunteering as your tour guide. If you live in a metropolitan, the "projects" can't be more than two miles radius away.
Did you have to go to school in this environment? Isn't it crazy to expect these kids to even get a passing grade?
So anyways, one by one, if dreamleague can help steer fate towards another path, with your attention to this situation, that's what we're all about. Our strength right now is the Asian American basketball community. That's a great start.
Any community that gives a smidget of a damn for even so little as one kid from our neglected war-at-home-torn community is a GIANT leap forward.
dreamleague: the little engine that could.
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