A Mother and Father Want to Know — Who Killed JoJo?

On January 19, 1996, our 23 year-old son, Joshua "JoJo" White was returning home with friends from work at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School when he was confronted by a confused and enraged stranger who shot him to death. His last words, in hope of calming his assailant, were "Peace, brother, One Love." 

His killer escaped, and is still at large. We, of course, want this man off the streets, unable to hurt or kill again. But we think he is not the only one responsible for JoJo's death.

JoJo was born and raised in San Francisco, attending public schools. He grew to love the city for its progressiveness and its diversity. He had a passion for sports, playing in nearly every field, gym, and playground in the city. He enjoyed working with children and was especially concerned with the effects that violence, racism and poverty had on them. His experiences on the playgrounds and in the classrooms motivated him to political action, knowing we all have the right and the responsibility to make the world a peaceful, healthy, nurturing place. He was active in the hip-hop movement, believing music and poetry can be powerful voices for social change. One of his last activities was a fundraiser to defend the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is on death row in Pennsylvania for the “crime” of trying to change the world.

An African proverb says it takes a village to raise a child. JoJo had the good fortune to have a village to grow in, from a relatively secure, peaceful, and loving family life to a community of friends from every neighborhood of San Francisco. His travels to Mexico, Europe and Cuba developed in him an even broader idea of who he was and how he belonged to the entire human family.

His experiences gave him an identity much larger than himself, helping him to become a man who didn't simply tolerate differences in people, but one who deeply respected and loved the diversity in humanity.

The hundreds of people, mostly youth, who attended the candlelight vigil where JoJo was killed, and the memorial programs to honor and celebrate his life, are living testimony to the hopeful and loving person he became. 

Who, then, besides the gunman is responsible for this outrageous crime?

JoJo was killed by the same social system he was trying to change;  a system that takes food, music, health and recreation programs from school children so that wealthy corporate executives and stockholders can pay  fewer taxes.  It's a system that closes factories in California so that stockholders can earn greater profits from the labor of children in Mexico and other parts of the Third World. It's a system that denies social services to the homeless and the working poor to feed the hogs at the Pentagon feeding trough.

It's a system that, in the name of peace, wages endless war at home and abroad, militarizing our civil society and promoting more violence in the form of the death penalty and the war on drugs. It is criminalizing poverty, youth and dissent, making justice even less accessible to the poor.

It’s a system that is responsible for many more crimes than the death of our son.  It is responsible for the misery and deaths of millions of innocent people who suffer from the cold-blooded greed  of others.

The real criminals are the policymakers who are responsible for a system that is making war on the poor and in the process creating hopeless and enraged people like the man who killed our son.  That man is as much a product of this system as is the handgun he used. He obviously had no village that might have given him the love and respect that would have made his horrendous crime impossible. If we don't give a child a decent life, how can that child grow up to respect life? 

If we were a just society, one that respected children in all their great diversity, one that offered real equal opportunity, liberty and justice for all, our son JoJo would be here living a hopeful, loving and generous life.

And so would the young man who killed him.