Roxborough alum Malcolm Kenyatta: ‘We are failing our kids’

“Live past 30.”

That was one of the notes written by an anonymous student on a “dream wall,” a board set up in the lunch room of my high school alma mater, Roxborough High School. It will never leave me.

I went there last Wednesday because the day before, a 14-year-old football player, Nicolas Elizalde, had been killed — and four others wounded — following a scrimmage. I was on hand at the school to talk to students, staff, and Principal Kristin Williams Smalley to see how I could respond, along with a group of elected officials.

I decided to take a walk through the halls I knew so well. In the lunchroom, I spotted the dream board. It was a place for students to write their future wishes for their lives and careers. But for one student, the danger they faced in their daily life eclipsed any of their hopes for the future; all they could wish for was to stay alive past 30.

As a student at Roxborough High, I loved my school. The year I graduated in 2007, I was the student body president, and the year before I was prom prince; to me, school was a haven.

But since Elizalde’s murder, that haven has been vandalized. I pray daily for his family and all those who’ve lost a loved one to this intractable crisis.

» READ MORE: Vigil for Roxborough shooting victim Nicolas Elizalde: ‘How does this keep happening?’

Leaving the lunchroom still reeling from that dream board message, I met another student and staffer sitting outside and stopped for a quick conversation. The student was expressionless; I kneeled down to her and asked her how she was doing. She said, flatly: “I just hope I can graduate before I get shot.”

I could tell this wasn’t a new feeling. She wasn’t responding to the tragic events of the day before. She had been thinking this way for a while and was resigned to it.

We are failing our kids.

The last time I visited Roxborough High was to deliver the commencement speech in June 2021. That day was jubilant, a celebration of the amazing achievements of the class that had graduated despite the pandemic and all the other challenges in their lives. Now, this same place was a crime scene. The juxtaposition of those two visits gave me whiplash. I felt crushed. I still do.

But I’ll never stop trying, partnering with my colleagues, and learning from community members who renew my hope. These are Philadelphia’s everyday heroes who never give up, folks like Movita Johnson-Harrell, Jamal Johnson, Dorothy Johnson-Speight, Zarinah Lomax, Scott Charles, and Bilal Qayyum — to name a few. They keep going and so must we.

As an elected official, there is probably no more intractable issue than gun crime. It’s so frustrating when people tell me we should “do something about it.” Many of us are trying — we introduce bills, cosponsor memos. I’ve traveled the city and state to listen to those tackling this problem on the ground. What infuriates me is that we don’t lack the solutions to this problem — we lack the political will.

“Our kids are killing each other, and over what?”

Now it’s election season, and — like clockwork — crime is being talked about and politicized by a lot of people I work with in Harrisburg who have stopped me and my Democratic colleagues from taking meaningful action on this problem.

We have to reduce the enormous quantity of weapons that are on the streets and enforce existing laws so that young people stop carrying guns — particularly ghost guns. At the same time, we have to give young people something to hope for. Too many of them don’t see a future for themselves, even if they graduate from high school and go to college. If you don’t think you’re going to live past 30, what’s to stop you from reaching for a gun during the slightest dispute?

The day before Nicolas Elizalde was killed, another football player, Treshawn J. Tracy, 15, was killed in Allentown, also in broad daylight. Surveillance video showed him getting into an argument with a 16-year-old in the park before being shot three times.

What is happening? Our kids are killing each other, and over what? It’s all so surreal.

What else is surreal is that just hours before Nicolas Elizalde was killed, I had been at a press conference in Chester with his grandmother. I spoke to her; we are friends.

The topic of the press conference? Gun violence.

Malcolm Kenyatta is a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, representing District 181, which includes North Philadelphia. @malcolmkenyatta