WILD WILD WINDY CITY — The Weekly Opine

Chicago’s ‘cool’ factor erodes with each act of gun violence. (Photo credit The Weekly Opine)

Numbers game

When I was a youngin’, fresh out of college living in the city, area code 312 was special. For a guy from small-town Indiana it signaled you had arrived, on the inside gazing out at a vast suburban landscape of slow movers.

Back then, ‘city slickers’ made fun of 708ers. In our minds 708 was the area code of dullsville. Suburbanites were like Cinderella, running home when the party at late-night clubs was just starting to bounce. Since then, 847 and 630 joined 708 as area codes covering Chicago’s suburbs. But 847er and 630er do not flow smoothly like 708er.

(Full disclosure, I am now a suburbanite, having ‘succumbed’ years ago to pastoral green lawns and wide-open sky.)

When I finally moved from Chicago to the ‘burbs, I decided to keep my cell number and the fashionable 312-area code. Keeping 312 meant hanging on to a slice of city “cool.”

Today, between COVID-19 with its outsized impact on urban centers, and relentless, random gun violence, Chicago’s once chic area code 312 has reversed roles with 708. Now, 312ers live in a city of crisis. Brilliant architecture stands largely vacant, Michelin-quality restaurants are shuttering and blissful lakefront beaches are closed. Some residents no longer sit on their porches on warm summer evenings, fearful of being the next victim of an errant bullet.

Gun violence, still primarily afflicting poor Black and Latino neighborhoods on the West Side and South Side, sporadically and increasingly pops up downtown and on the North Side.

If you have not noticed, Chicago is a wreck. An undignified mess that gets messier every day. It was a mess before Trump became president. And before J.B. Pritzker became Illinois’ governor and before Lori Lightfoot became mayor of Chicago.

When I retired from corporate several years ago, friends asked if I planned to move back downtown. To paraphrase former Bulls Coach Phil Jackson, when reporters asked if he would ever coach in Chicago again, wild horses couldn’t drag me back to the city.

Empty lots and hopelessness permeate swaths of Chicago neighborhoods. (Photo credit The Weekly Opine)

A killer rep

Long before the pandemic choked the city, death by gun in Chicago was legendary. The bloody Al Capone-led St. Valentine’s Day massacre in 1929. The killing of notorious bad guy John Dillinger outside the Biograph Theater in 1934. The senseless gunning down of Ben Wilson, the nation’s #1 high school basketball player, just a block from Simeon High School, in 1984.

In 1995, during a record-setting heatwave, 739 Chicagoans died from heat-related causes. In just five days. Although these deaths did not result from gun violence, it was a shocking display of city government incapable of protecting its residents. Therefore, it is not surprising local government officials do not have the will, empathy, or sense of duty to stop gun violence. The similarity between those who perished in the 1995 heatwave and those who are dying from gun violence is the victims mostly lived in impoverished, minority neighborhoods.

Forgotten people are forgotten whether it involves education resources, access to healthy food, access to bank loans, access to quality healthcare, or protection under the police motto “We serve and protect.”

Failure to meaningfully reduce daily shootings, that increasingly take the lives of children and toddlers, is primarily the result of policy failures and parental oversight failures. Also, it is wrong to expect the police to fix this. As we have witnessed with the change from one police superintendent (Eddie Johnson) to another (David Brown), there is not much cops can do to stem Chicago violence. The primary blame falls on city government.

During summer 2018, Fr. Michael Pfleger shut down a Chicago expressway to call attention to neglect and gun violence. Two years later, nothing’s changed. (Photo credit The Weekly Opine)

It is commonplace here

Mass shootings occur like clockwork, especially during summertime. Whereas mass shootings in otherwise relatively quiet places like Columbus, Ohio generate intense media attention, Chicago violence is mostly background noise in a nation that is the most violent on Earth.

After Columbus (and El Paso and Las Vegas) cable news went into overdrive, covering the story night after night. The pace of mass shootings in Chicago is such that cable news would have to cover it for weeks at a time (like Chicago local news stations do).

Activist Dwight McKee says three deficits are impacting young adults in Black communities. Investment deficit, cultural deficit, and spiritual deficit.

There are few, if any, good-paying jobs in marginalized neighborhoods. Even when you see the rare infrastructure project, say street repaving, the crew is not representative of the people living in the community. Chicago has a notorious reputation in this regard. Whole swaths of industries traditionally relied on a systemic, unwritten code that refused to hire Blacks.

Firemen. Police officer. Construction worker. Streets and sanitation. Well-paying, union jobs with lifetime benefits. Nowadays, you see some Blacks working in these industries. But decades of being shut out impacts Black employment levels overall, which in turn negatively affects Black neighborhoods.

