NO PLACE FOR CHILDREN?

It was definitely in the air last night. As i sat n the stoop watching Bahiyyah play in front of the house with some of the kids from the barbecue two doors down, my gut picked up the danger. In my days working in the jails, I learned how to watch people's movements for signs of trouble. I noticed an unusual presence of gang members on Bainbridge n Howard around the bodega, staring down Howard toward Chauncey. The barbecue two doors down began to grow and there's been trouble at those events before. The streets were moving real funny (naahmean?). I was text-joking with a former co worker some lines from a famous Wu Tang album: "Feel hot at night...feel like somebody gonna get burnt tonight.."

I told B," we're going in in 5 minutes". She whined a little until I said it firmer. Twenty minutes after we came in, gunfire on the sidewalk next to the barbecue.

As the police were managing the crime scene, five more shots rang in from what sounded like the direction of Patchen, maybe near Macon or Decatur. My former co worker texted me that he heard 18-20 shots by Nostrand and Monroe.

As the nation celebrates the legacy of its soldiers, these street soldiers, urban insurgents really, are fighting their own war to establish a new republic. In this new republic, this new hood order, be sure, there is no place for children; not a decent one anyway.

We have three choices: run, stay and let them rule or build the next order with our own hands.