Category Archives: Race

The words of Martin Luther King we won’t see on social media this year

Politics, Race, ,
“Martin Luther King, Jr. San Francisco June 30 1964” by geoconklin2001 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

“Martin Luther King, Jr. San Francisco June 30 1964” by geoconklin2001 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Originally written in January 2022; updated in January 2023

I’ve been thinking a lot about this Martin Luther King quote today:

And the final thing that I would like to say to you this morning is that the world doesn’t like people like Gandhi. That’s strange, isn’t it? They don’t like people like Christ. They don’t like people like Abraham Lincoln. They kill them.

It’s from his Palm Sunday sermon on Mohandas K. Gandhi, delivered on March 22, 1959.

The world did not like people like Martin Luther King. They killed him.

Here’s a fun game you can play on Martin Luther King’s birthday:

For every politician who posts one of MLK’s quotes on social media — it’s probably going to be the one about his kids being judged by their character, not their skin color — scroll back through their recent social media posts and look for the last still-living Black leader they took a photo with, quoted, or praised.

Award one point for every post that qualifies. Five points awarded if that Black leader has been involved in a recent protest movement. Ten points if he or she said “Black Lives Matter.”

Here’s another one: If a United States senator posts an MLK quote, ask them if they’ll vote for comprehensive voting rights legislation like the Freedom to Vote Act or the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Without saying as much, Heather Cox Richardson points out that those who oppose the expansion or protection of the right to vote would have been the same people who opposed the Voting Rights Act back in 1965, three years before King was killed by an assassin.

To put it another way: it’s very easy to support people and concepts that are in the past, but the real measure of a person’s dedication to justice is whether they support it today.

The river of irony formed by, say, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin using a King quote to defend a ban on the possibility of kids learning about how race and history intersect is so deep and wide that it’s impossible to cross.

Youngkin isn’t alone here. The cuddly, stuffed-animal version of Martin Luther King is now used to sell everything from mattresses to the sincerity of people who say they “don’t see color.”

In this Saturday morning cartoon rendering of the man who was shot for his beliefs, we have sanded off the rough edges of King’s crusades against capitalism, poverty, and war; these are the same edges King used to force America into a state of discomfort over its failure to “be true to what you said on paper.”

The rough-edged King is where we should seek our inspiration. In words written in the final chapter of his final book, Where Do We Go From Here, he said:

“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal opposition to poverty, racism, and militarism.”

The following all come from speeches, essays, and articles written by Martin Luther King and collected in The Radical King, edited by Dr. Cornel West.

In the introduction, West quotes King from 1967: “I am nevertheless greatly saddened … that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment, or my calling.”

West compares King’s de-radicalized image to the way Nelson Mandela was painted later in life, describing them both as “Santa Claus-fied…into non-threatening and smiling old men with toys in their bags and forgiveness in their hearts.”

In the collection of pieces in The Radical King, the lie is put to that image and it provides us with timeless wisdom for this moment.

“I had also learned that the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice.”

— “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence, 1958”

In a chapter of his book “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” King speaks of his experiences as a teen in Atlanta when he had “come perilously close to resenting all white people.”

“I had passed spots where Negroes had been savagely lynched, and had watched the Ku Klux Klan on its rides at night. I had seen police brutality with my own eyes and watched Negroes receive tragic injustice in the courts.”

It’s not hard to read these words and envision khaki-clad, ersatz Nazis marching in Charlottesville or the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers storming the Capitol to hijack democracy. Or the “not guilty” verdicts handed down in the deaths of Trayvon Martin or the lack of charges against those who killed Tamir Rice.

Later, King talks about his work in a factory “that hired both Negroes and whites…and [I] realized that the poor white was exploited just as much as the Negro.”

He critiques capitalism as a failure “to see the truth in collective enterprise” and communism / Marxism as a failure “to see the truth in individual enterprise.”

“Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself,” King warns as a bulwark against depriving a man of freedom. “Capitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life.”

Something to think about as we consider the real meanings behind The Great Resignation.

“The nonviolent resister would contend that in the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world should not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe.”

— Pilgrimage to Nonviolence, 1958

In the same essay, King reminds us what nonviolent resistance really means. This exploration is a key wedge between the true King and the sepia-toned example he’s often described as.

Non-violence as a tactic was not about asking nicely, staying off the streets, and keeping the status quo. It was about acting as a true societal disrupter and pouring sand in the gears.

It was also about strength.

“True pacifism is not unrealistic submission to evil power…it is rather a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love, in the faith that it is better to be the recipient of violence than the inflicter of it.”

A hard value to live up to and not an easy road to walk. Can we meet the challenge of this the next time we are faced with those who want to create a two-tiered system of justice?

“All humanity is involved in a single process, and all men are brothers. To the degree that I harm my brother, no matter what he is doing to me, to that extent I am harming myself.”

“He revealed that far from the tragic era white historians described, it was the only period in which democracy existed in the South.”

— On DuBois’s book Black Reconstruction, from a speech printed in the journal “Black Titan.”

King on DuBois is full of love and praise while embracing our country’s full and unruly history of race. One line seems to foretell the lazy dangers of Twitter-based discourse:

“Above all he did not content himself with hurling invectives for emotional release and then to retire in smug passive satisfaction.”

He goes on to say:

“History had taught [DuBois] that it is not enough for people to be angry — the supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.”

King also has some words for those who would remove the history of race from the history of our country:

“When they corrupted Negro history, they corrupted American history because Negroes are too big a part of the building of this nation to be written out of it without destroying scientific history.”

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block is not the White Citizens’ Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to the ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says ‘I agree with the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action; who paternally believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom…”

— “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

The entire unedited “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is still so urgent, relevant, and fiery. It is as much a warning for now as it was then.

“There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.”

— “Where Do We Go From Here,” King’s final speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1967

Described by West as “his last and most radical SCLC presidential address,” the speech denounces capitalism as an end, embraces a guaranteed national income, and takes aim at poverty.

Ever the writer, King notes the hypocrisy of Western language.

“There are some 120 synonyms for blackness and at least sixty of them are offensive, such words as blot, soot, grim, devil, and foul. And there are some 134 synonyms for whiteness and all are favorable, expressed in such words as purity, cleanliness, chastity, and innocence.”

