Page 12
April 25, 2018
O PINION
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Addressing Gun Violence in its Totality
Police kill more
people than
mass shooters
e bony s lauGhter -J ohnson
This spring, an
estimated
800,000
Americans gathered
in Washington, D.C.
to participate in the
“March for Our Lives”
organized by the teen-
age survivors of the
school massacre in
Parkland, Fla. Thou-
sands more attended 800 sister
marches across the nation and
around the world for gun reform.
Gun control is often portrayed
as a “white” issue, but the march
was encouragingly intersection-
al. Organizers shared the stage
with members of black and brown
communities whose daily encoun-
ters with gun violence are rarely
treated with the kind of media at-
tention the Florida students have
gotten.
A number of the Parkland stu-
dents have been upfront about
the privileges afforded to them
by their race and socioeconom-
ic status — and have used these
privileges to create space for those
from other communities. Along-
side them were activists of color
from Los Angeles, Chicago, and
Washington, D.C. who testified
to their personal experiences with
by
gun violence.
There was no doubt at the
March for Our Lives that black
lives matter. National events
still show, however, the extent to
which black life is devalued.
On April 4, Saheed Vassell was
killed by law enforce-
ment officers in Brook-
lyn. He was unarmed
and suffering from
mental illness. What the
officers claimed they
thought was a gun was
shown to be a piece of
a welding torch Vassell
used for work.
On March 18, Stephon Clark,
an unarmed black man, was killed
by law enforcement officers in his
grandparents’ backyard in Sac-
ramento, Calif. He too was un-
armed. Clark was shot at 20 times
and hit eight times in the back.
Some 590 Americans were
killed in mass shootings last year,
according to MassShootingTrack-
er.org which counts events in
which four or more people are
shot. But that figure almost pales
in comparison to the number of
Americans subjected to gun vio-
lence by law enforcement.
According to the Washington
Post, law enforcement officers
shot and killed 987 Americans
in 2017 alone. Despite constitut-
ing 12 percent of the population,
nearly a quarter of those shot were
black Americans. Of those 223
black Americans, all but nine were
black men.
Because police don’t report
this data themselves, counts can
vary. MappingPoliceViolence.org,
counting more than just shootings,
determined that law enforcement
officers killed 1,146 Americans
in 2017. Similarly, one quarter of
those were black.
suburbs, and city centers can
be curbed with legislation that
mandates universal background
checks, a ban on bump stocks, a
ban on assault weapons, and an
increase in the age at which Amer-
icans are able to purchase guns.
But to those common demands
I’d add: There should be more
faith — like the ones who killed
Stephon Clark after muting theirs
— cannot and should not be trust-
ed with a weapon.
If the movement behind the
March for Our Lives wants to ad-
dress gun violence in its totality,
it should keep reaching out to all
affected communities. And it must
Some 590 Americans were killed in
mass shootings last year, according to
MassShootingTracker.org which counts
events in which four or more people
are shot. But that figure almost pales in
comparison to the number of Americans
subjected to gun violence by law
enforcement.
Gun violence is devastating
in all its forms and must be ad-
dressed at all levels of govern-
ment. However, there’s some-
thing truly perverse about the
frequency of the violence inflict-
ed by law enforcement upon the
communities they’re called to
serve and protect.
Shootings in schools, wealthy
sensitivity training for law en-
forcement, community policing,
and weapons training that rein-
forces that there are other ways to
subdue a suspect than to kill them.
At the very least, all officers
should be required to wear body
cameras properly at all times. An
officer that cannot be trusted to
operate a body camera in good
not only speak to instances of
mass gun violence, but also to gun
violence inflicted by law enforce-
ment every day across the country.
Ebony Slaughter-Johnson is an
associate fellow at the Institute for
Policy Studies who covers histo-
ry, race, and the criminalization
of poverty. Distributed by Other-
Words.org.
A Counterproductive Assault on Food Stamps
GOP pushes
mean plan
against poor
J ill r ichardson
Once again, Re-
publicans are taking
aim at poor people.
What is it this
time? Adding a
stricter work re-
quirement to receive
what used to be
known as food stamps. (Today it’s
known as the Supplemental Nutri-
tion Assistance Program, but that
just doesn’t have the same ring to
it.)
If the Republican House bill
goes through, anyone between
the ages of 18 and 59 will have
to work or participate in a work
training program for 20 hours
by
a week in order to receive food
stamp benefits.
Frankly, this is both disgusting
and counterproductive. Let me ex-
plain why.
First of all, among other things,
food stamps are an incred-
ible economic stimulus.
For every $1 spent on food
stamps, the economy gets a
$1.79 boost. Every $1 bil-
lion spent on food stamps
results in creating an addi-
tional 8,900 to 17,900 full
time jobs.
In other words, cutting food
stamps cuts jobs.
Making it harder to get food
stamps will, in effect, cut food
stamps — and therefore cut jobs.
How so? Well, most people on
food stamps who can work al-
ready do.
About two out of five food
stamp recipients live in house-
holds where someone works.
They’re the working poor. They
work, but don’t make enough
money to make ends meet.
What about the rest, who have
no income? One in five are dis-
abled, and one quarter are elderly.
For many Americans, there’s a
moral obligation to feed the hungry.
Period, end of story, no more infor-
mation needed. If somebody is hun-
gry, feed them. The fact that feeding
them creates jobs is just a bonus.
Let’s say you’re a skeptic,
though. Who are these lazy people
who just won’t work? And why
can’t they work?
Turns out we’ve been here be-
fore, when we began requiring
welfare recipients to have jobs or
participate in training programs
back in the 1990s. And, lucky for
us, sociologists Jane Collins and
Victoria Mayer researched the
people affected by it and wrote
a book about them called Both
Hands Tied.
Note that the title is Both Hands
Tied and not Lazy People Who
Should Get Off Their Duffs and
Work.
They found that most of the
people on welfare had worked for
most of their lives. In almost every
single case, they went on welfare
because a family member needed
care and they had to stay home to
do it, or they themselves were ill.
One woman had a severely dis-
abled child that no day care would
agree to accept. She had to stay
home to care for her child, and
therefore wasn’t able to work.
Is that the person you want to
deny food stamps? The mother
caring for her disabled child?
The job training programs pro-
vided weren’t helpful either. They
didn’t teach useful skills, and they
didn’t lead to people finding long-
term work.
I don’t know who’s on food
stamps and not working. But since
food stamps pay only for food and
not for any other needs, odds are
everyone who can work already
does. It’s not possible to get by
otherwise.
I’ve been on food stamps. Trust
me, you aren’t living the good life
when you have to get them. On
the contrary, you must be so poor
to even qualify that you’ll do just
about anything to work for more
income.
Adding a work requirement to
food stamps is a mean-spirited and
short-sighted move that will harm
our economy while exacerbating
hunger.
OtherWords columnist Jill
Richardson is the author of Recipe
for America: Why Our Food Sys-
tem Is Broken and What We Can
Do to Fix It.