Perhaps one of Elvis Presley’s most progressive songs was “In the Ghetto," recorded in 1969. The song, by Mac Davis, speaks of a child born in the ghetto with comparatively bleak prospects. It’s one of my favorite Elvis songs, and one over which I have shed some tears.
“Well the world turns … “
This is a diary for Ja'Veion Tyshun Mayes, a Person, aged 4.
(Photo taken from his obituary.)
What is the connection between Elvis's song and young Ja'Veion? Explained below the fold.
As the snow flies
On a cold and gray Chicago mornin'
A poor little baby child is born
In the ghetto
And his mama cries
'cause if there's one thing that she don't need
it's another hungry mouth to feed
In the ghetto
People, don't you understand
the child needs a helping hand
or he'll grow to be an angry young man some day
Take a look at you and me,
are we too blind to see,
do we simply turn our heads
and look the other way
Well the world turns
and a hungry little boy with a runny nose
plays in the street as the cold wind blows
In the ghetto
And his hunger burns
so he starts to roam the streets at night
and he learns how to steal
and he learns how to fight
In the ghetto
Then one night in desperation
a young man breaks away
He buys a gun, steals a car,
tries to run, but he don't get far
And his mama cries
As a crowd gathers 'round an angry young man
face down on the street with a gun in his hand
In the ghetto
As her young man dies,
on a cold and gray Chicago mornin',
another little baby child is born
In the ghetto
(These lyrics are transcribed on many Internet sites. These are from lyrics007.com.)
I thought it was appropriate to use an Elvis song for Ja' Veion's story. As touching as the song is, it describes only one scenario. There are infinitely more, equally tragic.
A child died in Greenville last month and was buried 8 days later. His father reported him missing the day following his death. Though no Amber alert was ever issued, hundreds of law enforcement officers and good-hearted volunteers turned out to participate in a tremendous manhunt. There was great urgency to the search as the temperatures hovered around 104ºF.
His little body was found in a patch of kudzu mid-afternoon that Wednesday (day after he was reported missing, two days after he died). My sister called me to tell me he’d been found. My heart leaped with hope, until I realized that he was dead when he was found. His father was arrested and is currently in custody on charges of homicide by child abuse.
I attended a candlelight vigil for young Ja’Veion Mayes at the site where he was found on the day of his burial. Large crowds gathered to honor him, including the mayor, a Republican. Here is a picture of that gathering. (I took all pictures in this diary except for the pictures of Ja'Veion Mayes.)
Little Ja'Veion's body was found here, just a few yards to the right of the assembly pictured above. Someone has left some small blue flowers for him.
I was not present when he was found, but the spot didn't look like that at that time. (Apparently cadaver dogs discovered him.) I believe much of the kudzu was taken for forensics, because it is so thick in that area, you can’t see anything except the kudzu.
Here is a picture of some of the teddy bears and other items expressing love for little Ja’Veion at the site. On the date of his burial the pile was still growing.
(This picture is from a Greenville News photo gallery. Picture #3 in that gallery.)
In a nearby Greenville park there is a memorial sculpture for abused children, dedicated to a small unnamed baby who was discovered in a Sears vacuum cleaner box days after her birth. This is information I found about her on the Internet.
She's still Julie Valentine to the police and people of Greenville, S.C., this little girl found dead in a Sears vacuum-cleaner box just days after her birth.
That's what detectives named the unknown infant, discovered the day before Valentine's Day in 1990. She and her bloody blanket were left in the cardboard container among wildflowers in an illegal dump off Interstate 85. The detectives wrote in their reports that she deserved better than the standard but anonymous "Jane Doe.''
They couldn't find her parents, after a search that included tracking down all recent buyers of the same-model vacuum cleaner. They wonder if the mother could have been someone passing through on the interstate, pulling off the highway, giving birth and then going on.
But no one could fathom the unfathomable: How could anyone do such a thing to a new baby?
Here are a couple of pictures I took of the site dedicated to Julie Valentine.
In this next picture, someone has honored Ja’Veion Mayes at the Julie Valentine memorial. That brought tears, too. Still does.