Woven throughout is a reminder of how the power of nonviolence is truly power, a power rooted in love.

“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic.”

He goes on to discuss the Watts riots, his equal critiques of capitalism and communism, and provides the compass for the rest of King’s mission had he lived:

“The problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.”

“When there is massive unemployment in the Black community, it’s called a social problem. But when there is massive unemployment in the white community, it’s called a depression. With the Black man, it’s ‘welfare,’ with the whites it’s called ‘subsidies.’ This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.

— “The Other America”

King would later put an even finer point on this critique of inequality.

In a March 1968 speech, King spoke to Local 1199 in New York City, which West describes as “a union consisting largely of African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and other people of color.”

“People are always talking about menial labor. But if you’re getting a good wage…that isn’t menial labor. What makes it menial, is the income, the wages.”

“The riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has not heard? … It has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, humanity, and equality, and it is still true.”

“If they are America’s angry children today, the anger is not congenital. It is a response to the feeling that a real solution is hopelessly distant, because of the inconsistencies, resistance, and faintheartedness, of those in power.”

— Black Power, “Where Do We Go From Here,” 1967

If there’s anything in King’s final book that speaks to what he would think of the Black Lives Matter movement, it’s this chapter that reflects on the Black Power movement of the late 1960s.

So often we hear disingenuous concern trolling about the current young Black leaders in America and how they ought to be more like the false, sanitized King. Yet King notes “many of the young people proclaiming Black Power today were but yesterday the devotees of Black-white cooperation and nonviolent direct action.”

Still, while he understood their rage, he also returned to his themes of power and love and how they should be a means to a political end.

“Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose.”

“Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”

“In his struggle for racial justice, the Negro must seek to transform his condition of powerlessness into creative and positive power. One of the most obvious sources of this power is political.”

“When they look around and see that the only people who do not share in the abundance of Western technology are colored people, it is an almost inescapable conclusion that their condition and their exploitation are somehow related to their color and the racism of the white Western world.”

— “Where Do We Go From Here,” 1967

In the final chapter of his last book, King speaks of apartheid around the world, in economic and cultural terms, throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He cautions against prejudice turned into institutional racism, warning that:

“One cannot hope to keep people locked out of the earthly kingdom of wealth, health, and happiness. Either they share in the blessings of the world or they organize to break down and overthrow the structures or governments which stand in the way of their goals.”

As we face the inequity of everything from food to vaccines across the world, it’s worth noting this chapter is in the section of The Radical King titled “Prophetic Vision.”

“Money devoid of genuine empathy is like salt devoid of savor, good for nothing except to be trodden under the foot of men.”

Yet hope is never far from King’s mind as in this line…

“One of the best proofs that reality hinges on moral foundations is the fact that when men and women and governments work devotedly for the good of others, they achieve their own enrichment in the process.”

And in this brief summation of an almost Buddhist philosophy…

“‘I’ cannot reach fulfillment without ‘thou.’ The self cannot be self without other selves. Self-concern without other-concern is like a tributary that has no outward flow to the ocean.”

Another relevant passage to our current moment — especially the opposition to a new voting rights act — is King’s tweaking of “right-wing slogans on ‘government control’ and ‘creeping socialism’” which he says are “as meaningless as the Chinese Red Guard slogans against ‘bourgeois revisionism.’”

King also returns to the strength of nonviolence:

“True nonviolence is more than the absence of violence. It is the persistent and determined application of peaceable power to offenses against the community — in this case, the world community.”

“Peaceable power” could be read many ways, but it’s hard not to read it as the power of voting rights. A ringing endorsement of his own legacy, carried on by John Lewis, and in the words of a bill bearing his name.

If the leaders quoting Martin Luther King truly believe in his words today, they’ll propose new legislation that brings them into the present.

Why I delete my tweets

Communities, Internet, Media, Race, , ,

In the wake of James Gunn’s dismissal as director of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 due to some offensive tweets in his past, director Rian Johnson and political commentator Glenn Greenwald both have deleted tens of thousands of their past tweets.

I’m not here to litigate Disney’s decision to fire a Gunn (sorry), deconstruct why he became a target of a right-wing troll or defend what he said (much of it is indefensible in any context).

But as HuffPost points out and Johnson/Greenwald’s actions demonstrate, Gunn won’t be the last well-known person targeted by people with suspect motives. Even those who aren’t bold-faced names could find themselves in a similar situation when they apply for a new job meet a new acquaintance or simply change their point of view. And it should go without saying, but this type of targeting has been happening to women and people of color for years.

With all this in mind, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to explain why I decided last year to I delete everything I tweeted from 2007 through 2013.

Here’s why:

What’s a tweet?

What’s Twitter for? Does that answer change as it scales? Is it for broadcast or narrowcast? Video or text? Everything and nothing?

The company itself has long struggled to answer these question and create a business model to match. The answer today will be different in six months as new features fundamentally change it. There is no agreed-upon use, style guide or set of standards for Twitter. Some people or organizations apply journalistic ethics to their work there. Others use it for comedy or as a press release distributor.There are governments and the governed. Then there are micro-communities like Weird Twitter or Black Twitter. Some people speak to thousands or millions of people they’ve never met with each tweet. Some speak to tens or a hundred people they’ve known for years.

The line between public figures and private individuals was blurred a long time ago (thanks, Mark!) but we’re all using the same tools. How can we develop a set of rules or guidelines for their use when the experience is always in flux with a user base of broadly differing knowledge and experiences and make it open to new users, too?

Because of all this, Twitter of 2007, 2008 or even 2010 or 2012 is fundamentally different from the Twitter of 2018, specifically in the way media organizations mine it for #content.

We’re all in this together, unfortunately

Feeding this frenzy is what some commentators have called “context collapse” – the removal of a tweet, comment or post from its surrounding discussion, leaving it open to a different interpretation – and what is derisively referred to as the content industrial complex. 

In 2014, The New Yorker compared this – while discussing the emerging problem of context collapse in relation to a tweet from The Colbert Report – to “delivering a punch line without its setup.” 

The problem with calling this “context collapse” in this …er, context is the term already has a specific meaning when it comes to digital communities. Nicholas Carr defined “context collapse” as “a sociological term of art that describes the way social media tend to erase the boundaries that once defined people’s social lives.”

