Here's a link to this op/ed from Chicago's inspector general Joe Ferguson:
Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell, in characteristically heartfelt fashion, recently asked why this shooting was different. A part-time Chicago Public Schools employee died a few days later, shot while sitting on her front porch, another innocent victim. It pierced the news cycle and then faded. Mary asked why the Rogers Park murder carried a jolt that the ceaseless stream of others have not.Will Joe Ferguson step up to the plate to face Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2019? Will the city's violence be a cornerstone of his campaign? Read the whole thing!
Because it was an unintended wound to privilege – my privilege.
A white teacher was cut down in a place and under circumstances we do not associate with such occurrences. It stood out as not normal, even in a city in which we have internalized and compartmentalized the soul-grinding carnage on our streets as utterly normal. It is, in fact, a daily, at times hourly, occurrence in other parts of Chicago.
The children in those parts of our city never get to see the world as good, and are relentlessly exposed to brutal violence and the threat of violence such as to have them grow up in modified states of traumatic stress. This is not normal, either. If Chicago’s gun-murder rate was the same as New York’s, our annual murder tally would be 150 — about one-fifth of last year’s total and less than a quarter of this year’s likely total.
Can this be turned around? Hell, yes. Can it be turned around tomorrow? Hell, no.
Also allow me to note that Emanuel has stated that he plans to run for re-election in 2019.
No comments:
Post a Comment