As the number of gun related crimes continue to rise across the country, the question, again, remains what do we need to do about it?
More than 313 deaths this summer alone in Chicago's South Side, 13 injured recently during an all out assault on employees at Washington, DC's Navy Yard, movie theaters unsafe, people shot dead nightly on America's city streets, yet applications for gun permits reach all time highs.
Gun violence, a lot like the issue of homelessness in major cities, is a pervasive social problem, seemingly with no solution.
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu offer up recommendations during a visit last week to The National Press Club.
"Said Landrieu, "We've bought into the evil notion that somehow the lives of Black men are somehow less valuable than the rest of us. We've all heard it before, "just thugs, killing thugs.""
Mayor Nutter, who took to a church pool pit to render some basic TLC to youth in his city earlier this year, noted the disparity in the amount of media coverage when hundreds of young people die on city streets, versus the amount of media coverage when the same number die in what is called 'national tragedies'.
"Not a single word. If international terrorists killed Americans we would hunt them down like dogs and bring them to justice."
Both cities, like the Nation's Capital, have been plagued by turbulent gun violence.
Despite city budget constraints the two men pledge to propose pathways for better futures for America's youth.
"You either find the way, or make a way. This is a national problem", said Landrieu.
As a former Philadelphia youth with "a lot of unsupervised time" on his hands, M.K. Asante shares with us, at the 2013 Congressional Black Caucus authors' pavilion, how he went from would-be teen failure to one of the youngest African American male professors at a major university.
Said Asante, quoting Frederick Douglass, "Without struggle, there is no progress."
Listen to the video below, as this young man who says a 'a blank sheet of paper' saved his life, shares his journey toward his own 'progress'.
More than 313 deaths this summer alone in Chicago's South Side, 13 injured recently during an all out assault on employees at Washington, DC's Navy Yard, movie theaters unsafe, people shot dead nightly on America's city streets, yet applications for gun permits reach all time highs.
Gun violence, a lot like the issue of homelessness in major cities, is a pervasive social problem, seemingly with no solution.
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu offer up recommendations during a visit last week to The National Press Club.
"Said Landrieu, "We've bought into the evil notion that somehow the lives of Black men are somehow less valuable than the rest of us. We've all heard it before, "just thugs, killing thugs.""
Mayor Nutter, who took to a church pool pit to render some basic TLC to youth in his city earlier this year, noted the disparity in the amount of media coverage when hundreds of young people die on city streets, versus the amount of media coverage when the same number die in what is called 'national tragedies'.
"Not a single word. If international terrorists killed Americans we would hunt them down like dogs and bring them to justice."
Both cities, like the Nation's Capital, have been plagued by turbulent gun violence.
Despite city budget constraints the two men pledge to propose pathways for better futures for America's youth.
"You either find the way, or make a way. This is a national problem", said Landrieu.
As a former Philadelphia youth with "a lot of unsupervised time" on his hands, M.K. Asante shares with us, at the 2013 Congressional Black Caucus authors' pavilion, how he went from would-be teen failure to one of the youngest African American male professors at a major university.
Said Asante, quoting Frederick Douglass, "Without struggle, there is no progress."
Listen to the video below, as this young man who says a 'a blank sheet of paper' saved his life, shares his journey toward his own 'progress'.
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