Whatever definition you apply to context collapse is part of the problem here whether we’re discussing presidents or private citizens. There’s no clear agreement on the rules of engagement though Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic uses the term “conversation smoosh” to describe the Colbertian type of context collapse and that’s about as good as anything.

Then there’s the problem of how tweets and the collapse of media business models have created a lower standard for newsworthiness. Shrinking newsrooms and “doing more with less” have meant that tweets are now the coal shoveled into the boilers of content management systems.

Congratulations, you’re the news

It was a safe bet that a 2010 tweet of yours would not be picked up by, say, Buzzfeed or a Gawker site then copy/pasted by countless other digital publishers and later broadcast on your local 10pm news show. The watershed moment for “someone said a thing!” mass media content was probably Valleywag tying Justine Sacco to a digital whipping post at the end of 2013.

Similar to the race to the bottom that occurred when local news sites found gold in mining Anna Nicole Smith’s death for #content, the Sacco incident proved you could easily create a piece of “Twitter reacts!” #content from a set of related posts on a topic and get people to read it even if you hadn’t added anything new. “It exists and now you have an emotion” is reason enough. “Julia Roberts joins Instagram” might be the worst, most recent example of this.

Like most technological advancements, the discussion of an ethical, professional or legislative approach lags far behind. We should probably call this The Jeff Goldblum Rule.

Should a person’s professional or professional background act as a guide for how we use their content in mass media? I dunno, it’s complicated. I’ll use myself as an example.

I worked in news/journalism/blogging/commentary in a professional capacity from 2004 to 2016. I’m not a journalist now, but I’m the editorial director of a small media company, but one that’s owned and operated by a marketing agency and counts a museum as a partner. I’m also a board member at a non-profit organization with a 70-year-plus history in my community, a board member of a four-year-old activist group in that same community and a host of a storytelling series co-produced by an arts organization.

Does that make me a journalist, a marketer, a community leader or an activist?  Yes?

Even though it’s not currently my job/career right now, I’ve tried to use the standards of journalism and informed commentary to guide the things I say on Twitter and this blog even when they’re grounded in my work as a community member or activist. The fact that 11,000+ people follow me on Twitter means I have a greater responsibility for accuracy and truth than someone with 100.

Have I been consistent in this? No, because sometimes it would make me less effective in whatever role I am in at the time. And, quite frankly, sometimes I’ve fired off a tweet that I should have thought the better of at the time.

I think about this stuff quite a bit and try to understand the implications around it all. Still, I was surprised when one of my tweets was published as a roundup of Twitter conversation about ABC7’s 2013 New Year’s Eve coverage by the city’s most prominent media critic. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. I realized I couldn’t publish anything on Twitter that I wouldn’t say in a roomful of people or to the face of the person mentioned in that tweet. Again, I’ve failed to meet this standard from time to time.

Is this approach right? Wrong? I don’t know, honestly.

So it’s why I deleted seven years of tweets.

Why I deleted my tweets

From Twitter’s founding in 2006 to roughly 2012, tweets spoke to a relatively small number of people, many of whom were tech or media types. From 2012 to 2014, things changed dramatically. Meyer’s Atlantic article is a great exploration of this. Media changed. Conversation smoosh happened. Everyone became a “personal brand.”

I started tweeting in 2007. I was in my early 30s. I wasn’t a kid. But last year, I began a fool’s errand of trying to manually delete tweets I felt were dumb, overly reliant on swear words or otherwise inconsistent with my current worldview. After a couple days, I gave up. It was like trying to separate dirt from pepper. So I paid $12 to use TweetDeleter to get rid of everything I tweeted from 2007 through 2013 feeling confident that by 2014 I’d understood that anything I tweeted might end up in a news story with wide reach. (It happens.) I’ve also occasionally deleted recent replies to people which, devoid of context, might be read in opposition to their actual meaning.

I’m not saying everyone should do the same. I will say in the several months since I deleted all those tweets, I haven’t missed any of them or felt as if I could still have access to that work. So if you’re worried about that, don’t be. (I feel much differently about the loss of stuff I’ve written at previous employers thanks to website redesigns. Save your work locally, kids!)

How we move forward

Some have bathed in the delicious irony that Greenwald has apparently called people who delete tweets “cowards.” I understand that impulse, but expecting everyone to think of their tweets as the Library of Congress Archives misses where we are right now and where we’ve been.

We shouldn’t immediately think that someone who deletes their tweets has something to hide. We should consider that maybe they’re trying to become a better person and remove any harm they’ve committed. We should also consider that structures of misogyny and whiteness mean that women, people of color and others in oppressed populations are more likely to be ostracized for their expressions of thought because they challenge those structures. Deletion may be a means of safety and protection.

Moreover, we have to talk about moving conversation in the social space from “calling out” to “calling in.” We have to allow for people to experience emotional and intellectual growth and not judge them solely on their worst tweet. Confrontation, yes, but without a subsequent requirement for erasure.

With respect to my fellow white men, we also need to be ready to speak up and defend women and people of color who articulate something outside of what we perceive to be “the norm” and make space for conversations that don’t involve us, aren’t meant for us and don’t need our approval or contributions.

We’re getting there. Societal conversation has become much more intersectional than it’s ever been. There’s a deeper understanding of how racist and sexist institutions have driven our understanding of the world. Eyes have been opened. Hearts and minds have been changed. We have to assume a person in 2007 was fundamentally different than who they are in 2018. I know I am.

Personally, I’ve lost my appetite for Twitter fights. Not every @ is delivered in good faith. I’ve tried to spend less time being concerned that “someone is wrong on the Internet.” (My wife is thrilled.)

None of this should be read as a defense of truly bad behavior, actions or statements or arguing Twitter become a free-for-all. But we have to be able to reckon with the difference between, say, James Gunn saying stupid, deliberately provocative things about groups of people back in 2010 and Roseanne or Alex Jones singling out a specific person.

In the meantime, with context collapse and conversation smoosh still very much guiding how we view people and conversations, the “delete tweet” button is there for a reason.

UPDATE – NOVEMBER 2018: Since I first published this four months ago, I’ve deleted everything I’ve tweeted since October of 2018. It was something I’d meant to do for a while, but never got around to. I even tried to delete my likes using the same Tweetdeleter service. For some reason, it didn’t work. Then I tried to run a script I found online, but this had some unintended consequences.

