Column: 'First — You've Got To Get Mad!'

*This is an opinion column*

'I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write ... All I know is that first, you've got to get mad.'

- Howard Beale, "Network" (1971)

NORTHPORT, AL — A sad yellow Moon loomed larger than normal in the sky over west Alabama Tuesday night. In the parking lot of Fieldcrest Apartments just off Watermelon Road, the early fall evening, aided by the blue whirls from the tops of police cruisers, outshined the dusk-til-dawn streetlights that seemed to lag as they flickered on one by one.

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Despite the pleasant weather and relative stillness of an otherwise normal night in Northport, there could be no peace found as I heard a woman repeatedly scream "But where is my baby?"

The woman's daughter — 16-year-old Trinity Shannon — was shot and killed a little more than an hour or so before in a drive-by shooting at Wendy's on McFarland Boulevard in Northport. Her murder represented the second teen killed by gun violence targeting other people since Friday and the fourth homicide for Tuscaloosa County during that time.

Despite the absolutely heartbreaking murder of 13-year-old Kei'lan Allen Friday as he sat in his room playing on his iPad, that tragedy would mark just the start of the most violent stretch of days I have covered in over a decade of working in journalism across the southeast, in cities big and small.

While it came and went with no media coverage, the following Saturday nearly saw a similar situation play out in University Manor — a longstanding epicenter of crime in Tuscaloosa.

As I reported on Thursday, a 13-year-old boy was shot in what seems to have been the result of boneheaded negligence on someone's part. But imagine had that bullet been launched at a slightly different angle. Fractions of inches likely made the difference.

The teen — a child, for all intents and purposes — had no choice other than to run upon hearing the shots ring out, but was struck in the ankle. Luckily, he is expected to make a full recovery from his injuries. Is that the kind of every day environment we want for our children?

Tuesday, though, would be the most violent day for Tuscaloosa County in some time, as a 28-year-old man died from injuries sustained in an afternoon shooting at Hay Court Apartments in the city's West End. This tragedy occurred just hours before a shooting in Northport left a 16-year-old Tuscaloosa County High School student dead.

As I stood off out of the way by an apartment building on Fieldcrest Drive Tuesday night, nervously digging my boot heels into the damp ground, I was overcome with an emotion that is rarely brought out when I'm out in the field — seething anger.

It's an anger for the parents of those murdered and injured children. It's an anger for the young lives cut short. It's an anger for those in our community who no longer feel safe. And it's an anger that knows if we don't do something about the violence as a community, the next death paraded around on the 6 o'clock news as a result of a stray bullet could just as easily be any one of us.

That's why I evoked the words of Peter Finch in his Academy Award-winning role of possessed anchorman Howard Beale in the 1971 classic "Network."

During the movie's most-iconic scene, a rain-soaked and disheveled Beale, appearing live on television to millions of viewers, launches into a full-throated tirade that culminates with the famous phrase "I'm as mad as Hell and I'm not going to take this anymore."

While the movie is dated in many ways by today's standards, the response of blind fury still seems an appropriate one to a population crippled by malaise and rendered nearly useless by its own apathy and selfishness.

If we're ever going to address our not-so-subtle uptick in gun violence, first, we've got to get mad. This isn't an anger that should be a precursor to more violence or bitterness, but one that motivates and holds accountable not just the officials capable of effecting change, but those of us in our own communities raising children while turning a blind eye to the root causes of violence.

While concepts like community policing and activism make for good photo opportunities, I remember the words one longtime police officer told me when asked about the efficacy of the new age approach when addressing violence before it starts.

"Community policing is an easy concept to support, until it's time for the community to do its part and get out in their communities and do the work."

At some point, the onus must be placed on us at the community level, instead of expecting law enforcement to lock folks up before they ever commit crimes. With our broken criminal justice system at present, we have enough of that already without encouraging more proactive law enforcement measures that only feed our bloated revolving-door prison system.

As I wrote in a column in June, which followed a tragic murder/suicide during a shift change at Dixie Pulp & Paper, our situation in Tuscaloosa is much more complicated than talking points in a community planning pamphlet or topics hollered through a megaphone at a protest.

Again, we can't pray, legislate or demonstrate the violence away.

First — we've got to get mad.

We have to take it personally that our communities are rapidly becoming war zones. While it should get your blood boiling to see an innocent teenager gunned down, it should bring out just as much concern for the person responsible, along with consideration for the environmental, social and economic factors that would lead someone to commit such senseless acts of brutality. After all, everyone was somebody's child at one point and I think we fail to recognize that once they become the public villain responsible for a killing that should have never happened.

And that's what we so often miss. I'm even guilty of it as a journalist and have tried my best to develop as much empathy for all of the parties involved when reporting on these situations. I can be objective when re-writing a press release, but after hearing a mother openly weep for her dead teenager, it's hard to keep your emotions in check.

But, when that anger and rage breached the surface for me Tuesday night, I was once again reminded of that famous movie speech. Despite the changes in media and technology that we've seen in the half century since "Network" debuted on the silver screen, the message is still one that applies to this day.

"It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!"

Ryan Phillips is the founder and field editor of Tuscaloosa Patch. The views expressed in this opinion column are his and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of our parent company.