Posted on 07/08/2010 7:29:14 PM PDT by iowamark
Deck stacked against those who were raised by the streets.
The horrible death of Eric Morse, the 5-year-old boy who was dropped from a CHA building in 1994, became a metaphor for the horrors of urban living.
The ages of the boy's killers, 10 and 11, compounded the tragedy, as did the fact that Eric's half-brother, Derrick Lemon, was in the 14th-floor apartment when his brother was dropped to his death. » Click to enlarge image Mary Mitchell
Derrick was 8 years old, unable to protect his younger brother from his tormenters even before the killers took him to the apartment at 3833 South Langley in the Clarence Darrow Homes.
Now, 16 years later, what has become of Derrick Lemon could be a metaphor for the horrors of ghetto parenting.
I know some of you will be offended by my word choice. But ghetto parenting is the only phrase that can describe what is going on.
Ghetto parenting is cursing around, and at, a child.
Ghetto parenting is brawling with your man or your woman in front of your child.
Ghetto parenting is letting your child roam the streets until somebody else's mother has to tell the child to go home.
Ghetto parenting is putting your child off on friends and relatives because you want to hang out in the street.
Ghetto parenting is getting so hooked on substances that the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has to remove your children and place them with strangers.
This is how a child who was a victim of ghetto parenting can turn out.
Last week, the 23-year-old Lemon was found guilty of murdering Illya Glover, his aunt's 40-year-old boyfriend, in 2006.
The dead man had tried to stop Lemon from choking the aunt at a family barbecue. Lemon shot him several times.
And it gets worse.
Earlier this year, Lemon was also charged with home invasion and intimidating a witness to the murder.
I can only imagine the nightmares Lemon must have had after his brother's death, but his future was already in jeopardy before he was caught in a national glare.
In a follow-up article that was published in 1997, the Chicago Tribune reported Eric and Derrick's mother, Toni Morse, was a drug addict whose parental rights were being terminated.
"Morse's seven living children reside in foster homes, with relatives or in shelters, all having been abandoned by their mother or taken into protective custody by the state; including Eric, three tested positive for drugs at birth," according to the Tribune.
Lemon went to live with Toni Morse's father, Alvin Bush.
"It is kind of strange to me for a mother to leave her kids, period," Bush said.
According to the article, "the Morse children lived a transient life" and it wasn't clear who was supposed to be watching them that day.
While it appears that the state, which provided counseling, and Lemon's grandparents tried to redirect his fate, there's no indication that his own mother did anything other than sue the Chicago Housing Authority.
Here is a mother who failed her children in every way.
Yet, she was awarded a $2.175 million settlement from the CHA, and another $800,000 from the Digby's Detective and Security Agency Inc.
How ironic is that?
Toni Morse's lawyers argued that the blame for Eric Morse's death was shared by the CHA, the detective agency and the realty group that failed to keep the doors and windows of the vacant apartment boarded up.
But there was no advocate for Eric Morse or Derrick Lemon.
There was no one to argue that the biggest share of the blame belonged to the mother who allowed her young sons to wander around the notoriously dangerous housing project unsupervised.
No one to point out that leaving the 8-year-old to protect the 5-year-old was tantamount to neglect.
No one to say straight out that had Toni Morse fulfilled her obligation to parent her children, Eric Morse would not have ended up in that apartment.
Instead of being held accountable, Toni Morse might as well have won the lottery.
Lemon got half of the settlement. The rest of the money was split among Lemon's mother, a sister and a brother.
But the blood money was not enough to change Lemon's destiny.
Only repentance and redemption could have done that.
She could have said: “Democrat parenting dooms kids”
what are MAry Mitchell’s politics? is she an Obammy supporter?
How can she reconcile those two opposing positions then
kyrie eleison
In my opinion, I believe the parenting and family values were stronger prior to the 1960’s welfare laws. We are now into the 3rd plus generation of the welfare state, and it has bred a nightmare.
Once we started the culture of unmarried welfare moms, we set off a never ending downward spiral in values across the country. I don't think there is a way to turn it around, either. The democrats would fight every measure of reform because this is their voting base.
Betcha she just loves Chicago and wouldn’t live anywhere else ...unless she’s already moved to the suburbs.
I agree with you. When we removed the stigma and shame from being an unwed mother, and then paid her to have and keep her baby, all was lost.
Bleeding heart liberals were more concerned with the poor unwed mother’s feelings than the havoc that would be unleashed on society.
They never ask what’s best for society. They only care about the feelings and self esteem of the individual.
We called this “learned poverty” and left Chicago back in the 70’s. There were already multi-generational welfare families back then.
Mary Mitchell is Obama. very left. Once in a while she’ll get it right.
Paragraphs are our friends. We have lots of friends.
“Writers” incapable of organizing their thoughts into paragraphs have a lot of nerve calling themselves “writers”.
Racist!
She could have said: Democrat parenting dooms kids
<<
Yup!..or you could write a book...”It takes a Village”
She's a black woman working for the Chicago Sun Times. Of course she's a screaming left wing Obama supporting lunatic. Give her a couple of days. She'll find a way to blam this on Bush.
We don’t need a book...they wrote the “White Paper” on this almost 50 yrs ago:
http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/webid-meynihan.htm
and of course NO democrat alive now even wants to acknowledge its existence..
We don’t need a book...they wrote the “White Paper” on this almost 50 yrs ago:
http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/webid-meynihan.htm
and of course NO democrat alive now even wants to acknowledge its existence..
Doublethink. The Party encourages it.
(Hi, FRiend!!)
So true! There have always been the poor and there have always been ghettos, but never was life — then and there— as it is now. When men and women spawn kids just for the welfare money, there is a breakdown in society. When there is no strong family structure, trouble looms. And for what? To get votes?
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