Ugggggh. And then I was getting tweets and DMs from people wondering what was up. I stopped running the script because blowing up people’s phones wasn’t worth it. Apparently the only way to unlike old tweets is to do it manually. I have…12,000 or so. So that’ll be fun.

This feels like another example of how tech platforms don’t allow you to truly own your data, but someone else can write about that.

A guide to yesterday’s Chicago protests on the Dan Ryan – for people who are new to all this (and trolls)

Chicago, Communities, Media, Politics, Race, ,

The_Dan_Ryan_Expressway_Westbound_near_the_I-55_exit

I spent most of yesterday watching reactions to the shutdown of the Dan Ryan to protest violence in Chicago.

Some of the reactions were genuine – people trying to come to a better understanding of why protestors chose this tactic and why it’s effective.

Some of them were super troll-y.

This is for both groups.

What’s the point of disrupting traffic on the Dan Ryan? Most of the people affected aren’t the ones causing the violence.

One of the biggest problems with addressing violence in Chicago is that it is seen as a problem isolated to a particular area and only affecting certain people and neighborhoods. Yesterday’s protest was like throwing a stone in a pond and causing ripple effects.

If you ended up talking about this protest and the issues surrounding it this weekend, that was the point of the protest. Shutting down the Dan Ryan makes that possible in ways other tactics don’t.

Without calling more people into this fight, the problem doesn’t get solved. Without more pressure on the mayor, the governor, the City Council, it doesn’t get solved. Without a broad-based coalition of people from around the metro area who demand solutions, it doesn’t get solved. Shutting down the Dan Ryan made the problem impossible to ignore.

It was also about forcing people who access Chicago via the Dan Ryan to see parts of the city they otherwise are able to avoid. If you wanted to access the city via I-57, you got diverted to 95th or 103rd Street. You’d have to take State Street or Vincennes or any of the other streets that run parallel to the Dan Ryan to get into the city. You’d have to see the people, the businesses and neighborhoods that make up the South Side – all the places that are largely invisible if you’re taking the Dan Ryan.

At a minimum, this makes the problem more present, less a thing you hear about and more a thing that exists in real ways.

Why don’t they disrupt the spots where the drug dealers / gang members hang out?

People do this all the time. This article is from 2016, but trust me this kind of thing happens out of the reach of TV cameras and reporters frequently.

In fact, Father Pfleger himself leads marches like this every Friday night. His church, St. Sabina, also has an ongoing violence intervention program.

Bringing more attention to the people doing this work is also what the protest was about, not to mention talking about issues like low wages, schools, jobs, etc.

So why don’t they protest in front of the mayor/governor/Mike Madigan’s house?

People do protest in front of the mayor’s house. Often enough that it doesn’t create the kind of disruption or visibility that something like this did. But honestly, this is like asking why civil rights protestors walked from Selma to Montgomery or blocked the Edmund Pettus Bridge. There’s a tendency with protests to see them as either/or rather than “yes, and…”

This is just politics! It’s just a publicity stunt.

Yes. You’ve captured the exact reason why protests happen: to publicize issues and put pressure on political decision makers.

But I’ll agree with you on one point: The posturing by the mayor and the governor yesterday was not particularly insightful or helpful. Especially when you consider the mayor and the governor have both tried to crush unions and teachers, two groups that provide economic and educational health to the affected communities.

This just creates a lot of chaos for law enforcement.

It definitely requires a significant deployment of resources. I don’t have the exact numbers, but I’ll bet it’s roughly equal to the time we closed down Michigan Avenue and most of downtown when the Blackhawks won.

We close streets, disrupt traffic and re-deploy law enforcement officers all the time for street fests, parades, etc. It affects people who aren’t participating in those events, too. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have those things. We should! But again it’s “yes, and…”

It’s a question of what we prioritize.

Also, you might have missed Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson marching arm-in-arm with Father Pfleger down the Dan Ryan. Was this more politics? Maybe. But most folks think better relations between the community and law enforcement are what’s needed here. So if this brought those groups together in a way that showed unity? That’s probably helpful.

Do you think people really don’t know about violence in Chicago?

I think most people hear about Chicago violence, but they don’t know much about it.

Do they hear it exists? Sure. Do they know why it happens? The real root causes of it and not just the stuff Hannity and his ilk spout? I don’t know.

Do they know the ways we fought gangs and dismantled public housing led to a less centralized, more violent gang problem?

Do they know we closed down mental health clinics in our neighborhoods which meant it was more likely that we are trying to treat medical issues as law enforcement problems? And that Illinois’s ongoing budget issues closed even more?

Do they know we closed 40+ schools in black and brown neighborhoods which meant their education was disrupted or kids had to cross gang boundaries? Do they know you end up gang-affiliated not by choice but by location?

Do they know the manufacturing and industrial jobs that were a large part of the South Side haven’t been replaced and that people there are (ahem) economically insecure?

People who live in this city – anywhere, from the North Side to the South Side to downtown and elsewhere – have a part to play. In part because resources to deal with the issue often flow to what demographer Rob Paral calls “the zone of affluence” which stretches from downtown to as far north as Lakeview and parts beyond. If you live in the suburbs, you benefit from the metro area being an economic powerhouse, not to mention the times you come into the city to enjoy its attractions and culture. Yesterday’s protest was about reaching you, too, and asking for your help.

I also find it interesting that some of the same people who say “What about Chicago?” whenever there’s a protest over a mass shooting at a school, church, movie theater, concert, etc. – to suggest no one is protesting over the violence here – are the same ones who are quick to decry this effort as well.

In order for all of us to be better educated on this topic, we need to seek out media, not just expect that it will reach us. More often than not, it’s in seeking out books, magazines and podcasts over TV, daily news and tweets.

It’s how we will know about Chicago violence and not just hear about it.

Why don’t these protestors spend their time calling for mandatory minimums or truth in sentencing laws?

Increasing the carceral state is a further drain on an already financially taxed system. Not to mention that mandatory minimums are usually implemented in ways that are racist and unequal. And Illinois already has truth-in-sentencing laws.

But if we’re interested in solutions that do more than warehousing people, we could start with restoring the funding to social service programs that try to interrupt violence in Chicago communities or provide jobs and other community services. Or we could work on re-opening mental health clinics. Or equally fund our schools.

