Chronic poverty coupled with the isolation of the COVID-19 lockdowns are the root causes of the Baltimore block party shooting, says a local civil rights leader
The Baltimore Police Department has still not named any suspects in the shooting that left two dead and 28 wounded, 15 of those children, on Sunday July 2.
Joshua Harris, vice-president of the NAACP chapter in nearby Maryland, told Sputnik that the majority-black city near Washington DC is blighted by poverty and social alienation.
He explained that the party at the Brooklyn Homes housing project was an annual community event intended to "keep teenagers out of trouble" in a city that sees around 300 murders every year, and where there were 84 gunshot victims aged 17 or younger in 2022 alone.
"We really can't have the conversation about the increase in gun violence or even particularly the increasing number around youth, if we're not talking about the increase in the poverty and the poverty gap," Harris said.
He also blamed the COVID-19 lockdowns for increasing the existing social alienation among Baltimore's youth.
"We saw this really exacerbated by the pandemic and those that are impacted," Harris stressed. "We know that violence is clearly a public health issue, but we have to really talk about the root causes."
"This is a public housing community, many who may feel a sense of hopelessness," the activist said. "Then combine that with the isolation that occurred over a period of the pandemic from real interpersonal interaction and inability to really register with each other as human beings."
Another factor to blame was the "ease of access to weapons" in American cities, he added.
"Whether they be stolen weapons or not, there's seems to be an ease of access, unlimited supply of guns flooding our streets, not just in Baltimore, but around the country," Harris said.
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