5400 block of Edwards Ave., Flint, MI, February 19, 2026
Multiple people shot in drive-by-shooting in Flint —WILX
by Ron Riekki
Another shooting after another shooting after
another shooting after another shooting after
another shooting after another shooting after
another shooting after another shooting after
another shooting after another shooting after
another shooting after another shooting after
another shooting after another shooting after
another shooting after another shooting after
another shooting after another shooting after
another shooting after another shooting after
another shooting after another shooting after
another shooting after another shooting after
another shooting after another shooting after,
and nothing’s being done, and after that, still,
nothing’s being done, and, after that, nothing
is being done, and after that, nothing’s being
done, and after that, nothing’s being done,
except prayers and thoughts, because those
are easy, simple, no effort. How much effort
for a thought? I remember going to a lecture
at Central Michigan where the message was
that, to help the poor, to lessen violence, we
have to pray. That’s it. That was the entire
lecture. And it was long. And I went up to
the mic after the lecturer was done, grabbed
it and started saying, before they could turn
the microphone off, that there’s organizations
people can volunteer with. There’s the ONE
Campaign and The Borgen Project, Global
Citizen and the National Urban League, and
there’s the American Foundation for Suicide
Prevention, Violence Policy Center, Sandy
Hook Promise Foundation, Brady. So many.
I drive up to the latest mass shooting. It’s
residential. Small houses. Poverty? Yes.
Extreme poverty? No. But small houses.
I visited a wealthy student’s house once
where the front room’s larger than these
houses. There’s no one around. I want
to ask the same question: how to lessen
gun violence? But there’s no one around.
There was another shooting on the same
day as the mass shooting, February 19.
How much can I learn about why drive-
by shootings happen simply by driving
by the site where it happened? Maybe
nothing. How much can I learn about
mass shootings by going to the areas
of the mass shootings to ask those who
live there how we stop the violence?
Maybe everything. But today, there’s
no one. There’s a liquor store not too
far away. Omnipresent. I decide to
drive to the other February 19 shooting.
East Court Street. On the way, I pass by
a liquor store named LIQUOR STORE.
Then another liquor store with the same
lack of name. The name doesn’t matter.
Everything seems to be closed, except
for the nameless liquor stores. So easy
to get guns and alcohol. The two-trillion-
dollar global alcohol industry. Forty-
billion-dollar gun industry. A man walks
out carrying a forty in a brown paper bag.
I get to Richert Manor with its mix of
“Rich” and “Manor.” I look up “manor”
online and see mansion and colonies
and feudal system and I think of feuds
and land and see the apartments with
the “efficiency (0-bedroom) floor plans”—
the strangeness of “0-bedroom”s—and
the 195 units are compact, more compact
than the houses, the shooting inside of
the “community room” here. Community.
A community that has reported lack of
heat. Flint winters. In 2024, a three-year-
old boy fell from a ninth-floor window.
Community. A man limps out the front
door. Crosses the street. The difficulty to
walk. To simply walk. How goddamn hard.
Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.
