Thread: Jamiel Shaw's killing lamented in Ice Cube video

Jamiel Shaw's killing lamented in Ice Cube video
By Thomas Watkins, The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 10/03/2008 05:42:48 PM PDT




VIDEO:
Why Me? video

LOS ANGELES - The unlikely stars of Ice Cube's new video are the grieving relatives of Jamiel Shaw Jr., a 17-year-old high school football star with a promising future who was shot to death outside his home.
The song "Why Me?" speaks out against senseless violence and gun crime devastating communities. Cube says the Shaws are a powerful illustration of the pain that remains after a murder.

"It just was a tragic, tragic story of why," Cube says. "Young people are dying for no reason all over the world that don't know why. It's ugly, everywhere."

The rap video begins with the tightly framed, sorrow-filled faces of Jamiel's parents and aunt. His dad recounts a final conversation with his son.

"To drive this home, it was only right to use real family and not use a bunch of actors," Cube says.

Jamiel Shaw was on track for a college sports scholarship, and his mother was serving in the Army in Iraq at the time of the shooting last March.

He was a few yards from his house in a working-class neighborhood south of downtown Los Angeles when he was killed. Pedro Espinoza, an illegal immigrant and alleged gang member who had been released from jail a day earlier on weapons charges, has pleaded not guilty to murder.

Prosecutors say Espinoza drove to Shaw's neighborhood and shot him after asking him a question about his gang affiliation. Police have said Shaw was never in a gang.

Cube's video also features photographs of dozens of other crime victims blowing from a
tree then across the sand in the desert north of Los Angeles. The video also depicts a young man in a football jersey being gunned down on a street. As he lays dying, he asks, "Why me homie, why me?"
Espinoza's early release from jail prompted the Shaws to call for a new law, dubbed "Jamiel's Law," that would push Los Angeles police to crack down on illegal immigrant gang members.

Cube says the video is not meant as an endorsement of the move.

"It ain't really a commentary on that," Cube says. "You've got a person being killed by a person he don't know for a reason he don't know ... Who cares if it was an immigrant or if it was a taxpaying citizen?"

For the Shaws, appearing in the video was a chance to further their petition drive to qualify the proposed law for the ballot.

"Every time I start watching it, I start crying," father Jamiel Shaw says. "At the same time, I feel good that we are getting the word out."


http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_10631856

... Who cares if it was an immigrant or if it was a taxpaying citizen?"

I do, Mr. Cube. We dont need even more murderers here. We have enough already.

"It ain't really a commentary on that," Cube says. "You've got a person being killed by a person he don't know for a reason he don't know ... Who cares if it was an immigrant or if it was a taxpaying citizen?"

This scum bag that murdered this poor kid was not an "immigrant" mr. ice cube. He was an illegal invader, who gunned down this kid for no other reason than the color of his skin! That's it!!

Wake up! I suspect your perspective would not be so benign if a white man would have committed this act under similiar circumstances.

Cube says the video is not meant as an endorsement of the move.

Why not? Are you affraid of offending someone, perhaps resulting in lost revenue.

Looks like "Ice Cube" didn't want to P.O. his corporate benefactors and liberal casting agents so he took the cowardly way out by dodging and not speaking out about the many devastating impacts that illegal immigration has on the African American community. What a sell-out.

("It ain't really a commentary on that," Cube says. "You've got a person being killed by a person he don't know for a reason he don't know ... Who cares if it was an immigrant or if it was a taxpaying citizen?")

If the "immigrant" an ILLEGAL had not been in the United States the young man would still be alive along with thousands of additonal United States Citizens murdered by ILLEGALS!

Our FAMILIES are at the mercy of ILLEGALS and their Anchors being murdered, raped, infected with disease, or robbed. We can see the results of the ILLEGAL invasion in our courts every day! But NOT to worry the Chamber of Commerce will get their "cheap labor" increasing "their privatized" PROFITS while socializing the "benefits" for their ILLEGALS on the back of United States Citizens, thanks to Bush, the Congressional Leadership(?), and local elected and appointed officials and their SANCTUARY City Policies !!!

It doesn’t seem to matter if it is a high school student in Los Angeles standing in front of his home while his mother is half way around the world defending her/our country, a Mother from Alabama attempting to support herself, a Police Officer in Houston attempting to safe guard his city, or a father and his sons in San Francisco driving home all became targets of ILLEGALS and were murdered because of the greed of "our" Elitist Politicians and their Elitist Contributors in search of "cheap labor" to help their "bottom line"!

I just do not understand how our President and our Congress can send our young men and women half way around the world in defense of the United States and refuse to defend our National Borders and Enforce our Immigration Laws while at the same time warning our military, for their own safety, not to wear their uniforms when traveling to "our" southern borders. Now our military can no longer leave their children at home in a "major United States city" and expect them to be safe or a least as safe as the parents in a "combat zone"!!