You know, on the Daily Kos we often find diaries on abortion or child abuse. We see diaries which debate the issue of ‘personhood,’ and when it is (or perhaps should be) conferred. Is a fetus a person? We may read the widely quoted Barney Frank condemnation in which he says, referring to anti-abortion legislators (Republicans almost without exception, though there are a few intentionally ineffectual pro-choice Republicans):
Life begins at conception and ends at birth.
Isn’t that equally true of persons, if they live in a severely underprivileged community? That personhood begins at conception, in that viciously conservative view, and ends at birth?
The death of Ja’Veion is an unspeakable tragedy, but for me it is also distressing that it took his death to restore to him the personhood which we Democrats consider his (and everyone's) BIRTHRIGHT.
Ja’Veion is dead, just as surely as the angry young man 'the King' sang about, without having had nearly so many years of life. Will his twin brother, Ta’Veion, be accorded the personhood he deserves in this world?
Now, people care about Ja’Veion, people who last cared when he was nameless, comparatively undifferentiated human tissue laying with his brother in his nameless, societally undifferentiated mother’s womb. Now that he is dead, he has regained his personhood with them.
Now, people are clamoring for the death penalty for Ja’Veion’s father, the same people who would have clamored for hellfire and brimstone had Ja’Veion been aborted. They wouldn’t lift a finger for Ja’Veion while he was alive. Once born, the underprivileged, for conservatives, become fair game for every competitive endeavor, fair or otherwise. The underprivileged become rivals for 'scarce' resources, when, in conservatives' view, they deserve nothing. Not even dignity, not even personhood.
In a sense Ja’Veion’s father parallels the angry young man Elvis sang about who did not die quite so early. I have nothing good to say about him. He has an extensive criminal record. He’s not a good person, but neither is he the only one guilty of child abuse. He, too, has lived a lifetime denied the personhood we all cherish and tend to take for granted.
After all, isn't the reason that Elvis's 'angry young man' became so angry that he perceived ever more clearly how completely and in how many ways society denied his personhood? Isn't the real reason that his mama cried upon his birth that she realized birth was the true line of demarcation for her son between being a person and not? Because she knew society forced her to have a child doomed since society would never grant the child the personhood which should be every child's right and dignified endowment?
You had it all too tragically right, Barney Frank.
Life begins at conception and ends at birth.
Damn.
Below, I linked to a couple of stories about the case. The Greenville News permits site visitors to comment on stories in a blog-like fashion. I have not read all of the comments, but a disgustingly high number of commenters extend the blame to include Ja'Veion's mother. Astonishing. So far I have not read a single comment which acknowledges that the vicious, 'kick 'em while they're down' culture of this blood-red state deserves any blame for Ja'Veion's death. Where were these people when Ja'Veion was alive? Before he regained his personhood in death? Where will they be from this point forward for his twin brother, Ta'Veion?
If you talk to conservatives long enough, you begin to suspect Ja'Veion himself is most to blame. For his choice in parents. Isn't that the real answer for them? Ultimately? I think it is. It is why - once born - any political measure to deny his dignity and opportunity is fair, just and right, even deserved, in conservatives' eyes.
I see a complete tapestry of child abuse, and the clearest example is of those who denied Ja’Veion’s personhood while he was alive. It is child abuse writ large. Child abuse with the society’s denial, which is its ultimate stamp of approval. Will society stand up for his twin brother (or his six other siblings)? (You don't want to take bets, at this moment in time, trust me.)
Elvis asked:
People, dont you understand
The child needs a helping hand
Or hell grow to be an angry young man some day
Take a look at you and me,
Are we too blind to see,
Do we simply turn our heads
And look the other way
He knew. In 1969, he knew. And in 2007, seemingly, we are doing no better. Travesty.
Below is a picture of a broken heart, built into the brick structure at the Julie Valentine sculpture.
(If you would like to read more about Ja'Veion's case, here are some of the news stories:
This story reports his discovery. You can see how tall the kudzu is in that area. Four feet high!
This story reports that he died the day before he was reported missing.
This story reports about community response and 'caring.' It was this story which stimulated this diary, as my opinion of the 'caring' differs rather dramatically from theirs. Where was this community the Sunday before Ja'Veion died? Where are they today for his twin brother?)
