commentary

There’s been a lot to digest lately. My emotions about the violence in Hartford are similar to those I felt following 9/11. The violence saddens me. I don’t feel a lot of surprise or anger about the actual acts of violence. I reserve my anger for how people respond to the violence.

When the terrorist attacks of 9/11 occurred (and if your theory is that the government had something to do with it, I think the word “terrorist” still applies), I tried to comprehend what the deaths and injuries of hundreds of people meant. I had to figure out if I even knew the same number of people as were killed. With the local violence, the victimization is more sporadic, easier to understand in terms of its possibility. I worry when I read the headlines that one of my students from Capital Community College, many of whom live in Hartford, will be among those either killed or doing the killing.

As with the terrorist attacks, I feel a range of disappointment-to-anger regarding how we are responding to the violence in Hartford. My political perspective is such that I must question whenever a new law or ordinance of some kind is introduced. Before asking if it’s a good or effective law, I have to think about whether it’s necessary to even have a law. Of course, this gets complicated because we live in a culture which, on the surface, pretends to be one of laws. It’s no secret that I am thrilled about the immigration ordinance passing. What laws we have should be aimed at those with the most power–police, politicians, and the very wealthy–as people with power are known to abuse it. I’m not such a fan of creating ordinances and policies aimed at those who have little power in the first place.

Youth are in that group of people with little power. Some might try to compensate by wielding guns, but the fact remains that they are routinely given the message that they are not allowed control over their lives. They can’t vote, which makes teenagers somewhat useless to politicians. Unless they are homeschooled/unschooled, they are expected to visit daily an institution which can be boring, insulting, dangerous, pointless, numbing, soul-sucking, or a babysitting service, depending on which town it’s in. I’m exaggerating only a bit. The public schools are coerced into teaching-to-the-test, which insults the brighter students and harms the weaker ones. There are some teachers who challenge this No Child Left Behind mandate, but not every student has the exposure to those increasingly few. But even before the test mania that’s developed during the current administration, the purpose of the public school in America has been somewhat sketchy. While the better teachers try to foster intellectual growth, others have said outright that the point is to prepare students to be future workers. The latter purpose seems common, and is echoed when the business world gets a little too involved in education.

Now, as a feel-good response to recent violence, the mayor and his posse announced a curfew. Later, they corrected themselves to say that they were merely going to enforce the curfew, which has been on the books since the late 1970s. And then they said it would be to enforce loitering. I won’t be the first to point out that if this a reaction to last weekend’s violence, those shootings all happened during daylight. I also won’t be the first to say that punishing all youth because of what a few have done is a bad idea. It’s another way of diverting resources that could be used more effectively. If there’s a street fight going down, I don’t want the police to respond slowly because a few are tied up transporting youngsters who are on the street at 10:30 to a community center. Furthermore, the curfew does not get to the root of the problem–and this is a problem with many roots. Since everyone else is giving their two cents, here’s mine. We live in a culture that glorifies violence (war, football, videogames, movies, boxing, ultimate fighting, death penalty). We also have a gun problem, as in, youth, who are not legally able to own guns, are able to get them. (FYI– I think that as long as the police and military have weapons, the people need to also have weapons) It makes sense for children and teens to be legally barred from owning guns as the sense of mortality doesn’t kick in until later…also that eye-hand coordination thing, for the same reason that driving is not supposed to happen until age 16. There are too few jobs, too few constructive things for youth to do. There’s that self-fulfilling prophesy of youth feeling like they’ve got no future. The violence going on can’t be blamed on one thing. I can’t name them all. I can’t pretend to know them all. Many causes and no singular solution.

So, while I’m glad to see that the “emergency curfew” decision was accompanied by other measures, I still feel like the curfew is intrusive and unnecessary. It undermines whatever system a family might have in place. Growing up, I never had a standing curfew. If I did not hold up my end of things, like forgetting to call home or not doing my chores, then I would be punished for a few days; however, my brother would not get punished for what I did, and I would not get punished when he messed up. Pretty fair.

Moreover, a curfew is a shady control mechanism, according to the authors of “Under Curfew and Under Siege? Legal geographies of young people.” They write:

Against a backdrop of widespread panic about children’s safety and the unruliness of teenagers, efforts to remove young people from public space are becoming increasingly pervasive. Public space is being constructed as adult space through legal mechanisms such as curfews, which seek to curtail young people’s spatial freedoms and contain them within their homes. Ostensibly motivated by a desire to reduce youth crime and victimisation, curfews reflect a contemporary preoccupation with achieving social control through the control of space.

I don’t want to imply that I think violence is anything but serious; however, the way the country reacted following 9/11 is only a more extreme version of this curfew: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety” (Benjamin Franklin, 1775).

I’m going to end this with a thought that’s bound to be unpopular. We’re hearing from the Mayor, Chief-of-Police, religious figures, and every adult (whether coherent or moronic) inside and outside of Hartford, and we still have a problem. Why don’t we ask the youth how these issues can be resolved? Since Hartford’s youth are the ones being most directly affected by violence, it would make sense to turn to them to see how they believe the problem can be addressed.