Picture Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
By DAVID SMILE
Miami Herald
WEST PARK, Fla. (AP) _ In a unique context, Shevrin Jones may need appeared like a spokesman for the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation. Simply two days after tons of of Parkland households cheered on Florida’s new gun restrictions, the West Park Democrat stood in entrance of nodding dad and mom and kids in a rec heart and referred to as the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty Public Security Act deeply flawed. In any case, what good are prolonged ready intervals to South Florida’s minority communities when the shooters who terrorize their neighborhoods are sometimes stealing weapons and shopping for them on the road?
“Our communities don’t care about whether or not you do a background examine,” stated Jones, a state consultant. “As a result of we’re not going to the shop to purchase a gun. We’re going to purchase them illegally.”
As South Florida lawmakers hosted a sequence of city corridor occasions coordinated throughout the nation within the hopes of furthering a renewed gun management motion, the tenor and tone of the gatherings _ very like their relationship with weapons _ has diverse from neighborhood to neighborhood. Lower than 30 miles and 48 hours aside, occasions close to Parkland and in Miami Gardens illustrated simply how complicated the issue of gun violence is, and why solutions have been so elusive even amongst communities supporting the identical occasion.
In majority-white Parkland, the place murders had been uncommon till a February college capturing shattered the veneer of Florida’s “most secure metropolis” and thrust it into the nationwide highlight, options provided throughout a April 2 city corridor hosted by U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch included banning assault weapons and bettering psychological well being screenings and companies. And for all of the tragedy of the bloodbath at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty, the assumption and hope that federal and state politicians will cross new, efficient legal guidelines was palpable.
“We’re right here as a result of the courageous households who misplaced family members in Stoneman Douglas have stood up and thru their braveness have set examples for the remainder of us in the entire ways in which we must be seeking to hold our colleges secure and to forestall one thing like this from ever taking place once more,” Deutch stated from a stage inside a Coral Springs performing arts heart with stadium seating {and professional} lighting and sound.
In Miami Gardens, the place the neighborhood across the Betty T. Ferguson Leisure Advanced is 85 p.c black and gunfire is mapped in actual time, an identical optimism exists. However on the April 4 city corridor hosted by U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson _ the place the microphones saved reducing out _ hope mingled with frustration. Right here, moms with lifeless kids and brothers with slain siblings have been activists for years. Right here, they questioned why the 22 folks murdered in 2016 within the metropolis mattered much less to the nationwide dialog about weapons than the 17 folks killed in Parkland.
Concepts on the best way to repair the issue felt completely different, too, with co-host Jones arguing not for extra gun management however for higher after-school companies, social programming and small-business loans as a strategy to make Miami’s “city core” and colleges safer.
“The individuals who see gun violence on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month actuality, they’ll’t trip this wave. As a result of for many years they’ve been drowning within the actuality,” stated Miami-Dade Faculty Board member Steve Gallon. The variations aren’t misplaced on the politicians and newly born gun activists in North Broward, an prosperous, majority-white space the place murders stay rare regardless of the Feb. 14 highschool capturing.
The scholars behind the March For Our Lives motion have consciously reached out to youngsters in minority communities to broaden their trigger. Through the April 2 city corridor, a number of college students requested how regulation enforcement and colleges officers can be certain that black and brown college students gained’t be profiled as communities improve safety measures and police presence at colleges.
State Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who represents Parkland and graduated from Stoneman Douglas, talked about April 2 that whereas Parkland’s murders obtained swift response, 316 kids and youngsters had been killed in Miami-Dade between 2006 and 2016 with scant consideration in political circles. It’s a dialogue that’s nuanced, and hardly black-and-white. However whereas each communities vote Democrat, and elect lawmakers on the state and federal degree who are likely to vote alongside comparable traces, their wants and issues are completely different. And what works in a single neighborhood might exacerbate issues in one other.
For Jones and Moskowitz, whose desks sit subsequent to one another on the ground of the Florida Home of Representatives, they know their problem is to seek out one thing that works for everybody, and to guarantee that nobody is neglected.
“Parkland has undoubtedly began a dialog, however it’s a dialog many communities have been having for a very long time. These communities acquired no payments. These communities acquired no appropriations for years,” Moskowitz stated. “So I’m blissful issues at the moment are altering.”
