16-year-old Kayla Green was ready to conquer the world. She attended Mount Vernon High School in New York, was captain of the cheerleading team, and was an A student planning on going to college to be a doctor. She had her future all planned out. She was a bright, smart, funny, and popular young lady who was going to have the world at her fingertips, but last week, she was murdered. Her basketball team had won the state championship and there was a parade to celebrate their victory. Kayla and her team of cheerleaders were in the parade and at the very end, a gang of girls surrounded her, attacked her, and a 15-year-old girl stabbed her to death. A police officer saw Kayla being attacked and tried to intervene; he realized she was in very bad need of medical help and rushed her to the hospital, but it was too late, she had died. The 15-year-old who stabbed Kayla was arrested and is being charged with murder and assault. This is a case of a brilliant young woman, a winner, being killed by a loser. Kayla Green’s mother was beyond heartbroken. She made an Instagram post in which she begged the girl who killed her daughter to kill her, too. She said she no longer wanted to live, that she wanted to die and be buried with her daughter. She was so overwhelmed with grief. There have been vigils in Kayla’s honor, but none of them will bring her back. A beautiful young woman with her whole life ahead of her gone in an instant due to a stab wound from a gang member. This is the future we can look forward to unless we take action to stop it.
Another terrible incidence happened last week in New York City at a subway station. A man named Frank James threw a smoke bomb into a subway car then opened fire, wounding many people, but fortunately not killing any of them. His motive was hate; pure, raw hate. He hated humans, hated the world, knew he had no future, and had gotten fired from his job. He made a bunch of video rants complaining about how much he hated the world, saying America was born in violence and that it would die in violence. He then committed that subway shooting. This is the kind of future we can expect if we don’t do something to stop violence. Just condemning violence isn’t enough. It’s easy enough to say violence is bad and evil, but that’s doesn’t outline a program on how to stop it. I truly fear what the results of the midterm election will be if we don’t take strong and firm action against violence. Why vote for Democracy when you have beautiful, brilliant 16-year-old girls being killed by a gang? Why vote for Democracy when you can’t even ride the subway without wondering if somebody is going to shoot you? We need a coordinated effort against this. One thing we need to do is utilize public service announcements stating that if you join a gang, you’re going to be a loser and that there are many ways in which you can be a winner. You don’t have to join a gang in order to have power. If you join a gang, you’re going to be a loser and if you kill somebody who’s a winner, you’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison for it; that’s not the way to go. Hate is consuming the land like a forest fire. People feel that it’s okay and even necessary to hate and that we have to destroy before we can build, but we have to make it clear that that’s not a good future for America. It will only destroy Democracy, destroy this country, and destroy the world.
Some people don’t believe in climate change and think it’s a hoax. However, climate scientists say it’s real and that we’re nearing the point of no return. How long will we have a habitable world? If losers keep killing our winners, how are we going to solve the problem of climate change? Winners are being killed and they are the ones who can solve this problem. They are the people who can help make a better future for us. Kayla Green wanted to be a doctor. Maybe she would’ve found a cure for cancer. She was a bright, caring, compassionate person and now she’s dead. That’s one less potential doctor in the world. As for the girl who stabbed her, what kind of future is she going to have? She’s in jail being charged with murder. A murderer at age 15. We need to tell people that joining a gang will make them a loser and that they need to find a way to be a winner. Hate is not the answer. There are many women who are afraid to have children nowadays because they don’t want them growing up in a world where they can be killed at any moment. That’s the kind of world we’re living in; a world where hate is on the rampage, where people are being shot and killed every day. What future is there for democracy and inclusion in that? Do you think this is a Democracy worth voting for? This is the reality of our lives and I’m afraid the end is going to be some sort of authoritarian America where our lives are even more at risk.