___ Lives Matter in Syracuse, NY: Grumblings from a Corner of Disparity and Frustration in the Summer of 2022

The only way things are going to change is if people change their everyday ways
And that’s what scares people away
Unfortunately
Some more than others

My wife and I have been trying to put up a privacy fence in our backyard, and even though we garnered support from all of our neighbors, it hasn’t been going well with the City of Syracuse because apparently, it’s a zoning issue.
We live on a corner lot,
“And if you actually look at it, your property doesn’t go right up to the sidewalk and not everyone knows this and we have to take this information and calibrate our machine and that’s too bad about the crime but really these are the rules blah blah blah…
…here, take this red tape, wrap it around yourself and jump through this hoop…”

Which got us nowhere. And we even know a guy!

Here in Syracuse, NY, we have been fortunate.
We haven’t had a mass shooting that’s made the national news cycle.
We have college basketball and the Golden Snowball,
But we haven’t won in a few years.
Nope, no singular mass shootings are newsworthy here (at this rate, though, are any mass shootings newsworthy?).
However, if you look at the total number of shooting deaths in any given year as if it were a singular event, then you can consider us a great spot for mass shootings.
Our year is just one long mass shooting punctuated by days, as people are gunned down a few times a week from January to December.

Go ahead and check my math.
Give me the real number; correct me.
Let’s see how ridiculous it looks or how silly it sounds
When you say it aloud or write it down.

“Teen admits Syracuse murder; fired gun in prior murder and faced 2 attempted murders, too”

“15-year-old boy shot 3 times on Syracuse’s Near West Side, police say”

“Syracuse police investigate reported shooting at Near West Side apartment complex”

“2 women hospitalized after getting shot near Syracuse’s Kirk Park, police say”

“Teens who kill: Syracuse’s alarming death toll spreads heartbreak across city”

Well, it must have just been a bad few weeks in Syracuse this week.
You see, it’s the summer, and it’s always worse in the summer because of the heat.
What’s the date again?
The point is, it doesn’t matter.

(Can we put up our fence now? It sounds like a zoning issue, for sure.
Whose altar do we need to bow down to in order to make progress here?)

I’m not one for all doom and gloom, so here’s some good news:
“Update: Stolen car with 18-month-old recovered by Syracuse police; baby unharmed”

May as well stay in the loop on what’s going on elsewhere in the country:
“Amber Heard faces hurdles seeking to reverse Depp win”

I digress; back to the meat of this story.

Fill in the ___ lives matter

Did I assume the murders were black and white or did you?
Wait, does it matter?

If Black Lives Matter, then where are the protests?
Was it a shiny object and is there another?
Who’s looking, and who’s clicking?
Is anything clicking now that the cameras are pointing elsewhere?
(Thank you, inflation and Putin and mass shootings and insurrections.)
Speaking of insurrections, which city should we burn now, and which businesses should be smashed in?

Instead of one mass shooting event, some prefer numbers in the streets spread out over a period of time.
Black lives matter except for the victims of black-on-black crime on either side of the police tape line.
It’s a slow burn instead of a Molotov cocktail through the window of a small business.

Black-on-black violence, white-on-white crime,
The rest of the colors in the crayon box must just play nice or they’re all used up,
Or the coloring lines haven’t been drawn yet so there’s nothing to fill in and no narrative to spin.

I stood in the protests, and I wore my mask.
I was proud to be among fellow humans, even though I was on edge for violence and fearful for the businesses that worked so hard to stay afloat during Covid, that they could suffer damage from looters and the self-righteous charging through the streets and tossing bricks through windows to pillage in the name of equality or equity or power to the people or fairness.
You have to stay woke during times like these.
Did you hear Antifa was behind it all?

Not so fast – if All Lives Matter, then where are the protests?
Are we done making America great again?
Are these lives matter?
Which lives do? Only the ones on paper?
Maybe the news knows you can’t multitask:
Too busy stripping the rights of women and the other people who can get pregnant
(Forgive me, I’m still getting up to speed on the proper terminology –
I’m not as woke this early in the morning, or late in the evening, depending on which way you look at it)
In the name of god and goop?

Long live the fetus, and as long as it does,
The person carrying the fetus has no say, can’t be trusted to not make mistakes,
Can’t make informed decisions or determine the trajectory or their own lives because
All lives don’t matter.