Is a protest really going to solve this problem though?

By itself? No. And not even Fr. Pfleger thinks that.

We came out here to do one thing: to shut it down,” Pfleger said. “We came here to get their attention. Hopefully we got their attention. … Today was the attention-getter, but now comes the action.”

I’m going to put on my marketing hat for a second and suggest protests like this are about bringing in new participants through awareness and education. None of the other options above would have as much impact on awareness as what happened yesterday. It’s also important to talk through these issues and what else is being done to solve the problem so people know where/how they can spend their time and why it’s so vitally important.

Are the issues and their solutions complicated? Very much so. Chicago Tribune reporter Peter Nickeas talked yesterday about how the work that follows is about offering basic help and services to the people most likely to end up touched by violence:

Softball on Monday + Thursday, afternoon basketball, Tuesday night prayer group, twice-monthly tattoo removal, after-school probation programming w/ substance abuse, therapy, life skill classes, little league baseball. And of course, street outreach, violence intervention…they’ve done *tons* of work off the efforts of volunteers alone over the years, they still do. And people donate space, food, etc. But yea, things cost $. Space, vans, insurance, salaries, permits, jerseys and uniforms, etc.

Pete’s article from last year on how this work is being done in Little Village is a must-read on the topic.

So what am I supposed to do? I want to help, but I don’t know where to start.

Continue to ask questions and listen to the answers from people who’ve been doing this work.

For a regular deep dive into these issues, follow the coverage at WBEZ, Chicago Reader, City Bureau, South Side Weekly and Chicago Reporter as they often go beyond a daily news reporting model. This isn’t to say reporters at the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times aren’t ever doing so, but the approach is different. Having said that, the long reads and watchdog reporting from both those papers (like Pete’s article linked above) are worth your time. Again, “yes, and…” not either/or.

Here’s a list of social service agencies that could use your time, talent or treasure. You could also learn more about the places that fly under the radar who are trying to help.

If each of us takes a piece of this, the load becomes a little lighter.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Families Belong Together protest on Clark St. in Chicago on June 30th, 2018

Our country was founded on a culture of dissent. That’s worth celebrating

Politics, Race, ,
Families Belong Together protest on Clark St. in Chicago on June 30th, 2018
Families Belong Together protest on Clark St. in Chicago on June 30th, 2018

Every year on the 4th of July, I read the Declaration of Independence as a reminder of where we’ve been, how far we have to go and the tools we have available to create what a later document would describe as “a more perfect union.”

From the beginning, we’ve failed to live up to our stated ideals. We said “all men are created equal,” but didn’t really mean it. Doubling down, we extended “certain unalienable rights” only to men.

Then, just as the Declaration goes into its final pitch, there’s a line that describes Native Americans as “the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

The document that began the work of building our country was incomplete, exclusionary. At best, a work in progress. At worst, a codification of prejudice.

(Side note: I want to know which horny founding father was responsible for introducing the phrase “manly firmness” into one of our country’s original documents. John Hancock seems the obvious culprit here, but how much you want to bet it was Thomas Jefferson? Seriously, how were we expecting to be taken seriously with a dick joke in our manifesto?)

Many of us believe we are at one of our country’s lowest points and lack a cause for celebration. At the risk of further twisting the knife, we haven’t lacked for low points: the Alien and Sedition Acts, slavery, the Trail of Tears, Jim Crow laws and the 13th amendment, Japanese internment camps, government-sponsored redlining that created an ongoing racial wealth gap, the AIDS crisis, not to mention the persistent stones in our shoes brought on by a seemingly permanent surveillance state, paying women 82 cents for every dollar a man earns and allowing Rob Schneider to still be a thing.

Reading the Declaration of Independence can seem an indictment of our country’s founding. Yet the same document that creates a separate and unequal state allows for the rectification of the same, a way forward in times when the power of the people seems to be at its lowest. It is a reminder that we have been here before.

To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

“The consent of the governed…alter or abolish it…most likely to affect their Safety…” These seem to be words that track with our current situation. A suggestion that changes can and should be made to part of our government, not necessarily the whole of it.

…when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…

We could start with the Electoral College, but your mileage may vary on this point.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good…

Sounds familiar. And then there’s this…

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

Sure, this referred exclusively to white Europeans when it was written, but applications can be found anew.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice…

This one seems somewhat TBD but, you know.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

Gross, but still.

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world…

Work in progress!

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

Is it a stretch to apply this to declarations of “the enemy of the American people?” Maybe. Maybe not.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us…

“Send tweet.”

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

We can read the above and not necessarily think it should follow that “these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States” or we should “be Absolved from all Allegiance“ or that “all political connection between them and the State…is and ought to be totally dissolved.”

We can and should, however, read the Declaration as an endorsement of protest – yes, even and especially ones that inconvenience, upset and discomfort. It is dissent itself. Taking to the streets to petition for redress is literally our country’s birthright. It is how many love it so much that they refuse to leave it.

From there, we organize to march, we march to vote, we vote to protect.

Among the fireworks, the hot dogs and the beers is the belief that hope exists for a better tomorrow. We aren’t done yet.

Let there be no greater reminder of this than a holiday reimagined and celebrated as ongoing work to protect the vulnerable, stand for equality and create true freedom for all.

Pushing back on racism: The Beverly Review, 12.29.15

Communities, Politics, Race, , ,
integration
Screenshot from WBEZ’s Curious City report on Beverly’s 1970s integration efforts. This was from a presentation called “Beverly Now.”

Yesterday I experienced an afternoon of celebration, reflection and conversation at St. Barnabas Church, where I’m a parishioner. The event was “Following Big Shoes – What Is Ours Yet To Do?” It focused on the past, present and future of the civil rights movement. Specifically, we discussed the work that needs to be done for civil rights in Chicago, now, to eradicate the scourge of gun violence in this city. There was passion and the comfort of shared mission.

The event was part of the Thou Shalt Not Murder campaign, led by a group of South Side churches and pastors leading up to a day without murder or shootings: March 27th, Easter Sunday. Please visit the website, read about the upcoming events and consider adding your voice to those who call for a day without murder in this city.

