Media attention devoted to the latest mass shooting in front of the Empire State building is telling when contrasted with the nonexistent coverage of gun violence ravaging America’s inner cities. The following are some of the latest examples of shootings regularly overlooked by the media and politicians alike.

Last night, 19 people were shot in Chicago, 13 of them in just 30 minutes. Eight people, mostly teens, were shot between 9:15-9:45 pm on a single street in the south side in what the Chicago Tribune reports, “stemmed from a conflict between two factions of a gang that uses 75th Street as a dividing line.”  Among the victims were:

• A 19-year-old woman walking to work was shot in the arm and taken to Stroger Hospital.

• Two 14-year-old boys were stable. One was shot in the arm and taken to Comer Children’s Hospital, and the other was shot in the foot and taken to Children’s Memorial Hospital, police said.

• A 15-year-old boy was shot in the back of the neck and taken to Comer Children’s Hospital, and a 16-year-old boy was shot in the foot and treated at Advocate Trinity Hospital. A second 16-year-old boy was shot twice in the leg and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital.

• A 20-year-old was taken to Stroger Hospital with a gunshot wound to the leg, along with a 28-year-old who remained in serious condition with a gunshot wound to the chest.

These shootings are nothing new in Chicago, where the homicide rate is expected to exceed last year’s. Chicago’s gun violence is largely segregated to the city’s impoverished black neighborhoods, where the drug trade serves as one of the few employment opportunities for communities decimated by America’s racist war on drugs that has seen mostly poor black men rounded up, caged, and branded with criminal records that strip them of their basic rights and any chance at a successful future. According to the Chicago Tribune:

While blacks make up about 33 percent of the city’s population, they accounted for nearly 78 percent of the homicide victims through the first six months of 2012.

By comparison, just 11 homicide victims in the first six months of the year were white, and 44 were Hispanic, according to police data.

Annual Chicago police statistics show a majority of both homicide victims and offenders are young black men with criminal records. With one exception, African-Americans have made up more than 70 percent of homicide victims in Chicago every year for the last two decades.

Then there’s Philadelphia, which has one of the highest murder rates in the country, earning the nickname “Kila-delphia”. According to CNN, Philadelphia has seen over 220 murders this year alone. The violence is not evenly distributed, as black people making up the majority of the victims. Of the 324 homicides in 2011, 85% of the victims were black.

Yesterday morning, a 19-year-old woman was shot outside of her home in South Philadelphia. Two days earlier (late Tuesday night), two men, 16 and 23, were shot in West Oak Lane. These shootings come on top of a string of weekend murders. Details from ABC News:

1) Friday 12:20 a.m. at 1534 North 29th Street. Idris Bilal, 19, was shot and killed. The killer escaped in a dark-colored car with tinted windows, last seen heading north of the scene. A $20,000 reward is being offered in the case.

2) Friday 11:38 p.m. at 62 West Rockland St. Bryant Jones, 47, was shot and killed. Police are looking for a heavy-set man, 5’9″ tall, who was wearing a red Polo shirt when he fled the scene. A $20,000 reward is being offered in the case.

3) Saturday 2:16 a.m. at 4975 Girard Ave. Duane Dixon, 22, was shot in the head and killed.

4) Sunday 4:20 p.m. at 1362 Wells St. Donald Mimes, 20, was shot and killed. Police have arrested and charged George Cobb with the murder.

Moving on, during the night of August 9 to August 10, one man was killed and four others wounded in four separate shootings in Oakland. On Sunday, August 12, five more people were shot in a series of Oakland shootings that left one person dead. Less than a week later, two more people were wounded in separate late night Oakland shootings.

This past Sunday, August 20, a triple shooting in Baltimore sent a 9-year-old boy to the hospital. Days earlier, two men, brothers, were killed and one woman critically injured in another triple shooting. The mother and brother of the man suspected of killing the two brothers were shot and killed in what police say was retaliation. (Despite praises of “The Wire” by people in power, Baltimore’s police department and city council have learned nothing.)

Gun violence is certainly not isolated to the cities I’ve mentioned. People are similarly being shot on the streets of Detroit, Denver, Newark, Los Angeles, and more. Since the victims are overwhelmingly people of color and the shootings are often blamed on gang violence, no one seems to care. But even the small amount of attention given to inner-city gun violence consistently fails to investigate the underlying causes, probably because a true examination would prompt scrutiny of failed police tactics in the ongoing war on drugs. Just as alcohol prohibition led to unprecedented gang warfare in the 1920s, today’s drug prohibition has done the same to America’s poor black and brown communities.

When Aurora happened, people cared and asked “Why?” When Tuscon happened, people cared and asked “Why?”  When Virgina Tech happened, people cared and asked “Why?

How many more poor people of color have to die for the media, politicians and the public to care and, more importantly, ask “Why?”