I'm a big fan of his. I haven't seen anything from him about today's violence.
Someone mentioned two folks from Philly who were on the radio there talking about how bad the violence is. Just thot I'd mention that I noticed one of them was from ODAAT, or One Day At A Time, who are a really really really awesome drug recovery house in north philly. They are historically part of the actup street protest coalition, I used to go to group meetings there for teach ins about whatever issue protest was coming up. Of course any real long term approach to fixing these things would mean giving the defense departments budget to odaat, alas.
The national news media is totally not freaking out about the violence increase. Nothing like the crime hysteria back in the late eighties. And I think it's cause 1) the victims are almost entirely poor and black, and 2) it's not hitting the three big cultural capital cities. Corner boys can shoot each other all day long in west dayton and orland and millwauke, and our fucking media would still be preening about the park slope baby boom and lindsay lohan.