Three weeks ago we came to you with a plea: help us keep Homicide Watch alive by donating to our kickstarter campaign.
Your response has been overwhelming. More than 600 people have donated. Some as little as one dollar, others as much as 500 dollars.
Here’s why it matters: In the three weeks since we had to shutter HomicideWatch.org, Antoinette Mitchell, Bidley Warren and Stephan Manuel Pool have been killed. In DC.
At Homicide Watch we believe that Mitchell’s, Warren’s, and Pool’s lives matter. That all our lives matter. And that how people live and die in DC matters to every one of us.
There are five other names you won’t find on Homicide Watch DC either: the names of suspects arrested in murder cases since we shuttered. And their stories matter, too. Because how we dispense of justice, finding defendants guilty or innocent, matters to every one of us, too. Unless we bring back Homicide Watch DC, the stories of these five suspects will not be told. We will not know how, or whether, justice is served in DC.
If we are to do this, to tell these stories, we have to raise $15,000 in one week. We’ve already raised $25,000, but here’s the tricky thing about Kickstarter: if we don’t raise all the funds, your donation is returned to you and Homicide Watch gets nothing.
So while it’s incredible that together we’ve raised $25,000, we need to make a final push to make sure we cross that $40,000 line. Otherwise the site stays closed.
If I haven’t convinced you that Homicide Watch is worth funding, consider this appeal from Clay Shirky, who writes:
Homicide Watch matters because they are more than just thorough, they’re innovative. They’ve designed the site like a set of feeds and a wiki rather than like the crime section of a newspaper. The home page shows the most recent updates on all pending cases. Each victim gets their own page, where those updates are aggregated. Every murder is mapped. Every page has the tip line for the detective assigned to the case. Every page hosts a place for remembrance of the victim.
This way of working isn’t just technologically innovative, it’s socially innovative, in a way journalism desperately needs. The home page of Homicide Watch shows photos of the most recent seven victims; as I write this, all seven, are, as usual, African-American. Like a lot of white people, I knew, vaguely, that crime was worse in black neighborhoods than in white ones, but actually seeing the faces, too often of kids not much older than my own, makes it clear how disproportionately this crime is visited on African-Americans.
This is one of their most remarkable innovations: murder coverage has always been racially biased in this country. The old saying for New York papers was not to bother covering murders north of 96th street, where the victims were almost certainly black. The casual exclusion of most citizens from most DC crime coverage is a continuation of that legacy; news organizations aren’t generally in the business of introducing their readers to the realities of life elsewhere in their town. Simon Anderson, father of 5, was gunned down in northwest DC. Terrance Robinson was killed in southeast DC the day before. Antwan Boseman was shot to death two miles south and three hours earlier. And so on, and on, and on.
And if you’re still reading, and you’re still not convinced, consider Antoinette Mitchell. Consider Bidley Warren. Consider Stephan Manuel Pool.
Seven days. $15,000. Stand with us in saying: Mark every death. Remember every victim. Follow every case.
