THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 2, 1996 TAG: 9606010022
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: 68 lines
Recently, city police made their first breakthrough in a string of murders of elderly women that have traumatized my normally placid neighborhood.
The first arrestee in the ``Golden Years Murders,'' as they've been dubbed, defied every stereotype my neighbors and I had imagined as we locked doors and screened strangers.
No weirdo, middle-age, misfit male this. The suspect is an 18-year-old girl. She was 15 at the time her alleged victim was bludgeoned to death in 1993, apparently during a robbery.
This weekend, thousands of Americans are journeying to Washington to ``Stand For Children.'' A colleague cynically dismisses the undertaking as ``holding hands on television.'' Time was, he adds, when neighborhoods didn't need a special day or a bus trip to D.C. to stand up for kids. Children were what most communities were about.
No one disputes that coming of age in the '90s can be a grim and solitary affair.
Every day in America, more than 8,000 children are reported abused and neglected, child advocates tell us. Every day, three children will die from abuse. Every day, more than 6,000 youths are arrested. Every day, 2,700 become pregnant. Every day, 2,600 children are born into poverty.
It's enough to make you rue the dawning of another morn.
The young woman arrested for the Richmond murder fits the mold of children born beneath an unlucky star. Her welcome to the world was a diagnosis of fetal alcohol syndrome. According to acquaintances, she is a walking textbook of symptoms: poor self-control, violent anger, inability to concentrate. The result is a tale of escalating tragedy - failure in school, petty crime, time in a juvenile correctional center, murder.
What's a society to do?
Make moms stay home? Raise the minimum wage? Insert V-chips? Distribute condoms? Promote abstinence? Raise teacher salaries? Finance charter schools? Provide universal health care? Reduce the size of government?
Hold hands on television?
The array of possibilities is dizzying. So is the range of disagreement over what will work and what will not. Even the simple notion that ``it takes a village to raise a child'' has become fraught with political overtones. It takes strong parents to raise children, say those with one set of political beliefs. It also takes strong communities, counter those with another.
If ``Stand for Children'' day is worth more than a barrage of feel-good television spots, and I think it is, it's as a visual reminder of the imperative of bridging those political divides. Individuals can't do it alone; neither can government. It takes Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives.
The best solutions to social ills have a strong person-to-person component. Great parents would do the trick, if they came issued in perfect sets or as superb individuals. As our neighborhood murderess can attest, they don't.
Livable wages, quality health care, strong educational institutions would go a long way toward rescuing children too. Trouble is, they take time. They take money. They take the coalescing of a fragmented political will.
The organizers of ``Stand for Children'' ask Americans to insist that children become the No. 1 priority of policy-makers, much as the elderly were pushed to the fore two decades ago. It happened for that group, it could happen for this one. They're also asking individuals to do at least one extra thing to improve the life of a child. That could be as simple as reading a book, as complex as adoption, as concrete as giving employees an hour a week to volunteer at a local school, as symbolic as setting up a ``Stand for Children'' day in your neighborhood.
That's right. Link arms for the cameras. We need a visual antidote, even with a teaspoon of hokum mixed in, to the spiritual and sensual assault that comes from another image - 15-year-old murderesses. MEMO: Ms. Edds is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB