October 22nd marks the third anniversary of the police shooting of Christopher Burgess, a 16 year old kid from Eureka, CA. The police were looking for him, he ran away, they cornered him, he pulled a knife and they shot him. There were several other possible outcomes but the one that struck me deeply was if the kid hadn't run he'd be alive today. Having a 16 year old son myself at the time I thought about that in terms of the choices the kid made that led to this whole incident and wrote the song, 'Why Does Johnny Run?' My hope is that through remembering this and other acts of violence we can move towards preventing similar tragedies in the future.
