Najah Hendricks is a fourth-year Social Work major, Youth Empowerment & Urban Studies Minor. Nh871270@wcupa
Some of us go to college with the hope that we can eventually better ourselves and be surrounded by the right people for better opportunities. Some of us forget or don’t think about where other students are coming from, and what it took for them to get here. A lot of students come from Philadelphia — not the new Philadelphia that is constantly being gentrified near Temple University, or Center City — but from neighborhoods where real life is happening, where people don’t always have the same access to privileges and needs that someone living in the suburbs might.
During the last weekend of March, we learned that a Ph.D student from West Chester University, Najeebat Sule, passed away after being another victim of gun violence. As sad as it is, it’s also frustrating to see that all the work you put in, all of the accomplishments you’ve achieved and the dedicated work that you’re still putting in, can be taken away in a matter of seconds — by the same thing you’re trying to escape. Last year, we focused on systematic racism, police brutality and the mistreatment of Black people, especially during the pandemic. We also need to focus on the gun violence in Philadelphia. Because that violence also plays a huge part in the oppression of people of color, especially when we have youth as young as toddlers dying by gun violence.
With the weather getting warmer and more places beginning to open, I have a constant worry in the back of my head that the death tolls will continue to rise in Philadelphia. Last summer, we were all protesting and marching to stop killing Black people, but where is that activism now? Just as we want police to see more than just a Black person who poses a threat, we need to stop seeing a Black person as an irrelevant life taken away by gun violence.
It’s not enough to say, “They shouldn’t have been sitting on their porch so late at night” or “They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Black people killing each other tells everyone that we don’t even care about each other. So why should anyone else? Just as we marched to stop racial killings, we still need to continue protesting to stop the murder and violence rate in our own communities.
We are done seeing innocent lives being lost to gun violence. We need to start encouraging each other that when one of us makes it, we all do.