Let us not linger too long wringing our hands and shedding our tears.
Be assured that I write this as one who has shed many a tear over the loss of far too many young people shot and killed in north Minneapolis over the last 20 years. But I also get deeply angry over each untimely death -- because this violence does not have to happen.
What the wonderful youths and adults of north Minneapolis really need are our long-term effective actions, not after-the-fact weeping and lamentation. They need constructive efforts that build for the future more than they need commiseration over momentary calamity.
And by comparison with the overhaul of K-12 education, every other action is just application of the Band-Aid, the treating of symptom rather than cause.
For more than 30 years, the public K-12 schools of north Minneapolis have been on a steep decline into failure. From the late 1970s, as great numbers of Jewish and middle-class African-American people exited for St. Louis Park and other near suburbs, many of those left behind have been the poorest community members.
New neighbors appeared, recently arrived from gravely challenged communities in Chicago, Gary and Detroit.
These more recent arrivals had little idea of the proud traditions that have abided on the North Side: the splendid activities of the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House under the 1924-1937 tenure of W. Gertrude Brown, the life of old 6th Avenue (today's Olson Highway) into the late 1930s and the heyday of North High School into the 1950s as Minnesota's best secondary institution.
White, middle-class educators were overwhelmed amid the shifts of population and community identity. There were virtually no African-American teachers in the Minneapolis public schools of the 1970s.