this, an article about Chicago violence
Last edited Sun Aug 12, 2018, 08:10 AM - Edit history (1)
last weekend. It shows one example of why the violence exists, just like the racism and its current and historical roots exists to fuel the current violence. People, just like some everywhere, including some here, like to point to skin color, both subtly and overtly, as the problem, you know white people throwing up their arms in exaggerated frustration, "oh those black people(throw in any negative connotation that can be thought of here)they are so violent"... more or less laughing at the AA who throw up our arms in real pain and tears of frustration for the families and friends of the many victims, at the violence. It hurts us truly. On the other hand, there are crocodile tears from other races and MOST politicians, local or otherwise, when in front of the cameras and that turns to "oh well, business as usual" when behind closed doors. Always in these times.
Rev Gregory Livingston, the interim pastor at the New Hope Baptist Church and president of the Coalition for a New Chicago, derided the mayor, accusing him of covering up police brutality to win his last election in February 2015.
Livingston was referring to the October 2014 case of Laquan McDonald, shot 16 times by a Chicago cop who is due to go on trial for murder next month. The city delayed the release of a dashboard camera video of the shooting for more than a year until a court ordered it be made public. The police chief resigned, prosecutors brought a murder charge, but Emanuel had been re-elected.
Black people do not trust the Chicago police to protect them and believe the city has chosen to ignore them, Livingston said.
What should the world understand about Chicago’s violence? “It’s gone from Al Capone to Chi-Raq,” Livingston said. “The weekend was like a boil bursting. This orgy of killing and shootings, it’s worse than a war zone in many ways, but there are root causes.”
Charlene Carruthers, Chicago-based activist and national director of BYP100, a black youth radical activist organisation, said: “What you saw this past weekend was an example of what happens when you crowd people into a space where there is little to no resources, where there have been decades of divestment, where there is hyper-policing but not hyper-education or access to mental health care.
“The things that manifest from that situation include violence, include depression, including environmental degradation, violence that involves guns, violence that doesn’t involve guns, all of those things.
“That doesn’t mean if I were to meet someone who pulled the trigger that I would say ‘you have no responsibility in that’, the point is for us to broaden the many places of responsibility for what happened this past weekend.”
“It stems from a fundamental inability to actually understand what violence is. Violence is not a policing issue, it is the manifestation of our public policy failings across the board. Everything from education to economic investment, to our housing policy, to how we treat those who need mental health and behavioural health services, to how we treat our young people, to the disinvested and vacant commercial corridors, to the inequitable allocation of resources from top to bottom, all of that manifests in violence.”
She too denounces the audacity of the mayor criticising communities, when he has closed schools and health clinics, has the power to direct investment toward them, or ensure police are acting under the law.
“To put the focus on the community and say the community needs to step up, I think it’s wrong-headed, I think it is tone deaf, I think he lacks the standing to make any such statement.
“Now after a tragic weekend, he calls for the community to step up? He needs to step up – in fact, he needs to step down, because you’ve been here for eight years now and this is the result of your leadership.”
Whole article here is everything that has been exacerbated tenfold by the trump administration drying up federal funds that target these types of AA communities. Then so he and AG sessions can give raw racist meat to their rabid and hateful base and 'others' who love to use stereotypes of AA to continue their horribly hateful race-baiting. It's a Sunday so I have been as nice as possible towards....ah, to hell with it.
I'm done with them here and in the country.....
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/12/chicago-gun-violence-racial-inequality-segregation-activism
= new reply since forum marked as read
