Last summer the "Munecas," an all-girl Little League softball team in Camden, N.J., won a championship behind a power-hitting 11-year-old named Samalica Ortiz.
This year the "Munecas," which means "Little Dolls," made it to the finals but lost the championship game, 14-13. Samalica was not there. Last Nov. 22 she was shot to death at a friend's birthday party.The bullet was not meant for her. It was fired in a gunfight that erupted outside the house where the party was held. But Samalica was sitting by a window and the bullet struck her in the head. Thus she joined the enormous and growing cadre of children who are lost to us suddenly and forever because of violence.
Why the nation is not trembling with outrage over this, I don't know. Perhaps it is denial. Perhaps ignorance. Maybe other reasons. In any event, our epidemic of violence is having a devastating effect on the young. The American Psychological Association, in a report on "Violence and Youth," cited a study of first- and second-graders in Washington:
"Forty-five percent said they had witnessed muggings, 31 percent said they had witnessed shootings and 39 percent said they had seen dead bodies."
First- and second-graders. Little kids no longer have to make up monsters, we provide them with the real thing.
With no concerted effort to check it, violence has spun way out of control. More Americans have been murdered already in the 1990s than were killed in all the years of Vietnam. According to the FBI, there were more than 24,000 homicides in the United States in 1991 and an estimated 23,000 last year.
In growing numbers, children and teenagers are among the killers as well as the killed.
Last Sunday the National Medical Association, which represents 16,000 black physicians, held a special session at its convention in San Antonio on "violence reduction in the African-American community."
The consensus, according to the association's president, Dr. Leonard Lawrence, "was that we've really got to teach our young people that there are alternative ways of problem solving," and "that there is some value in being disciplined."
The doctors did not want to understate the degree to which poverty, poor schooling, racism, drug and alcohol abuse, the availability of guns and other factors contribute to violence among the young. But you can get a handle on violent behavior, Lawrence said, "if you begin to teach youngsters the positive aspects of discipline at a very early age, teaching them how to achieve, how to learn, how to interact with other people."
Adults - parents and others - have to spend more time with youngsters, he said. And he urged successful African-Americans to serve as mentors to boys and girls struggling to grow up in difficult environments. There is always danger when that energy is not channeled by adults.
Tougher law enforcement is essential but it's not nearly enough. By the time the police are called, something terrible has already happened.
The black physicians are on to something, and others have reached similar conclusions. There are many programs operating around the country to defuse violence. A national campaign against violence would find out what is working best and what more is needed.
Right now it's a lot more.