In spite of the menial attention garnered by Brooklyn’s violent and pervasive drug trade in the local news media, borough residents are making sure you’ve heard about their loved one, or even strangers, senselessly gunned down – but they’re not snitching.
Chanequa Campbell, 21, grew up in Bedford Stuyvesant. The now-infamous Harvard senior, linked to a drug-related homicide on campus, is back in Brooklyn, awaiting the arrival of her possessions.
Whether Ms. Campbell’s involvement in the murder was criminal or not – the main story line in the coverage of this tragic event and subsequent charges of racism on Harvard’s part – is somewhat beside the point.
Around lunch time last Friday, 18-year-old Chad Wilkens was standing in China City, on the corner of Nostrand Avenue and Dean Street in Crown Heights, when he was shot. An ambulance arrived and took Mr. Wilkens to Kings County Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. The media was nowhere to be found.
Last Wednesday, on the evening of the final presidential debate of this cycle, held at Hofstra University, Senator John McCain alleged in the most cautious terms he could muster, that ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”
Nearby, in the Uniondale section of Hempstead Iona Emsley cringed. For the last 19 years, Ms. Emsley has worked with various chapters of ACORN—in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island—to fight for social, housing and immigrant rights.
Playwright and native New Yorker Danny Hoch knows where the money is, and he’s showing everyone.