Please think about this: Millions of children live in poverty, thousands of children (childhelp.org states there are three million reports per year) are abused every day. Several children were abused in the time it took you to read this diary (childhelp says there is one child abuse reported every ten seconds. And it may be that less than one in three cases are reported. Stat taken from a graphic at the above link.).
The National Center for Children in Poverty calculates that over 28 million children live in low-income familes. About 13 million live in 'poor' families. This is a prescription for disaster.
It is vitally important that we elect progressive candidates who will implement health care, who will work to combat terrible poverty, hunger, untenable living conditions. We need representatives who have a deeper understanding of child abuse, and of the role society could play in undermining it. Work for their election, but also tell them how important their role is in removing this shame. Support public education. Ask them to stand up for the Ja'Veions of the world. We all have to do that.
I have read many dKos diaries in my time here, with many different calls to action. I have always been a fan of the Think Globally, Act Locally philosophy, and yet I wanted a more global call to action for this diary.
There are organizations which help the underprivileged. There are opportunities for assisting them through contributions and or volunteerism. Those may be found through Internet searches, and I recommend them if you have the time and resources.
The problem with that kind of action, for me, is that it tends to treat even major societal problems like this one symptomatically, rather than through real societal change. The only way I know of to affect the problem which resulted in Ja’Veion’s death is to effect societal change, top to bottom, through individual change and collective change. We need to elect candidates who will care, and who will express that caring through legislative and social initiatives. Those initiatives require a soul. The soul for the initiatives has to be that every human being has worth and value and inviolate personhood.
The question becomes how do we elect candidates who respect the personhood of all?
The last campaign I worked on was an eye-opener for me. I made calls, I did mailings, I went door-to-door, I put up yard signs. My candidate lost, which was heart-breaking, but it made me evaluate some things. Have I ever voted for a candidate because of a call I received? Or because of a piece of mail? Or because of a yard sign? Or because of a visit at my home? Or because I knew a neighbor was voting for a specific candidate? Never. Not once. Those political activities have never influenced my vote.
I am inclined to think that those things have not influenced the votes of very many political activists here. So why do we invest so much energy and so many resources in political action in which we can’t have much faith? (I am not saying those traditional political activities have no value at all, but I am saying that, for me, they have very little impact.)
What campaign activity has impact for me? In every case it is the candidate her or himself who decided the issue for me. I gave my vote because of the candidate’s heart, because of the candidate’s mind and, yes, because of the candidate’s values.
So what I am asking, in this diary’s call to action, is that you present your candidate with an argument. I am asking you to present your candidate with a story that may strengthen your candidate’s appeal through articulating a compassionate progressive worldview.
As Barney Frank said (paraphrase mine):
Personhood begins at conception and ends at birth.
There is greater power in Barney Frank’s fine framing than many suspect. There is a great hypocrisy in the insistence on personhood for fetuses, when that respect evaporates upon birth. Conservatives are very vulnerable on this point, for their extreme hypocrisy and unfairness. And they do such a masterful job of making it about ‘abortion’ that their miserable positions on education and health-care (pre- peri- and post-natal), minorities and the underprivileged do not receive a fraction of the spotlight that they deserve. Their positions ARE child abuse. Their attitudes are child abuse. Their policies and platforms are child abuse.
In Thinking Points, A Progressive’s Handbook, by George Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute (available in bookstores or as a free pdf download, here) Lakoff and the Rockridgians say (Chapt. 8, p. 137):
Perhaps the most effective political arguments come not in the form of arguments but in the form of stories. We have seen that arguments have implicit story elements-heroes, victims, villains, crimes, rewards, punishments. The reverse is also true: Stories have implicit argument elements, the elements in an argument frame.
In short, very often a story can make a political point far better than hours of more abstract monologue.
Give your candidate Ja’Veion’s story. Give your candidate framing and arguments to make the progressive case on human dignity and fair treatment for our children. Help her or him articulate this moral pillar of progressivism, which is superior to conservative moral contrivance. I think it will resonate far more clearly with the good hearts of our citizens. Don’t you?
Finally, please spare a moment to send a good thought to Ja’Veion, Ta’Veion and sweet little Julie Valentine. And be as emphatically and powerfully progressive as you can be, today, tomorrow and for the rest of your lives. You know how much is at stake.
Here is a last picture of Ja’Veion. You can see what a beautiful child he was!