I will write more about this campaign later, but yesterday’s conversation (and specifically the line “what is ours left to do”) reminded me of an op-ed I wrote that originally ran in our neighborhood paper, The Beverly Review, during the last week of 2015. Our neighborhood is one of the few in Chicago that has an integrated population, but it didn’t come without a fight. The events in this country of the last year proved that the fight against racism isn’t over, nor is it enough for neighborhoods like mine to rest on its laurels. This column is specifically about the neighborhood of Beverly/Morgan Park, but likely has some relevance for you no matter where you live.

In all honesty, this column is a lot more gentle than anything I’d normally publish here. It’s absent the anger I feel about the incidents that led to it. And I purposely sidestepped calling out the neighborhood Facebook groups that are rife with stereotypes and some of the worst things I’ve read about anyone. But I wasn’t trying to reach them; I’m trying to reach those who disagree but feel cowed into silence by the hate they see. It’s those whose voices we need the most: the ones who hadn’t ever thought they can play a role in pushing back.

—

As winter takes hold and the year begins to draw to a close, I’ve been thinking about the past year and taking an inventory of my life in the past twelve months – work and home, good and bad, what I’ve done and what I’ve left undone.

When I’m thinking about the past year’s accomplishments and next year’s priorities, I often find myself thinking in terms of a checklist: which tasks are one-time events that can be forgotten once they’re done and which ones are ongoing tasks that need regular effort?

I’ve thought about this in terms of our neighborhood, too, and how most things we think of as one-and-done really ought to be ongoing matters that always get our attention.

All of which brings me around to matters of diversity and race in our area.

Our community is one of the few in the highly segregated city of Chicago that can claim a measure of racial integration. According to the 2010 census, Beverly’s population is 65% white, 32% black, 3% Hispanic. Morgan Park is 66% black, 29% white, 3% Hispanic. But this mix did not happen naturally.

The racial makeup of Beverly changed only after hard work, court fights and the bravery of those who persevered in the face of stiff opposition. A report last year by WBEZ’s Curious City program detailed this change. Beverly was 99% white in 1970. Members of the Beverly Area Planning Association pushed (and sued) realtors to avoid racially-motivated steering while also speaking to parishes and neighbors about the importance and benefits of an integrated community. A few brave black families began to move here. In the next ten years, the black population in Beverly would grow to 14%.

All of this gives our neighborhood a unique history. But what about our future? Or our present?

Our community’s current racial makeup may lead some of us to think that our efforts at integration can be checked off the list. Yet over the past couple years, it’s distressed me that our neighborhood has too often made local and even national headlines for incidents of racism. Just like in the 1970s, it is not a problem that will go away on its own without the help of people who live here. It will require bravery, honesty and a commitment from those with power.

Of course, our neighborhood is not alone in this struggle. As this country becomes more diverse, it is re-examining its own racial past and asking what work still needs to be done. While we’ve come far as a nation, we have a ways to go before we remove all the structural, economic and cultural barriers that prevent us from living up to the ideals of liberty and justice for all.

We can do this here. And we can do this now.

As with most things, stepping outside of our own experiences is the first step. Our community is tight-knit, which is wonderful. But sometimes it prevents us from seeing beyond what’s happening on our block, in our parish or within our immediate neighborhood. Rather than allow suspicions to form around those whom are unfamiliar, let’s agree to try and get to know each other better instead.

This work continues by not being silent when confronted with racism. We don’t need to be consumed by the hate and anger of others. The simple act of saying “I disagree and that doesn’t reflect my views” in response says far more than silence, which can, too often, be read as agreement.

When something happens to one group in this community, let’s agree that it affects all of us. If a racial incident occurs, we can express our concern and our willingness to help to our alderman Matt O’Shea, the police in the 22nd district, BAPA, our churches, our schools and any other organized group in this community capable of bringing people together in common cause. Moreover, groups like Unity in Diversity, Southsiders for Peace and the Southwest Chicago Diversity Collaborative all operate within this area and are interested in fighting racism and increasing diversity.

Forty years from now, will the next generation read about this neighborhood and say that we were the ones who continued the diversity work of those that came before us? We will make mistakes and it will be messy. But when it comes to pushing back on racism, it’s not enough to have good intentions; it has to be followed by good works.

It’s an ongoing effort, but it’s worth every bit of our attention.

At Mizzou, the tension between the message, the medium and the marginalized

Media, Race, , , ,
Graduate student Jonathan Butler leads the protestors in a chant in Jesse Hall at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, on Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015. (KOMUNews image via Creative Commons license.)
Graduate student Jonathan Butler leads the protesters at the University of Missouri on Oct. 6, 2015. KOMUNews image via Creative Commons license. Link

I’ve been struggling to reconcile competing thoughts on what’s happening at Mizzou, specifically between students and reporters.

This Vox post, quoting a Washington Post article about the parallel conversation at Yale, talks about an important part of these stories that’s often ignored:

One of the purposes of college is to articulate stupid arguments in stupid ways and then learn, through interactions with fellow students and professors, exactly how stupid they are. Anyone who thinks that the current generation of college students is uniquely stupid is either an amnesiac or willfully ignorant… As a professor with 20 years of experience, I can assure you that college students have been saying stupid things since the invention of college students.

The difference today is that because of social media, it is easy for college students to have their opinions go viral when that was not the original intent… If you are older than 22 and reading this, imagine for a second how you would feel if professional pundits pored over your undergraduate musings in real time.

So on one hand, I get it: Nobody wants an unintended gesture made or statement said in the heat of a chaotic situation to represent you on the Internet for the next 10-15 years. On the other hand, a cause that’s just and fair should withstand the scrutiny of an open press. The most newsworthy part of the Mizzou story was the black football players banding together and refusing to play – a story that touches on lots of hot-button issues: race, the ongoing conversation about unpaid student athletes, worker protections, social justice, etc. These issues should get a proper vetting in the press.

Still, how do Mizzou students exercise their collective right to protest and make change, do it in a transparent way and protect their rights to privacy? Honestly, I’m not sure. Yes, this is all being done in public space and on some level this isn’t private. But the coverage often outlasts the moment and at some point it affects the comfort level sources have with the press.

Is it possible to protect the right to make a mistake in protest efforts but also keep traditional media close? Does that get you anything as a protest group in 2015? It’s as much a risk as a benefit. If you have access to social media, which – thanks to Black Twitter and other groups – can amplify a story to its intended audience and understand it in a way traditional press cannot, why risk talking to CNN? Yes, there’s a First Amendment right to a free press, but these student groups aren’t a governmental body. Late today, the groups seemed to realize they’d perhaps started to do themselves more harm than good.