Neighborhoods that should be solid middle-class are beat down. Not only is government investment nonexistent, people who live there cannot afford to spruce up their homes, e.g, fresh coat of exterior paint, upgrade landscaping or repair a sagging roof.

Culturally, West Side and South Side residents are not truly welcome to venture downtown. Years ago, a 6th grade student I tutored said she had never been to the lakefront, even though she lived at Cabrini Green, just a few miles from Lake Michigan. Modifications to Chicago’s 4th of July fireworks were made several years back. Fireworks displays were added on the North Side and South Side to reduce downtown crowds and, you guessed it, keep South Siders from showing up at Navy Pier.

Fireworks and hanging out at the beach are not high on anyone’s list of magnificent cultural pursuits. But you can bet South Side and West Side folks get funny looks if they visit Chicago’s world-class museums.

Former Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson could not stop Chicago’s outrageous gun violence. It will require City Hall to end systemically racist policies. (Photo credit The Weekly Opine)

The spiritual deficit is not the exclusive purview of Blacks. The nation’s spirit is reeling under the weight of myriad scandals. Credibility of the Catholic Church, after years of protecting pedophile priests, may be lost forever. Celebrity ministers from just about every religion have fallen like huge oak trees. Former President Barack Obama’s minister – the Rev. Jeremiah Wright – appears prescient for having preached “God damn America” in 2003.

What fuels the despair that leads many poor Blacks to embrace a violent lifestyle? Among the causes are redlining, which traps blacks in neighborhoods without the investment needed to attract businesses that build-up neighborhoods.

A chart in last week’s Chicago Tribune showed 73% of Chicago businesses are White-owned, while only 2% are Black-owned. White unemployment is 4%; Black unemployment is 15%. Since most businesses are White-owned, and Chicago is a deeply segregated city, it is not surprising that White business owners overwhelmingly hire White workers.

Education inequality is rampant in the U.S. and Chicago is no exception. The pandemic threatens to leave a generation of Black and Hispanic kids in its wake, without access to critical technology necessary to compete in an era of remote learning.

Food deserts and lack of reliable healthcare seal the deal, creating a Third World level of despair and hopelessness.

Mayor Lightfoot recently launched a $750 million initiative called Invest South/West with the goal of helping businesses in 10 forgotten neighborhoods. Unfortunately, Chicago’s outlandish violence may scare away investors.

It took mere days to remove the Columbus statue from its base. Can the feds restore order in gun violence-plagued Chicago just as quickly? (Photo credit The Weekly Opine)

Trump to the rescue. (LOL!)

The same man who boasted during the 2016 campaign, “I alone can fix it,” has been whipped badly, very badly, by the coronavirus. Alas, having meekly surrendered to the pandemic, Trump now claims he will fix Chicago’s near-daily gun violence epidemic. It will not be easy, based on the past several months in Chi-town. The numbers are staggering:

· Memorial Day Weekend - 50 shot, 10 dead

· Father’s Day Weekend – 104 shot, 15 dead

· July 17-19 Weekend – 49 shot, 7 dead

· July 21 Funeral Drive By – 15 shot, 0 dead

Clearly, Chicago needs help. However, residents are split over the arrival of Trump’s troublemakers. Lakefront liberals and young marchers want Trump to stay away because when Trump gets involved the outcome is usually negative. (Which is why city officials in Jacksonville, Florida put the brakes on the Republican National Convention. The opposite of Rumpelstiltskin, Trump turns straw not into gold but into manure.) But other Chicagoans, surrounded by perpetual gun violence, are open to giving Trump a chance.

The harsh reality is Chicago’s gun violence will take years to reverse. Acknowledge the souls of 20-to-30-something-year-old gang bangers and troublemakers cannot be resurrected. Instead, provide proper resources to save high school and grade school age kids.

As it is, gun violence will continue spreading into nicer neighborhoods. Last weekend, a man was shot and killed at the posh W Hotel on Lake Shore Drive. Random shootings in nice North Side neighborhoods seem more commonplace than a decade ago.

Powder keg comes to mind when you think of Chicago. Mixing in 200 federal interlopers, itching for some action, is not the solution. Trump may get more than he has bargained for in Chicago which, no offense, is not Portland.

You may recall, in 2016, Trump’s barnstorming campaign rallies took over arenas in cities across the land, bullying many folks in the process. When Trump’s MAGA campaign rolled into the Windy City, Chicago – as Trump would say – literally knocked the hell out of MAGAs, beating some of them up and forcing them to retreat and cancel the rally.

The hot summer, like the year 2020, cannot end soon enough.