“THE HUNTED”

“THE HUNTED”

By Leopold Geans

“Where you from?”
If I had a dollar for every time some punk asked me that growing up, I would have a thousand dollars.
Everyone growing up the 80s and 90s in Los Angeles has heard that before. Anyone from my generation could tell you what the response is every time and you always said it loud and clear. You said it like you meant it, with intent.
“I don’t bang!”
Unless you were banging which is what over 28,000 individuals choose to do with their lives here in Los Angeles.
“I don’t bang!” Was the common response for young men who were not gang members.
“Where you from?” Is what the punk said to Dannie Farber Jr. before the murderer killed Dannie and ran off like a rat in the dark.
“Where you from?”
Only this time the response didn’t matter, finishing his sentence didn’t matter, the intent was to kill.
Four hot bullets ended his eighteen years of life on a cool Los Angeles night.
Calling the investigating detective inquiring about the murder and a salty officer replied, “which one, which murder?” In the coldest tone and I just imagined how much death this guy must have seen.
I must preface this, I didn’t know Dannie Farber he was just a kid I covered on my sports show. He scored the game winning TD against Crenshaw in the L.A. City Semi-Final match-up.
Viewing his Myspace in researching and what looks like Farber’s Myspace appeared gang videos and gang references. One video titled, “Compton Bloods Pirus,” another titled “Pirus Love.”
This changed the view of my article, not much.
This is where the expendable meets hegemony and for some reason we are responsible, the community.
Dannie was on his way out and one cannot hide from the world in which he lives. Choosing not to socially isolate his self.
No matter what happened, Dannie Farber should not have been murdered on May 24, 2009. Even though he was surrounded by gang infestation he was on his way to college, his way out of negativity.
Whether Dannie was trying to be friends with the gang infestation he was surrounded by via assimilation or not. We are responsible for this communal failure.
All you young ones must be aware that you have a responsibility to the image you exude.
You know the old cliché’ if it looks like a gang-banger, talks like a gang-banger, walks like a gang-banger then it is a gang-banger.
There is a negative culture that thrives here in Los Angeles and we as a community are responsible for not stopping and changing this culture of our city.
Tales of death began slapping me in the face as Farber’s Pop Warner Coach of the Compton Titans spoke about Dannie.
“I’ve been coaching for seventeen years and I’ve lost seven players, until last night at 2:05 a.m. I had another player who was shot in the back of the head, that makes eight.”
My Uncle Dr. James Mays wrote a manual when I was kid, it was about proper etiquette among police and gang harassment.
With four young black boys running around his mansion in Palos Verdes in the 70s 80s and 90s, he was trying to avoid the hegemonic statistics young black men face when it comes to death, education and jail in America.
He spoke of how in a predatory environment young black males have to pay attention to detail in order to succeed. You don’t have the option of playing on both sides of the line you must be on the right or wrong side because there is a difference.
Margin for error is minimal.
“This is all of our business…this country is all of our business,” Jim Brown NFL Hall of Fame inductee and social activist said in a Fox Sports interview.
“Our forefathers sacrificed themselves to create a Democratic Government, when you look around you, you’re the benefactor of people putting back,” he said.
The attention must come from the parents and if not then a neighbor or a coach and the community.
“It’s the community,” USC coach Pete Carroll said. “The community has to come together and we have to turn this around.”
Pete Carroll said “we” at Dannie Farber’s funeral. Pete Carroll standing in front of a group of people that have nothing to do with USC asking for change. Claiming himself as one of the community a responsible partner.
Carroll is as knee deep in stopping the killing of young men in Los Angeles as he is in knee deep domination of Notre’ Dame.
Coach Carroll and his “A Better L.A.” Charity is earning waves of respect in the Los Angeles community. “A Better L.A.” giving a genuine effort to make change and Carroll’s commitment to stopping the madness.
Speaking at an event for “A Better L.A.” last year Carroll spoke in opportunistic tones of optimism.
“Maybe we can do one of the greatest things that’s ever happened in America,” he said. “That’s turn this whole culture around, where it isn’t full of fear and we need to do it man, right here, its right there for us.”
Carroll’s opportunist optimism, treating the problem as if this is a moment to seize. Step aside Mayor Villaragosa my vote’s going to Pete.
Mayor Antonio Villaragosa was not there, it was Pete Carroll football coach USC. Asking the people to fix this problem we have grown accustomed to here in Los Angeles.
Dannie Farber Jr. scored the game-winning touchdown in one of the best High School football games of the 2008 season. Casting his Narbonne Gauchos into the Los Angeles City Title Championship game.
During the 2007 football season it was Jamiel Shaw, murdered, gunned down in broad daylight by an illegal alien.
I know this is going to sound weird to some certain types but even if all of these killings are “gang-related” we have a civic responsibility to stop it all.
Looking at these lapses in communal responsibility these deeds of evil touch me to the core.
Wondering why I care so much when I look at all these young boys.
I see me, I just see myself.

A young kid working hard toward his future, the world ahead of him, taken away

by evil, hunted.

e-mail me at og@ogsportsshow.com

Photos By Anthony Watson

Attribution: “A Better L.A.” Fox Sports.