Do Black Lives in Chicago Still Matter?

At least 2,300 people have been shot in Chicago this year alone, according to the Chicago Tribune. According to their analysis, that's roughly 400 more incidents than during the same period in 2014. Homicides are currently up 21 percent in 2015, with the past two weekends pointing to a noticeable increase in gun-related violence.

"Wherever you live, you should be able to get out of your car and go to your home," Emanuel told reporters on Tuesday after receiving news of the increased violence continuing on Monday evening, leaving six dead and at least eight injured. "You can say this happened in the neighborhood of the Back of the Yards, but everybody (who) woke up this morning, or heard it last night, felt a pain of anguish.
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Four people were killed and 52 wounded during shootings across Chicago over the weekend. After multiple weekends in a row of increased violence in the city, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is urging a fresh and more proactive approach.... The latest incidents, including the murder of a pregnant mother, come on the heels of two weekends in a row with more than 50 shootings in Chicago
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Find the killers and lock 'em up, for a long, long time.
There are too many innocents looking to avoid violence, keep their heads down, and achieve a semblance of normal family life for us to politicize these killings, and recommend leniency for those who take the lives of others.

The bonds of violence can be broken, one by one, by reaching out to those who believe in reason over masculine strutting, who practice peace, and who do not accept the statistics above as status quo.

Unless something effective is done, some long-lasting multi-generational commitment to creating change, then we'll always have Paris Chicago.


ADDED: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, of course, had prominent ties to Chicago before settling to run the business empire from the Colonnades Hotel on Singer Island, the next barrier island north of Palm Beach.

Catherine T. MacArthur (1908-1981) was one of five children born to Irish immigrants who had settled on the South Side of Chicago. Her father was active in Democratic politics in the city, and served in appointive posts in both state and local government. At various times, he also owned and operated several retail stores.

I don't think the foundation is as savvy at coaxing results from their investment dollars as MacArthur was from his direct investments. Let's leave it at that...


ADDED: The trouble with accepting the black deaths as the status quo is that there is no guarantee the violence will be contained in the warring, off-limits gang neighborhoods. As the public housing complexes were emptied, and people with no idea how to live in a collective peaceful community moved south, the violence and gansta lifestyle travels with them.

The fallout over Chief Keef's canceled benefit concert in Chicago last weekend peaked today when the young rapper called out the city's mayor Rahm Emanuel with some choice words. "I was really shocked," Keef told Billboard about the concert being unceremoniously canceled by city officials. The hologram performance was planned as a benefit for two victims of Chicago's gun violence earlier this month. When Chicago officials banned the concert the hologram performance was instead moved over to Indiana's Craze Fest. Shortly after Keef's hologram performance began, the feed was cut, and the mayor of Hammond, where Craze Fest takes place, took all the credit.

“I don’t even know Chief Keef,” Mayor Thomas McDermott told Billboard. “But in my opinion, he glamorizes gang-lifestyle, anti-cop, anti-women, pro drug-use. This was a public venue and surrounded by a residential neighborhood. We don’t want to invite the possibility of some of the gangs that are terrorizing Chicago right now to come to Northwest Indiana.”

Of course, it always comes back to violence, including sexual violence, and braggadocio from these little men who have no concept in their community of how a responsible working Man takes care of his own, no special reparations needed.

Speaking about the lead-up to the performance and its eventual cancelation, Keef said, "[City officials] just be hating. They don’t want to see a young black man be successful and try to do something good. It’s crazy."

As for Keef's message to Rahm Emmanuel? "If you ask me, man," he said, "f**k the mayor with a sandpaper dick! Say it like that."