Anti-gun violence activists who claim that they’re trying to help people in the inner city often get a bad reputation for being too partisan, racial, or self-serving. On Sunday, one of the few bright spots trying to save lives in Baltimore from gun violence without trying to advance his own career was shot and killed.
Tyriece Travon Watson, better known as Lor Scoota, was a young 23-year-old rapper who didn’t need a job with the DNC or CNN. He didn’t live in a gated community removed from the neighborhood, and he wasn’t trying to become a snake oil salesman.
The rapper had a blossoming music career. His song, “Bird Flu,” became a viral sensation and The Washington Post reported that producers in New York and Los Angeles had taken note of the young artist.
Outside the recording studio, Watson had become known for his activism against rampant violence in Baltimore.
“How I’m supposed to live with all this death in my sight?” he said in his lyrics.
Surrounded by violence and learning to survive, Watson became an advocate for non-violence. According to the Baltimore City Paper, in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray, he did a PSA for a Baltimore bus route that encouraged peace, he spoke at Fredrick Douglas High School about positive alternatives to the April 27 riots, and read to children at Samuel Coleridge Elementary School about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy of non-violence.
Watson was leaving a charity basketball game called “Touch People, pray for peace in these streets” when he was gunned down during the day by an unidentified black man in a white bandana.
It’s a tragedy that his life was cut short, and a huge loss for the city of Baltimore. He was a hero to many, willing to speak up about ending the circle of violence, and then was silenced. It’s impossible to know the number of people who will stay silent because of the fear and intimidation that took Watson’s young life — and how many more people he had left to inspire.
