FOREVER YOUNG (RIP Nigel Ellison)

by Tiphani N. Montgomery

 

Our children are dying.

They aren’t graduating from high school, they’re being buried six feet under.

They aren’t building families, they’re building deaths counts. Prison sentences are no longer a punishment, yet a lifestyle that is foolishly looked forward to.

Expected. A badge of honor.

Whose fault is it?

Mine. Yours. Ours.

While you’re sitting in your homes, your churches, your businesses. While you spend time with your friends and hug your family, our children are dying.

Being massacred.

Slayed. By each other.

We ARE failing them.

We HAVE failed them.

We have failed them by thinking that just because they’re not our children, they are not our responsibility.

By labeling them menaces to society.

By giving up on them and telling them to make it on their own.

We have failed them by not affirming them.

By not letting them know that they’re more than conquers. That they are powerful and have the ability to save and change lives. Or maybe we cant teach them what we don’t think about ourselves.

For you who live in the suburbs tucked away in your safe houses that you hide in..this is your problem!

For you who live in the hood and have settled with the thought that nothing can be changed…this is your problem!

For you young people who think this is just the way life is…this is your problem!

A problem that can no longer be ignored.

A problem that is causing the extinction of our youth.

A problem, that if not handled, will bring this city to ruin.

A city I have chosen to raise my daughter in.

Blood has been stained on too many sidewalks, in too many homes.

Gallons and gallons of baby blood.

The devil has a strong hold on the minds of our children.

Prayer is not enough.

Faith is not enough.

We have to take action.

God has equipped us with the power to heal this city. Don’t let anymore blood be on our hands.

Plant seeds of encouragement, love, expectation, dreams, and future into our children, in each other, and watch how we grow.

Jay Z said he wanted to be forever young.

Forever young is something Nigel should not have been.

 

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