Why The Violence May Never End in Chicago

2009-10-27
By Mark Allen

As crime intervention and prevention groups like CeaseFire and others prepare for major cuts in hands-on staff and programming in high crime areas, Mayor Richard M. Daley, Police Chief Jodi Weis and Chicago's political, civic and religious leadership remain silent on how to secure immediate funding for adequate intervention and prevention while Chicago shootings and killings continue to rise. Each day, the poor get poorer and more desperate by the day leaving far too many of our urban residents looking to the gangs, drugs, and other illegal street economies as their source to provide for themselves and their families. Yet, providing immediate resources to stop the flow of a deadly flu virus is still more important than providing the same type of immediate resources to improve the environment that is causing this rise in violence, shootings and death.
 
 
Over 500 workers and supporters of the group CeaseFire and citizens rallied in downtown Chicago this summer asking for public support for sources of funding to maintain and even expand the number of “violence interrupters “ to help keep the violence, shootings, and murders down. The Mayor's office responded that while the violence is rising in Chicago, CeaseFire is a state-funded responsibility. The Governor's budget office responded that CeaseFire was not a priority for the 2010 budget and would probably come up for funding from other state sources in future legislative sessions.
 
White House Senior Policy Advisor Valerie Jarrett responded to a Wall Street Journal story that eventually President Obama's economic programs would reach urban communities and stop the battle over illegal economies, and there was enough new money for law enforcement, which right now only results in more arrests and increasing the flow of urban youth in the criminal justice system. So from the Mayor to The President, the challenge to our leaders to provide collective financial and other resources to provide adequate hands-on crime intervention and programming is that it is someone else’s responsibility.
 
So while groups like CeaseFire and others who work at crime, prevention, continue to go through their grant-writing workshops, the immediate and drastic need for resources to stem this emergency is met with no sense of urgency at all.
Shouldn't Chicago's poor expect a better urban agenda that lifts them up when its’ the home of The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr, Minister Louis Farrakhan, and now The President Of The United States? Chicago is the collective home to the biggest and most influential local, national and international names in religion, media, civics, sports, banking, politics and business and with all this collective power we can stop our urban areas from their dependence on illegal activities versus legal opportunities.
 
Who is the enemy now? We at the grassroots level often said we were battling the Republican-controlled government that blocked access to capital and other resources at the grassroots level, but now that we have a grassroots community organizing Democratic President, and majority Democratic City, State, and Federal Government, who’s the enemy of poor people now?
 
Mark Allen runs the Black Leadership Development Institute in Chicago.