Prior to the last year, the national media has often undercovered stories on race. Even with an increased effort to cover these kinds of stories, they’re usually filmed through a Manchiean lens – this view vs. that view. A story like Mizzou is far more complicated with some folks seeming to act in a contradictory way. After a year of watching the way on-the-ground stories have been twisted by a virality-driven national media, I’m not surprised there’s a distrust of people who parachute into an event that has a complicated backstory. Somewhere in here, the affects of all the cuts that have happened to newspapers’ local and regional bureaus have prevented an ongoing dialogue between the press and their potential sources and the press now finds itself literally blocked out.

I don’t have a clear set of answers or a way forward here, but it’s clear this won’t be the last time reporters will be challenged in how to cover on-the-ground stories with marginalized groups. Just like their counterparts on the business side, they’ll need to stop insisting on a return to a previous model and adapt, perhaps – as local stories like this blow up into national stories quickly – by rebuilding the bureau model around beats, rather than geographic areas.

EDITED TO ADD: Having said all that, I pretty much sign on to the views expressed in this Atlantic article, too.

Mark Kirk has a very specific image of the South Side

Chicago, Politics, Race, ,

Image: Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk of Illinois celebrates at election night rally in WheelingThis week, Illinois Senator Mark Kirk referred to Lindsey Graham – an unmarried Presidential candidate – as “a bro with no ho.” He further intimated “that’s what we’d say on the South Side.” (Kirk was born in Champaign, IL and is a resident of Highland Park, IL where the median income is $108,393.)

The Washington Post heard that second sentence as “on the street.” Either way, it found “bro with no ho” is not in colloquial use on the South Side or anywhere else and is likely something Kirk made up.

It’s tempting to think of this as a one-off remark from an out-of-touch white guy who’s trying to adopt an urban patois that both enhances his cred while simultaneously critiquing the language patterns of a lower socioeconomic population.

In fact, it’s a pattern of Kirk’s who clearly sees the black neighborhoods as a wasteland of violence and corruption.

Back in April, he referred to “the black community” as “the one we drive faster through.

Then there was the time in 2013 when Kirk said he wanted to spend $500 million dollars to have federal agents roll into South Side neighborhoods and round up gang members:

The freshman Republican senator visited Englewood as part of a deal with Chicago Democratic congressman Bobby Rush to help smooth over tensions from earlier this year.  In May, Kirk proposed spending $500 million in federal funds to arrest 18,000 members of the Gangster Disciples street gang as a solution to combat violence. Rush responded that Kirk’s idea was an “upper-middle-class, elitist white boy solution to a problem he knows nothing about.” [SNIP] Kirk responded: “Oftentimes when people say you cannot police your way out of this, I would say thank God that Illinois and Chicago didn’t believe that. We could’ve just let Al Capone run the whole place.” The audience scoffed at the decades-old crime reference and tried to explain street crime to Kirk.

At least then he actually toured the neighborhood instead of hitting the gas when he approached it.

As Kirk approaches a re-election fight, it’s also worth remembering the time in 2010 when he said he wanted to “voter integrity” monitors to the South and West sides because Democrats would be likely to “jigger the numbers somewhat” there. Nevermind that voter fraud of this nature barely exists and such tactics are usually intended to suppress minority voter turnout.

So it was interesting to hear Kirk proudly wear the mantle of the South Side this week when he so often seems to want nothing to do with it.

The hard work of making Jackie Robinson West happen

Politics, Race, , ,

rahmquinn This is a piece I read for Tuesday Funk last night. It’s a reading series at Hopleaf on the first Tuesday of each month at 730pm. Last night was a particularly eclectic mix of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Normally when I do a live reading, I favor something with some humor interspersed. This was the first time I ever read a piece without any of my usual tricks due, in part to developing this for both Tuesday Funk and an op-ed on the Sun-Times’s website. (The version that appears below is a little longer.) It was great to do something new in a live setting and to get this piece out there in a couple different forms.

—

Over the Labor Day weekend, I was thinking about it means to do hard work. Hard work is filled with lots of little details that eventually pay off in the long-term, but aren’t much fun to hear about until you see the results.

I’d been thinking about what hard work looks like because of some news stories about Jaheim Benton and his South Side teammates from Jackie Robinson West, this year’s United States Little League champions. Benton scored five runs in the series, including the winning run in the championship game. In a month of news stories dominated by violence in African-American communities here in Chicago, in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere, the story of a group of young, inner-city black boys represented the pinnacle of American athletic accomplishment and contradicted an all-too-familiar narrative. This was a feel-good story on the scale of a big-screen movie, playing out in real life.

Just days after the team’s victory, the Sun-Times reported Benton, along with his mother and father, had been sleeping in the homes of friends and family for the past few months. They were homeless. Both parents work, but have been unable to pay their rent on two part-time salaries. Benton’s mother recently had her hours cut as an in-home care worker with Catholic Charities.

The story was a stunning contrast to the events of a few days before at a homecoming rally for Benton and his teammates at Millennium Park. Many of Chicago’s most powerful – the mayor, the governor, the State’s Attorney General and others – took the stage to praise the Jackie Robinson West team for its skill on the field. All were happy to celebrate the win and connect their names to a Chicago victory.

The question on the minds of many was whether any of the politicians who shared the stage with Benton earlier in the week would step up and be there for him now that his family needed help.

They didn’t. But the neighborhood did.

Leak and Sons Funeral Home offered to pay the family’s rent for a year. A South Side institution that has seen the effects of violence firsthand, Leak and Sons is no stranger to helping those in need, often providing discounted or pro bono funeral services to those who can’t otherwise afford it. In a story on ABC7 News, Spencer Leak Jr., said “I would hope that this rent turns into a mortgage that turns into homeownership for them,” said Leak Jr. In a separate Sun-Times story, he was quoted as saying “My dad always say a setback is a setup for a comeback. We’re going to try to help them come back.”

Other offers of assistance followed from various South Side businesses and institutions, including one from Leo High School in Auburn-Gresham, which offered Benton’s mother a job.