Long live the fetus.
Until it’s born of course and then evolves – sorry, trigger word – grows into a libtard.
Then lives don’t matter.
This is different, though,
Because Jesus said so in the bible.

Can’t control the guns,
Can’t control the criminals,
Half the country is about to say, “can’t control birth,
So we’ll control women instead.”

I feel duped.
By everyone on all sides.
Those headlines were only some and just from the past few weeks.
Listing them didn’t require much curating.
My A.I. brain interprets it as lives don’t matter.

The only way things are going to change is if people change their everyday ways
And that’s what scares people away
Unfortunately
Some more than others
Which is why some cling so dearly
To old texts and scriptures, wrinkled sheets of paper,
Clickbait headlines, traps set by the circus tent stakers,
Social media sound bites, celebrity snippets,
And get bent out of shape saying, “that’s not how it was written!”
But that’s the point, the shape doesn’t matter.

“Defund the police” didn’t gain much ground here in Syracuse that I can remember, but if it did, it certainly didn’t last.
No one is crying to defund the police here that I can hear.
It seems it’s the opposite.
I wonder why.
Last week, as my wife chatted with one of the police officers tending to a crime scene on our street, in front of our house (nothing major – just auto theft),
A neighbor came down to interrupt:
“Sorry, I’m not sure if this is related but I think someone broke into my garage again,
And I think they still might be in there.
It’s the same window that was broken into previously –
I didn’t have a chance to fix it yet –
I had boarded it up.”
Sort of like a business.

The long arm of the law hands out appearance tickets, so people are out and back home in someone else’s house in no time.
With this country’s prison numbers, can you blame the law?
Jails are stuffed to the brim,
And there’s just no room for these people behind bars with all the non-violent weed traffickers.

The children, somebody please think of the children!

How many soon-to-be violent offenders were previously given appearance tickets?
Can someone check that math?
We’re getting robbed blind.
Maybe that’s what happened to justice – poor girl’s sight was taken away.

What’s funny about this?

Is the timing of our saga and the obstacles we’ve faced.
You see, we’ve been trying to put up a privacy (security) fence,
But apparently, it’s a zoning issue.
We live on a corner lot so there are lots of little nuances to these things.
(“That really is too bad about the crime; have you talked to your common councilor about it?”)
Each and every situation always has its nuances.
We’re trying to follow the rules and it’s not working out in our favor.
Maybe we’ll move,
Or we’ll go rogue, become criminals and build the fence without the City’s permission.
I don’t want to do time but I can live with the appearance ticket, just as long as we can put up the fence in time to keep out the murderers.
Police can’t arrest us, so they’ll give us our tickets and we’ll just keep on building, doing our thing.
No offense, but we’ll offend again and again until we have our fence.

The City no doubt has other zoning issues to manage.
For example, tear down that highway; I’m all for it.
It’s a big step forward, and it will take time.
Maybe it’s a road to somewhere better, a new city.

As an update, we want to put up our privacy fence partially as a danger defense but the City denied our request for safety reasons,
(“I’m sorry, I have to be able to explain any deviations from this old rule book. That really is a shame about the crime though – have you talked to the police?”)
Even though people are being robbed and hurt and murdered,
And people are breaking in and stealing left and right.
It’s not that big of a place.

It has me thinking of mortality and life and death and how life matters to those who are living and conscious, or how it should, anyway.

Maybe I’m still torn up and trying to make sense of life after my father’s ended unexpectedly (or expectedly) about 11 months ago.
Add to that the fact that we recently we had to euthanize our beloved house cat (cat lives matter, all nine of them).
We used to let him patrol the backyard, and he liked looking out at the world from safely inside the existing metal wire fence – it’s all rusty and rotting.
Now it’s just our dog back there, barking aggressively at passersby.
Black, white, brown, yellow, blue, red, old, young – none of that matters to him.
He just barks and barks and is scared of the world out there beyond that rusty wire fence.

I didn’t write this as a Democrat or a Republican or a liberal or a conservative,
So don’t read it from any one of those boxes wearing the silly little buttons.
Throw those away –
They’re a big part of the problem.
These are just some of the latest grumblings from someone living on a corner of disparity and frustration.

So, if anyone needs us, my wife and I will be building a fence around ourselves in our living room
(we’ll keep a little hole in the side so we can plug in our news machine).
At least within that area, we can assume control of our destinies
(and my wife will have control over her uterus if New York gets red).
It should be out of city zoning’s jurisdiction.