I’ve started, and then stopped writing this column a dozen times, trying to find the words to express each layer of my sorrow.
Night after night, I struggled to wrap my mind around how Lumumba Sayers killed a young man who was innocent of killing his son. How he somehow thought that killing Malcolm Watson would balance the scales of what he felt was an unfathomable injustice: how bringing hell to another family could release him from the one he was already living.
You see, I know Lumumba, personally. I still have his number in my phone, along with over a decade of memories, and his organization’s mission on my mind. In my view, the “Glovez up, Gunz down” anti-violence initiative was a necessary aspiration to redirect potential violence into healthy combat alternatives…