It’s easy to show up to a victory rally. It’s harder to show up when there’s lots of work to do and no cameras around. But the politicians were silent even though an offer of help would have been an easy win for them. Would it have been an obvious piece of political grandstanding? Sure. But no moreso than their appearance at the rally.

The reason they didn’t is simple: People in power only like to take credit for a win, not blame for a loss.

The South Side has seen plenty of loss in the last year. Twenty out of the 49 Chicago Public Schools were closed in this part of the city. It also sees a higher proportion of gun deaths and shootings. Many of these neighborhoods are starved for economic resources as well. These facts are all interrelated and help to explain why a family like Jaheim Benton’s would be homeless.

The politicians who shared in Jackie Robinson West’s win don’t want to acknowledge their part in preventing any of the above.

In the same way that electing one black man President doesn’t make racism go away, sending one South Side baseball team to the Little League World Series doesn’t alleviate the problems of poverty, violence and homelessness in the neighborhoods of Chicago. But it definitely shows what happens when you provide the right tools to combat them.

Jaheim Benton’s family has a solution now. But what about all those other families who are on the brink, but don’t have the benefit of a Little League World Series victory to bring attention to their plight? The young men of Jackie Robinson West either live in or live close to neighborhoods that make headlines due to gun violence. But they’re also supported by families, churches and schools. Their victory and the offers of help from Leak and Sons and Leo High School show what is possible when we stop thinking there are either “good” or “bad” neighborhoods.

The comments sections of our local news sites are replete with those who sneer at the notion that the 20 year old kid who was just arrested for shooting someone could be described by his mother as a “good kid.” But the distance between a good kid and a bad kid is short. Maybe only the distance between their home the nearest baseball field. And if we’re going to talk about the importance of baseball to the youth of Chicago, it’s worth talking about what happens to youth baseball when those cameras aren’t around.

In a piece for Substance News, George N. Schmidt notes that most Little League play isn’t affordable for kids in vulnerable neighborhoods. So this leaves baseball fields at the school or park district fields. The frequent rains this summer showed that most Park District fields weren’t maintained well enough to withstand the weather, with flooding a constant problem. As for the school fields, we’re back to those 20 closed South Side schools. If there’s no school, there’s no field. Schmidt also notes “Chicago’s public schools do not have frosh, and frosh-soph baseball programs because the funding to pay the coaches for these programs has been eliminated.” Nevermind all the other issues that plague Chicago’s youth: we haven’t even managed to invest in the very thing our city and state leaders just finished praising.

Even if the most celebrated young men in our city aren’t immune to the city’s larger problems, investment in their neighborhoods may be the key to solving them. Local businesses are present in a community for more than just the exchange of goods and services and public schools are a lynchpin of safety and stability for families with an uncertain home life. When we don’t work to create strong networks of both in our neighborhoods and instead save those tax dollars for downtown, we aren’t investing in our city’s long-term future.

This story is also a reminder that a systemic problem in any of Chicago’s neighborhoods – violence, poverty, failing schools or homelessness – is a problem in our own.

It’s something the politicians at Jackie Robinson West’s victory rally should remember, too: The victories of our youth come only when we take the steps necessary to prevent the losses. It’s hard work that starts long before anyone takes the stage.

Photo via Quinn For Illinois, CC License

Confusing the symptoms of Chicago’s violence with the disease

Chicago, Media, Politics, Race

7452178210_4424a362a0_mI swear this blog isn’t going to become “Our Man In Chicago On Crime” but it’s probably going to be on my mind for a couple weeks.

I’m trying to understand the mayor’s mindset when he does things like this:

Emanuel attended an anti-violence vigil in Roseland Monday evening where he said everyone — from parents to police to federal lawmakers — must play a role to curb bloodshed in Chicago.

“A lot of people will say where were the police … and that’s a fair question, but not the only question,” Emanuel said. “Where are the parents? Where is the community?

First of all, I don’t know how you stand there at a anti-violence rally in a community that lost one of its own in a drive-by shooting two nights prior and ask “Where is the community?” That takes some gall.

I also don’t know how you read about the father of the 14-year-old boy shot in a separate incident and ask “Where are the parents?”

“What happens to kids when they’re not with their parents?” said Susan Diaz, whose daughter married into the Rios family. “The kid was 14 years old. The parents do the best that they can. When the kid walks away — he goes to school, the beach, the park, the library — the gangbangers are hanging around waiting to recruit them. … That’s just the way it is.”

When the mayor asks “Where are the parents? Where are the communities?” it implies neither exists where there is gun violence. That’s reductive. And wrong. Especially when the underpinnings of those communities have been ripped apart by lack of economic investment. Gun violence doesn’t start because a kid wakes up and decides not to listen to his parents. It starts when he thinks a gun keeps him alive. And that happens when crime seems like the best – and safest – possible way to earn a living and keep on living.

More police aren’t going to solve the problem. But pointing a finger at parents without talking about why parents aren’t around? Or the economic reasons why parents alone aren’t enough to shout down the other voices kids hear on those streets every day? Not helpful.

When you’re the mayor, your rhetoric frames the way people view a situation. Your words make headlines, they lead the evening news. Demonizing an entire community gives fuel to those who think “those people” are all criminals. It lays the blame for crime at the community’s collective feet, helps keep “them” at arm’s length and convinces people that crime is something that exists in other neighborhoods and won’t affect them.

I’m reminded of last week’s shooting in Lakeview:

The Pride parade revelers who had filled the street earlier were gone, Lane said, and a younger crowd replaced them.

“I doubt any of them was over 30,” Lane said. “A lot of them don’t live around here. They come from other neighborhoods. It’s just the attitude they have, the mentality.”

[snip]

Neighbor Juan Chavez, who’s lived in the area since 2007, said “the majority of people who cause trouble don’t live in the neighborhood.”

People in “safe” Chicago neighborhoods really will go to great lengths to convince themselves that crime isn’t a problem where they live. Saying “they come from other neighborhoods” suggests there’s a leaky faucet of crime you can just turn off and fix the problem.

Instead, we – all of us – need to support crime prevention and economic improvement efforts for all Chicago neighborhoods. Not just our own. That’s not easy, I’ll admit. But it’s the cause of the problem, not a lack of morality or parents or community.

Or to put it another way: morality, parents and community are what get infected by the disease of violence and poverty.

Image via Don Harder/Creative Commons