In 2021, 311 American children under 12 were shot and killed. But I haven’t seen anyone marching in the streets demanding justice or declaring that their innocent lives mattered. On New Year’s Day, the 4-year-old niece of George Floyd was shot and wounded as she slept in her bed. Will anyone remember baby Grayson’s name besides his family, who must now find a way to live with their emptiness and grief? How can we tolerate these kinds of deaths in our communities? Why is there no outrage?

The country seems too busy arguing about ideology that doesn’t mean anything to a grieving mother and pouring millions of dollars into the race grievance industry. Some people even make reckless demands to defund the police, which will only endanger more children. If young black lives lost to crossfire don’t matter to us now, when will they? It shouldn’t take the bloodshed of even more innocent children before we become “woke” to this issue.

Some, like me, have personally experienced the loss of a child to street violence and are working to end it. Too many communities throughout our nation have become like war zones. The way to fix this is through grassroots organizations with a track record of stopping violence. Among other things, my initiative, Voices of Black Mothers United, runs grief support groups in 22 states, advocates for the rights of victims of violence, and works with neighborhood violence-prevention projects.