During the height of rush hour on Friday afternoon, four Black men carried a casket into the intersection of Rainier Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard and placed it on an awaiting table. A loudspeaker on the corner blasted Boyz II Men’s “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday” passing drivers glanced, a few of whom honked in support or to express their condolences. The pall bearers, joined by a woman in a black veil, paused in front of the casket as volunteers with cars, bikes and trash cans blocked the intersection for a moment of reflection. Then the group picked up the coffin again and returned it to a pair of sawhorses set up in front of The Original Philly’s, where a group of fifty-or-so stood watching.
Following a shooting Tuesday, August 18 at the 3000 block of Rainier Avenue South, a man in his 20s was treated for life-threatening injuries and rushed to Harborview Medical Center. “We’ve always had gun violence in our community. We’ve been facing gun violence for a very long time,” said Dom Davis, CEO and Founder of Community Passageways, a Seattle-based nonprofit felony diversion and prevention program. But the incident August 18 was one of a potentially record-setting number of shootings this summer in Seattle. The case is ongoing.
There were ten shots fired. Or at least that’s what I think we counted while sitting at a large table near the front window of Rainier Beach’s Jude’s Old Town last Tuesday.
Darting to the back of the bar, all of us crouched to survey the scene from the large front windows. The disparate conversations broke apart as the whole bar began asking questions and assembling facts. There was a palpable sense of caution bordering on fear, but certainly not panic. Continue reading A Bulletproof Community Spirit→
Amplifying the Authentic Narratives of South Seattle
