Suffer Little Children

The image is a fleeting one, a black woman’s face on a television newscast, saying simply, “They’re killing our babies.”

I am walking by the set, not watching, when the phrase catches my attention. I turn only in time for a quick glimpse.

The face is clouded with anguish, the words isolated in pain.

“They’re killing our babies.”

I stare as she is snapped from the screen by the quick-cut magic of television electronics and replaced by a funeral for the baby Ashley Johnson.

Who the woman is, I have no idea. Ashley’s mother? An aunt? A friend? Or only someone who, caught in the coverage of a moment that claws at the heart, says what she feels.

It really doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter that Ashley, 5, killed in the cross fire of L.A.’s gang warfare, wasn’t in the true sense a “baby.”

The woman, by her anguish, is right. They’re killing our babies, and the tempo of violence quickens with every passing year.

By “they” I mean the gangs whose random barrages cut down the innocents in their paths.

They die like soft kittens, too young to have reasoned the caprice that called them to the intersections of their demise:

Ashley Johnson, 5.

Kanita Hailey, 7.

Frank Hernandez, 4.

Daniel Rodriquez, 7.

Gilbert Perez, 4.

David Godinez, 7 months. . . .

I admit to emotional outrage when a child is murdered.

The fury, like acid, eats at my soul. I want a neck in my hands. I want a face at the end of my fist. I want an answer, I want atonement, I want vengeance.

But life teaches that we are all victims of the urban warfare that rages within our boundaries, whether those boundaries be physical, racial, economic or psychological.

And experience cautions that the soul’s rage be damped or it will feed the flames that already burn within those boundaries, pouring combustibles, cooling nothing.

I talk to others, seeking answers.

A man in the Valley says, “It’s out of control, we’ve got to rethink the problem. Old solutions won’t work.”

A woman on the Westside says, “We ought to move in there with an army and eliminate the gangs once and for all.”

A friend in South-Central says, “You know what we’re hoping, is they’ll just kill each other off.”

I’m tempted to telephone someone who represents government, but know beforehand what political babble I’ll get, laced with the rhetoric that ensures reelection; bravado, not bravery.

I consider calling someone in the police or sheriff’s departments, but realize the departments are repositories for words and guns that have similarly failed to produce life-engendering results.

The words and guns have been fired in equal barrages through the dangerous years, with little success.

Still the babies die.

“It’s funny how outrage is limited only to the murder of 5-year-olds.”

The voice is that of the Rev. Greg Boyle, pastor of the Eastside’s Dolores Mission Church. I call him at a colleague’s suggestion.

Father Boyle has worked with gang members for years. He knows, more than most, what pain and terror their existence creates.

“I make speaking rounds all the time and I’m always hearing outrage over the killing of babies caught in the cross fire.

“But the grief is only offered for ‘innocent victims,’ like it’s OK if gang members get killed.”

(Isn’t that what my friends said? Let them wipe each other out?) “I say it’s all tragic. I say all sons have mothers, and my worst moments are spent telling them their boys are dead.

“I’m not even sure I understand anymore what innocent means.”

The response chides my rage. He asks, why do I weep for babies and scorn the babies-grown-older?

They’re all our children. Grieve for them all.

“You know what gang killings are called in police radio dispatches?” Boyle says. “ ‘NHI.’ No human involved. Slow down, it’s just another gang killing.

“A woman in Westwood is murdered, and there’s a $25,000 reward and a police task force. There’s never a reward or a task force out here. A life lost in Westwood is worth nine in Boyle Heights.

“I can understand the rage. Yes, it’s horrible. But you know what? It’s all horrible.”

The emotional impact of a murdered child grabs at the collective conscience. It embodies not only the grief of death, but the pain of failure.

The truth is even more crucial. They’re not only killing our babies. They’re killing us all.