There Be Monsters Here
by Steve Eckardt

The news was so awful it hit the front pages like a freight train into a school bus: KILLED FOR HER BIKE blared the Chicago Sun-Times above a big photo of the eleven year-old Ryan Harris, heart-wrenchingly innocent, full of life and promise.

And then the worst part: "Seven and Eight Year-olds Held in Slaying. "

Here was a story that turned the stomach and wounded the heart, for sure. It was particularly painful for any parent--especially the parent of a female, always torn between lovingly locking her in her room or letting her free . . . at the risk of rape and even murder.

With Ryan dead--sexually molested, her head bashed in with a brick--the girlish question "Daddy, can I ride my bike?" would never sound the same.

Surely the world today--especially its Black part--deserves the 16th Century map warning: "there be monsters here. "

Bad seeds

Meanwhile the Chicago Police brought forth--to everyone's horror--the alleged killers: two children.

Who needs any more evidence? -- some kids are just evil. Murdering at age seven -- no way you can blame society for that.

Thank God the Chicago Police wasn't constrained by Constitutional legal technicalities. They popped those little ones into roomsful of police officers with no parents or lawyers present (childrens' free choice, you understand--the cops told the kids about the Miranda decision) . . . and got confessions quick.

Thank God as well the officiers weren't side-tracked by witness reports of an adult male putting Ryan in a car, or by claims the kids were too small to have inflicted the fatal blow. Let's face it: these boys did something--and no doubt they'd do worse in the future.

Solution, finally

Stripping these little monsters of the so-called "rights" that only protect the guilty anyway is a good first step -- but only a first step. Lord knows that with curfew, anti-gang, and street and locker searches we've already taken away freedom of assembly and protection against warrantless searches. Plus we've tried metal detectors, drug-sniffing dogs, school uniforms and zero-tolerance programs like the one that expelled a 12 year-old from school for giving her friend an aspirin.

And what do we have to show for it?

School shootings. Murder. Graffiti.

Charging them as adults and putting them in prisons with grown-up felons are good steps, but how well have they worked? Sure, we can crack down even harder--and we should--but until we start executing elementary school children we're not going to get anywhere.

But, as the song say "God loves Texas" -- they're debating putting kids as young as eleven on Death Row there, though they'd wait until they're 17 to execute 'em. Now why they'd want to wait, I don't know--their victims didn't get to--but then you gotta love the idea of 'em spending six years growing up . . . knowing they're going to the chair.

* * *

All this brings to mind what James P. Cannon, one of America's greatest Reds, once said (here paraphrased): 'If in the end it turns out I'm wrong and there IS an afterlife, I'm sure I'll go to Heaven -- not for what I've done, but for what I've had to listen to. '

The truly sad case of Ryan Harris is just one of many the increasingly tabloid-ized media has been feeding us. Aside from boosting sagging ratings and circulation, the message is indeed "there be monsters here. "

The depiction of swarthy-faced, turbaned terrorists overseas is more obviously political: hate propaganda in the service of war, nationalism and attacks on civil liberties.

But the parade of domestic horror stories is political as well--and certainly at least as dangerous: evil ones are among us, these reports tell us. Fear each other, trust no one. Retreat to your cocoon (but leave your TV set on). Full-scale cultural and governmental crackdown--including many more executions--are our only hopes....

Ugly as this campaign is, it might not matter much were we entering the New Economy of triumphant capitalism we've heard so much about--where free-at-last markets promise ever-rising prosperity.

But in the six weeks leading up to the end of August, some 2. 5 trillion dollars of wealth have been destroyed in stock downturns just in the pre-eminent United States. Its lesser rivals in Europe and Asia have been hammered much, much worse.

"There is excess capacity in virtually every industry," reports the New York Times.

"We are moving into an era of deflation that could last as long as two decades," Chicago's top New Era economist tells the Chicago Tribune.

Far from being triumphant, capitalism is facing both ever-more-fierce international competition for shrinking markets -- and economic collapse (just ask little places like Japan, Russia, Indonesia and the Asian Tigers about that). Left unopposed, it will re-play the 1930's, albeit in twenty-first century style.

In short, capitalism is driving toward fascism and war.

Guess what will happen to a little girl--or anybody else--who rides along.

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Epilogue: Two weeks after this column was written, public protests forced evidence into public that Ryan's killer left semen at the scene--a biological impossibilty for the seven and eight year-olds--compelling Chicago police to drop all charges against the children.

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