The Barbershop: Dennis Byrne, Proprietor

Vengeance is ours, saith the gangs

A police officer tries to console the father of a 14-year-old boy who was shot and killed near 44th Street and Greenwood Avenue in Chicago on Sept. 19, 2015. (Brian Nguyen / Chicago Tribune)

“Gang feud likely cause of mass shooting at South Side funeral home, sources say” — Chicago Sun-Times

The funeral was for Donnie Weathersby, who was killed July 14 in a gang-related drive-by shooting in Englewood, police say. They believe he was targeted in an ongoing war between two little-known gang factions.

Gang retaliation has become Chicago’s perpetual motion murder machine. Talk about all the root causes, racism, white privilege, police brutality, gang wars, drugs and all the rest, the major proximate cause of the city’s shootings appears to be revenge.

You killed our guy, we kill your guys. You kill our guys we kill your kids. You kill our kids, we kill your families.

Never ending. Never running out of victims. Never running out of retribution, retaliation. Blow for blow.

People know who are doing the shootings. Some are afraid to say, fearing more retaliation. But some also aren’t saying, because they believe it is their job to dole out justice. An eye for an eye, and never mind the rest, that “vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”

These are men and boys who have grown up absent any idea about how to deal with “disrespect.” No one to tell them how “real men” handle disrespect. Few fathers around to show them how to be real men.

A WBEZ report explores how some men are stepping up to help in For Those Touched By Chicago’s Violence, Shootings Aren’t Always Senseless.

The woman’s dilemma is an example of what anti-violence workers like Patterson say is at the core of Chicago gun violence — the people doing the shooting are traumatized themselves and often driven by righteous anger. The violence is tragic and terrible, the violence prevention workers say, but it is not senseless.

“Once violence affects you, you can’t forget it, right? And so now violence becomes an option,” Patterson said after his conversation with the mother had ended. ”When people lose people who are close to them, an array of feelings may arise. … For people who are caught in a cycle of violence, violence makes sense for them. That’s the way they answer their problems.”

So, where have the real men gone? The culture has directed their disappearance. Fathers aren’t needed. Intact marriage between a man and a women and strong families mean nothing.

If science means anything to progressives, then they should acknowledge that research indeed shows that father presence and strong families tend to lead to competent, healthy and happier children and, thus, adults.

Have we reached the point of no return? Will the efforts of anti-violence organizations alone reverse the disastrous behaviors that has lead to a war on children? Will the popular culture ever return to sanity?

I don’t know.