[artwork by MITCH]
?UESTLOVE: some of you people are turning that sabina link i sent earlier into something super ugly. my timeline and fund raising efforts obviously state that i am out for justice in her senseless murder. BUT. i cannot look into this boy’s eyes http://twitpic.com/1xageo and be all dismissive like “this fucking monster” as im sure most of us (specially those of us who knew sabina and were regulars at PYT) will react. and i understand the passion behind it. make no mistake, i understand the passion behind it. this is NOT me being irresponsible nor an apologist in the matter. but you HAVE to understand it from my shoes: i too at one point was an 18 year old black man from philadelphia. the 2 west philly 
neighborhoods i grew up in (to my knowledge) — with the exception of my next door neighbor and my best bud down the street — all the lives have been claimed in my age range. like seriously. if there were a reunion of all the kids in my age range from born from 1971-1976 that i grew up playing ball with and summer day camp and breakdancing and trading pac-man game patterns with, out of the combined 24 of us? (3 cousins included) only 3 are STILL LIVING or NOT in jail for a long time. […] just as all the women in that neighborhood internalized sabina’s murder as “that could have been me or any of us!!!” i internalized donte. im sorry….http://twitpic.com/1xageo could have been me or any of us. MORE
ARNOLD: That’s not the stupidest thing I’ve ever read in response to a rape and murder, but ?uestlove’s little essay is up there. If the man is looking for the specific conditions that drove this “boy” to randomly rape, severely beat, and murder a beautiful young woman, he won’t find it in the part of the city that Donte Johnson came from. The external environmental factors that might have caused Donte Johnson to rape and murder a STRANGER transcend race and class. There’s obviously a correlation between poverty, rape, and other kinds of violent crime, but the individual who attacks, rapes, and murders a stranger is rare on a per capita basis. Just because this type of crime frequently makes headlines doesn’t mean it’s common. That’s the single good thing about this case: it isn’t common. I wonder if there’s a crime that Dante Johnson could have committed that wouldn’t make ?uestlove look into his eyes, see a little puppy dog, and pontificate about the plight of the black man in America? MORE
DIPLO: Questlove you are a dipshit. MORE
WPHILIA: I think ?uestlove’s comments would make more sense if this were an armed robbery or drug deal gone wrong. […] But here we have a crime far more sociopathic. What is the motivation for rape and murder? There is none I can comprehend, no matter how low your income is or how difficult your childhood was. I look into Donte Johnson’s eyes I am chilled to the core. He looks normal, and yet one night he decided to brutalize a stranger and leave her for dead. He is not a boy, but a monster that resembles one. MORE
STEVE M: Yes the woman in the area can internalize with Sabina murder because it could in fact be “any of them”. The capabilities of being a victim are as simple being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Donte on the other hand was capable of stalking an innocent girl, beating her with his fist, raping her, and strangling her to death with her bra…NO. You are wrong that could not have been ANY OF US. FUCK YOU MORE
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