Thread by @glennkirschner2

1/Quick true story about “hope” I wrote in 2010 when Obama was Pres: I recently interviewed a 10-year-old boy who witnessed a murder. Let’s call him Chris. Chris had been playing in front of his apartment building at about 8:00 p.m. on a warm summer’s night. Sadly, he witnessed

2/an 18-year-old kid sneak up behind one of the neighborhood drug dealers and shoot him twice in the back of the head.

Chris knew the killer from the neighborhood. And fortunately for the investigation, Chris’s mother contacted the police and told them what Chris had seen.

3/His mother, Sheila, would later tell me that it was not an easy decision, as she knew it meant she would have to move her family out of the area for fear of retaliation from the streets. But Sheila said she just couldn’t bear to have Chris grow up thinking it’s OK to

4/witness a murder and do absolutely nothing to try to make it right. She said she couldn’t do that to her son. How many of us lived a childhood that included these kind of concerns? Not me.

Sheila brought Chris to my office for a grand jury appearance.

5/I took some time talking with Chris, trying to get to know him a little before asking him to recount and relive the unimaginably horrible experience of seeing a young man shot in the head.
Chris was a handsome little boy, well under 5 feet tall, skinny, medium-brown complexion,

6/close cut hair, and ears that stuck out from the sides of his head in a way that was as cute as it was noticeable. He was wearing a light-blue Izod polo shirt and tan khakis, which might have been a school uniform.

“Hey Chris. My name is Glenn Kirschner. I’m a prosecutor.

7/It’s my job to talk with people who have seen crimes, seen people do bad things. Then I try to make sure that the people who do those bad things are held accountable for what they did, and try to make sure that they can’t hurt anyone else again.

8/Can I ask you where you go school?” “I go to Tyler,” he says, obviously feeling me out.
“I know where Tyler is. That’s a pretty good school. What grade are you in?” I continue on my ice-breaking mission.
“Fifth grade. My teacher’s Ms. Hanson,” he says.

9/“Ms. Hanson,” I say with feigned surprise. “Is she the real mean one that gives out way too much home work.”

Chris smirks. “Nah, Ms. Hanson’s OK. But she does give us lots of reading to do,” he says, warming up a bit.

10/“Hey Chris, can I ask you . . . do you have a nickname?” I say, knowing virtually every kid I’ve ever come across in DC seems to have a nickname.

Chris hesitates a few beats, then says, “the other kids call me Obama.”

11/I instantly recognize why – the medium complexion, close-cut hair, protruding ears, thin frame – he looks like a young Barack Obama.

I debate on whether to ask, but then: “Do you like being called Obama?”

A smile slowly develops on his face. “Yeah, I do,” beams Chris.

12/And there you have it: hope. The fact that this kid, this sharp little African-American kid, is nicknamed after the first African-American President of the United States of American - and he likes it. Even more, he’s proud of it. That has to qualify as “hope,” doesn’t it?

13/I was raised hearing the common refrain that I could be anything I wanted to be, including President of the United States. I’m sure minorities of every persuasion have heard the same thing, but I wonder if it rang true to them before there was a concrete example.

14/Might our first African-American President represent a sense of promise for the future to minority communities in a way that never existed before?

15/What I know, even if it’s all I know, is that a young African-American kid was obviously proud to carry the nickname of our first black president. I choose to interpret that as reason for hope.

16/Of course, I then have to ask, “OK. Chris, tell me about this horrible thing you saw...”
Thanks for reading this. I’m hopeful that my 5 daughters will soon hear, “you can be anything, including president” and have a female president as an example that validates that promise.