Pubdate: Tue, 11 Jul 2000
Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
Copyright: 2000 The Sun-Times Co.
Contact:  401 N. Wabash, Chicago IL 60611
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Website: http://www.suntimes.com/
Author: Mary A. Mitchell

ANOTHER VICTIM OF WAR ZONE

Tsarina Powell died in a war zone.

And hours after the 12-year-old was killed trying to escape gunfire
into her home, her neighbors sat on their front porches weary of the
strangers who intruded into their own private hell.

It was eerie.

Another young life is crushed under the weight of the drug war, but
where is the outrage? Where are our elected officals, clergy and
others? Where is our march to the killing room to demand an end to
this carnage?

Last Saturday in Mississippi, the Rev. Jesse Jackson was able to lead
about 1,000 demonstrators to a tree where a black teenager died last
month in a hanging that was ruled a suicide, which Jackson believes
was a lynching.

Yet here on Chicago's South Side, a girl was murdered in a volley of
gunfire most likely by people who look like her, and except for the
drone of a carpenter's saw, hours afterward it was as if the tragedy
never occurred.

"If we don't hear gunshots, that would be something wrong," a resident
conceded. "We are brainwashed. We've gotten used to being terrified."

Tsarina's neighbors eyed the news media suspiciously as we tried to
make sense out of why the young girl apparently became a victim of the
ongoing turf battle between gangs in her neighborhood.

No one was willing to give their names because eyes were watching,
even if we did not see them. People talked furtively out of lips that
barely moved.

This is what it means to live in a war zone.

You must stay out of the way. Everyone knew what was up at 5955 S.
Honore. Some of them even know who the shooters are and whom they were
looking for. It was not Tsarina. She was the only innocent one in all
of this.

By the time I arrived at the deteroriating frame house, fear had
blanketed the block like the humidity in New Orleans.

Tsarina's body had already been taken away and her family had
fled.

Her stepgrandfather learned of her death from the afternoon news and
came leaning on his cane to try to see for himself whether it was
true. His taps on the screenless door and a window roused only a dog
somewhere upstairs.

The old man did not go to the backyard and count the 19 bullet holes
that riveted the back of the house. The old man had no answers.

"I don't know. I really don't know. They must have been messing with
some of the wrong people," he said, identifying himself only as Mr.
Lucas and refusing to give a first name.

"Maybe they were targeted by mistake."

Unlike a declared war, it is hard to avoid the enemy in a drug/gang
war.

Gang members are landlords, relatives, husbands, boyfriends and
fathers. For many, the illicit drug business run by gangs has become a
legitimate lifestyle protected by silence.

It is safer to keep to yourself and keep your mouth shut while the
gangs fight over the size of their territory.

According to one resident, Tsarina's family had lived in the house for
about a year, but few people knew them. The upstairs apartment was
where an alleged ranking gang member named "Mooney" lived, and
everyone knew him.

"I try not to socialize. I try not to get to know anyone," a resident
said. "Everything around here is gang-related."

More than likely, the people who killed Tsarina will be found and
charged even if neighbors do not say a word. The murder of a child
demands swift action, and police are bound to take it since Englewood
is also poised to launch a renaissance with the redevelopment of
Kennedy-King College.

But what about the next time? Unless residents join forces to get the
guns out of the hands of criminals in communities like Englewood,
there will surely be a next time.

How many Tsarinas do we have to bury in these communities before the
residents themselves begin to give up their own corrupted fathers,
brothers, uncles and cousins in order to save the lives of their
uncorrupted children? Not one more, I pray. Not one more.
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