I didn’t know Miles Mack but I wish I did:

Mack - named by his mother after the jazz great Miles Davis - founded his beloved X-Tra Miles Developmental Basketball League to "keep kids straight," said Zellars, a general contractor.

"He loved the kids in the community," said Mack's mother, Sandra, 63.

"He always wanted [to help] the tough kids, the hard-headed kids," said Murphy Appin, 44, who worked with Mack on the league. "He could get in anybody's heart. That was his thing, to get the tough kids."

A quote from Mack on the X-Tra Web site reads, "I just want to know where the babies are."
That abiding concern for children in West Philadelphia was Mack's passion and legacy, friends and family said.

"He was genuine, and always all about the kids," said Kendall Edwards, 42, Mack's cousin. "And kids always followed him, no matter what."

His natural charisma was evident at a young age.

When Mack was a teenager, he was known as the peacemaker in the neighborhood.

"If a fight broke out," Zellars said, "he would tell the guys, 'We're friends. We don't fight.' "

Even older kids listened to Mack, who had a calming way about him. "He would never get angry, never get upset," Zellars said. "He really knew how to talk to people."

Even with all the sleazy political news, the city’s deficit, and (for me, at least) the wheeling and dealing around a Chinatown Gallery casino, this tragic and shocking murder had me grieving for the loss of a true local hero and the diminished humanity in our city.

At the same time, I had to struggle with the police commissioner’s contemptuous accusations of that this is a community ruled by a “no snitch” culture. Although I don’t deny that some people abide by such a code, clearly most don’t. It’s not that there’s a “no snitch” code in place, it’s that in some of the most neglected parts of our city, living as if government and the rule of law run the corners is a luxury. Most children and families know that justice is meted out in vastly different ways depending on where we live.

At the end of the day, I can’t help but think of all those young people who witnessed this brutal killing, of the happiness and pride of that day shattered, and then for all that to be accompanied by the larger public and media to turn on them for not snitching, for not understanding the fear and helplessness, and for the constant contempt and neglect heaped upon our neediest neighbors.

I don’t have solutions obviously; I just know that a brutal gun culture, with an enabling legislature, and a city’s constant chasing of ridiculous rainbow dreams of revival (like casinos) while our neighborhoods fall apart and people languish in poverty – is something that kills a part of all of us everyday.