*(Via LA Times) – There are only nine miles between the Crenshaw parking lot where Nipsey Hussle was shot to death in 2019 and the downtown Los Angeles courtroom where his alleged killer will stand trial this month. But to some, the two places might as well be worlds apart.
LaTanya Ward, who had been friends with the rapper since 2007 and organized a march in his honor a week after his death, said she isn’t focused on the pending prosecution of Eric Holder Jr. for Hussle’s death “at all.”
For many in Crenshaw and South L.A., she said, the best way to advance Hussle’s legacy is to focus on the community empowerment and reinvestment that marked the last few years of his life, rather than the specifics of his death.
“Court trials and murder cases ain’t scarce around here, sad to say. The death of Black folks’ futures is a plenty, both by death and the ‘injustice’ system,” said Ward. “What I want to pour into is what’s lacking energy, and that’s transgenerational healing, starting with Black gang members.”
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Many sets of eyes will be trained on the courtroom where Holder’s murder trial starts with jury selection Thursday. But few of them are likely to come from the neighborhood Hussle — born Ermias Asghedom — loved and rapped about so often.
To some, the disconnect between the trial of Hussle’s alleged killer and the neighborhoods most affected by his death speaks to a broader chasm between South L.A. and the rest of the city.
“This is part of our relationship and critique of the criminal justice system. I want a criminal justice system that gets there before it happens… so Nipsey would still be with us and the Marathon store would still be open and would have blossomed in the way that it should have,” said L.A. City Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson, whose district includes Crenshaw. “To tell me, ‘Oh, we convicted a person,’ it’s a hollow form of closure.”
Get the rest of this LA Times article at MSN News.
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