This Holy Week brings the familiar story of passion and death. But the accounts of betrayal, agony, tears and blood also relate to the experience of dying in the here and now, on the streets of our nation's capital. This week, for some of us, is about the hour of death, then and today.
Look no further than last Saturday on the eve of Holy Week. The lead story on the front page of the Washington Afro American newspaper carried this stark headline: "11 gun murders in two weeks." One African American resident told the Afro, "The blood is flowing again. The streets are paved with the blood of our boys."
Readers of the Afro learned through an interview with D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey what they could already tell with their own eyes: Although African Americans are about 60 percent of the District's population, more than 90 percent of the victims are African Americans. What's more, half of the murders go unsolved.
Ramsey's interview dealt with homicides in the preceding weeks. That discussion of recent violence, please note, took place before:
• The Eve of Palm Sunday, when: on Saturday, 7th District police found 24-year-old Corey Harvell in the 2400 block of Elvans Road SE dying from a gunshot wound to the head; four men were wounded in a drive-by shooting in the 1100 block of Trenton Place SE; a federal judge was stabbed in an attempted robbery while walking with his wife near Dupont Circle in Northwest.
• Palm Sunday, when 4th District police found 21-year-old Benita Morgan dying from gunshot wounds to the head and body in an alley off 16th Street NW near the Walter Reed Army Medical Center;
• Monday of Holy Week, whenfive people were shot with an assault rifle in a drive-by shooting outside a Northwest housing complex courtyard; and two women were carjacked, one of them kidnapped and raped by a gunman who accosted them in the 5500 of First Street NE.
• Tuesday of Holy Week, when 7th District police officers found 22-year-old Markita Lee on the sidewalk in the 1600 block of V Street SE dying from a gunshot wound to the back;
• Wednesday of Holy Week, when a 16-year-old girl at Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School in Northwest was shot in the neck and left in critical condition, unable to speak.
• Maundy Thursday, or Day of the Last Supper, when a man fired a gun at a group of men near 14th and Peabody streets NW.
• Good Friday, when the D.C. police reported a homicide count of 53, a 12.8 percent jump over the 47 recorded by March 28 of the previous year.
Something about this Holy Week isn't quite hanging together.
Washington, D.C., is a city with local leaders who can speak, world without end, about the blessings of freedom and liberty, the right to live in an America without fear, and the wonderful richness of our diverse city and its culture. Yet these same leaders are almost blase about the senseless and callous criminal acts that take place in our city almost daily.
That kind of disconnect extends to the city's pulpits, where clergy have been working themselves overtime this week preaching self-examination and repentance to the already saved. Yet many wearing the cloth -- indifferent and aloof -- drive or walk right past people on the streets whose lives are an unholy mess and in need of pastoral ministration.
The disconnection from the reality of troubles and treachery on our streets is not limited to our politicians or preachers.
A minivan drives into a housing complex and cuts loose with gunfire; as many as 12 shots are fired. One victim ends up lying on a car, another on the courtyard's pavement, three others in the housing complex. Not a pretty scene.
The day before, a woman is killed uptown. Two days earlier, four men across town are shot in another drive-by shooting.
The three stories combined rated about nine inches inside the Metro section of The Post.
Contrast that coverage with the account of Michael Myers, a Virginia resident who was killed in his downtown Washington modeling studio last week. His slaying was front-page news in the Metro section. It garnered more than 16 inches of coverage over two days.
We speak with conviction about life and its sanctity, but draw a line in our city. Downtown violence is real, but somehow detached from the bloodletting in our neighborhoods. What is the lesson here? That downtown life is valuable, but lives uptown, across town, on the outskirts of town aren't worth much? That violent death, beyond the office canyons, shops and restaurants, is nothing to mourn? That the victims, nameless and faceless, probably had it coming?
And so, with those questions comfortably out of mind, voices will be raised tomorrow in thanks and praise, rejoicing in the Easter moment. Yet at that very instance, others in our city may be falling silent, unnoticed, forever.
e-mail: kingc@washpost.com
