Chicago "STOP THE VIOLENCE" town hall meeting

[melensdad]

Those of us in N.W. Indiana get more information from Chicago than we do from Indy, and we are treated to Chicago TV broadcasts. Last night was a real treat.

About once a year the 'community leaders' from Chicago are all trotted out for a "STOP THE VIOLENCE" town hall type meeting. They basically plop 100 or so of these 'leaders' into a room, hook up a bunch of TV cameras and allow them to mumble on about their feelings as to what the causes of violence in the City are, who causes the violence, etc. These 'community leaders' included ex-drug dealers who are now on the government dole, activist Priest Fr Michael Pfleger, the most reverend Jesse Jackson, and a whole host of city politicians . . . but somehow this year they missed Obama's preacher Jerimiah Wright.

If you can't tell my disgust by the tone of my typing then I am clearly do a poor job.

Anyway this show starts last night after the 10pm news and runs to about midnight? It was simulcast on the radio. I started watching it but had to drive my daughters friend home so I listed to most of it in the car. I've watched/listened to bits and pieces of this before, but I caught almost the entire show this time.

The format was pretty simple. At the start of each topic point they would show a short video/interview of the "problem" and then they would go to the various pre-approved 'community leaders' they selected to talk to on this particular topic. The pre-selected community leader did not read a script, but basically got 30 to 120 seconds to rattle off a short info-mercial about their program's solution, frustration, or need. The host would then go to the next community leader they wanted to talk to. And for each topic there were several people who got to speak, each was introduces with their "qualifying" organization and their rank/title within that organization. And so it proceeded.

I was astounded at how many people blamed guns for violence.

I was astounded at how few people blamed the breakdown of the family, the breakdown of societal norms and other obvious factors. BTW, the 'drug problem' is apparently all about WHITE suppliers bringing drugs into the black communities.

Common solutions to eliminating "black and brown community" (their term not mine) violence included repeated calls for:

• outlaw guns
• spend more on schools
• spend more on welfare to raise illegitimate kids
• spend more on parks programs
• spend more on summer work programs (and make them year round jobs paid for by the government)

As my daughter's friend lives many miles away, my daughter and I actually listened together on the way home and my daughter asked me a lot of questions. She is obviously sheltered from troubled inner city life but she eventually got to ask some questions like these:

• Why do the fathers have kids they don't care for? / live with? / interact with in any way?
• Why do the mothers have kids from 3 or 4 different fathers?
• Why don't the parents keep their kids at home at night?
• Why don't black people speak properly?
• If they won't go to schools to learn, how will spending more on education make any difference?
• Why don't their parents make them go to school?
• Why do they make it illegal to defend myself from gangs?

Those were NOT any of the questions asked or addressed in any part of this town hall meeting (at least not that I was able to hear).

Maybe I am all wet on this subject, but if we are going to 'take back the streets' then we probably have to start at the home.

[melensdad]

Oh they did have a guy from the ATF on. He said that of the 15,000 illegal guns that are seized from gang members each year, at least 10,000 of them were legally purchased in Illinois within the past year or two, and the majority of the remaining guns were also sourced to legal Illinois purchases at some point. So it was interesting that NOBODY pointed out that Illinois is a 'poster child' state for the Brady Campaign's very restrictive gun control measures, yet the vast majority of the 'illegal' guns in Chicago were legally purchased in an very restrictive anti-gun state.

Funny how EVERYONE missed that point.

I wonder why?

[Hiram Abiff]

Originally Posted by melensdad

.

She is obviously sheltered from troubled inner city life but she eventually got to ask some questions like these:

• Why do the fathers have kids they don't care for? / live with? / interact with in any way?
• Why do the mothers have kids from 3 or 4 different fathers?
• Why don't the parents keep their kids at home at night?
• Why don't black people speak properly?
• If they won't go to schools to learn, how will spending more on education make any difference?
• Why don't their parents make them go to school?
• Why do they make it illegal to defend myself from gangs?

Sounds like you have a really smart girl there!!

[melensdad]

At 13 years old she offers a lot of insight that these Chicago politicians and 'community leaders' should actually listen to. Then again, they all suffer from the liberal disease of knowing more than us common folk, and they are great at telling us how we should live and act. Funny how that doesn't work out very well in these crime riddled communities they service!

[Annie]

Good Post, Melensdad!
Although, I don't really see how Chicago could have ANY gun related crime...you know, since private ownership of handguns has been banned for decades. Funny how all along the mayor of Chicago has chosen to blame the firearm industry for the city's problem, even though not one handgun is ever shipped to Chicago (most companies won't even send catalogs). I guess he never thought about blaming the criminals, huh?

[Disposable Heart]

I disagree with everything that they posted for anti-crime, except one thing, the summer work concept. Too many teenagers have come to depend on their parents for money and dont work the "hard" or dirty jobs anymore. What are businesses doing to fill these voids? Hiring Illegals or immigrants. Lets get our kids back into the workforce (like I did in highschool and college)! This may stem some of the jobs going to illegals (theory only).


BTW, smart kid at the end of the post. Sounds like, while sheltered, has good logic and mind.

[melensdad]

Originally Posted by Disposable Heart

I disagree with everything that they posted for anti-crime, except one thing, the summer work concept. Too many teenagers have come to depend on their parents for money and dont work the "hard" or dirty jobs anymore. What are businesses doing to fill these voids? Hiring Illegals or immigrants. Lets get our kids back into the workforce (like I did in highschool and college)! This may stem some of the jobs going to illegals (theory only).


BTW, smart kid at the end of the post. Sounds like, while sheltered, has good logic and mind.

Well with regards to what are businesses doing? They often don't exist. I drive through the "south side" of Chicago on a regular basis to take my daughter to La Rabida Children's Hospital for regular treatment. There are as many boarded up windows on stores as there are open stores. The factories have moved out to safer areas and to where they can get skilled workers. Many of these residents have minimal skills, are only able to read at basic levels, etc. The business community fled these areas when the crime and taxes chased them out. Add to the issues of crime and taxes there are wage laws in Chicago that force businesses to pay above minimum wage (the so-called 'living wage') rates for entry level employment. Unions are particularly strong in urban areas and these two drive out businesses because they often protect low quality employees that should be replaced, but can't be replaced with smarter, more productive, harder working employees. No medium to large business with any level of sanity would move into those communities because the cost structure to remain there is too high, the pool of qualified employees is too low, and many qualified employees refuse to drive into those neighborhoods.

I retired last year, owned a distribution business, one of the 50 largest in the nation of its type. We had a 'night shift' and the average night shift employee was not qualified to get a job at McDonalds. My main operation was in Highland, IN on a 6 acre campus like property, we were able to draw employees from all areas. But had we moved into south Chicago, Chicago Heights, Markham, or back up into East Chicago, IN or Gary into an "enterprise zone" or other development type zone to run the operation we would have had to double our already very rigid security (armed officers on staff, 3 over lapping security systems, massive video recording, etc) which would have only increased costs and reduced potential for profit. Further, we would have had a difficult time attracting qualified employees for our other shifts because often the work environment is one of the critical factors that employees consider, especially women and manager level employees, when looking at job offers. BTW, we left East Chicago after being there for 20 years and had no intention of returning to a community where our employees cars were constantly being broken into (in our fenced lot), where people had to walk to the McDonalds in groups for safety's sake, etc.

So I'm saying all that simply because business move out of those communities for a lot of reasons, and it is actually very rare that businesses will replace 'local' workers with 'illegal' workers.