You sure you want to go with Brooklyn, Iowa right now? Or am I not catching the sarcasm?
Rahm can’t spin his way out of the Chicago street gang wars
- Thread starter obfuscating
- Start date
it's still true that most big cities are run by Dems and in an awful mess
institutionally mandated oversight is not lack of respect. It protects our freedom
Ok. Take the inner city blacks and move them all over the country. Put them in every small town that has even the slightest infrastructure in place to deal with them. See the entire state of Iowa. Now you’ve dropped the poor uneducated African American into communities that were red areas. Now the red starts to change to a mix of red and blue and you’ve got a form of human gerrymandering. You’ve taken that centralized crime and made it a little of everyone’s problem. Exactly what Iowa city school district is trying to do so 3 or 4 schools don’t turn to shit.
Here’s the key part. You’ve taken the modern day slave to the Democrats party and spread them thin. How do you replace them in the city with an equally blue and controllable population that relies on handouts? It’s simple see. Plop those precious votes. I mean refugees from Africa right into where the African American blacks were moved from and boom. You’ve done doubled your handout control. See Minneapolis as an example of this. Kick out the blacks move in the Somalis.
And a murder rate, and violent crime rate, far lower than many other major cities. Why not throw a fit about Baltimore and it's murder rate than is 2 1/2 times higher than Chicago? Or the other 6 major cities ahead of it, or 4 others that are right behind it? Why not have a fit about St Louis and Detroit having violent crime rates that are double that of Chicago?
I agree, Chicago needs to improve it's safety. But it is safer (far safer in many cases) than a lot of major US cities. The response seems to far outweigh the reality and I'm wondering why. Why no outrage about Las Vegas being more dangerous? Or Kansas City, Memphis, Houston, Philly, Atlanta, DC...
Can we apply this logic to the shitty small towns in Iowa that keep electing Rs to represent them yet keep losing population and jobs?
Really?
February 20, 2018
Violent crime in Chicago Loop up 97%, but Mayor Rahm cuts the number of cops there
Chicago is the canary in the coal mine for America's big cities as civil order slips away. The presumption that life can be lived without constant fear of violent predators is already gone in gang stronghold neighborhoods, where murder rates shock the nation and the world.
The combined force of the police and judiciary, hobbled by federal scrutiny of police tactics and a bail system so weak that it is informally known as "catch and release," is simply laughed at. Cook County jail is "out of control," and a gang leader enforced a reign of terror there. Only last week, Chicago's top cop admitted that criminals think the police and judiciary are "a joke."
Police powerlessness was convincingly demonstrated when police were unable to stop a thousand-strong gang party that disrupted a neighborhood for hours last summer. The angry and violent men enjoying success on their home turf are not content to leave alone the rest of the city, with richer pickings. The emboldened criminal class got the message: car-jackings are spreading into affluent neighborhoods.
And now, via CWB Chicago, the locally focused website that chronicles Chicago's worsening crime, comes the news that violent crime in Chicago's Loop has skyrocketed 97% over the past five years, while Mayor Rahm Emanuel has cut the number of cops patrolling it by almost 8%. Alderman Brian Hopkins told the Chicago Tribune about the results:
It involves things that have been happening in the Loop that were unthinkable not that long ago – open-air drug markets, armed violence, an offender wearing body armor and carrying a gun through the Loop to engage in drug sales. This is a real problem that's happening around us right now.
Despite the open-air drug markets, CWB Chicago reports:
...narcotics arrests in 2017 declined for the fifth consecutive year in the Loop. There were just 74 arrests for drugs compared to 214 five years before. But the Loop is not alone. Nearly every neighborhood we studied has seen sharp declines in drug-related arrests in recent years as society's attitudes toward cannabis evolve and cops pull back on conducting street stops.
Lawlessness unchallenged spreads:
So far, the development boom in Chicago's Loop and adjacent areas continues, drawing more residents and visitors to the area, where they are targets for criminals. CWB summarizes:
Despite all of the press releases and photo ops about new cops going to the streets. Despite Emanuel's repeated pledges to "put more cops on the beat." Despite the 97% increase in robberies and violent crime overall, the Loop has lost 26 officers on Emanuel's watch.
While the cop count is declining in the Loop, the number of 911 calls for police service is skyrocketing. In December alone, the 1st District received nearly 3,500 more calls for police service than in December 2014 – a 21% increase according to Chicago's Office of Emergency Management and Communications.
It seems that [the] mayor's equation for success in the Loop is to add tourists, add residents, add 911 calls, and subtract cops. That's not working.
Sooner or later, if this continues, people will flee. So far, all the shiny buildings and upscale eateries, bars, and recreation opportunities continue to draw prey. But when the tide turns, it could be brutal. In Detroit, weeds and trees grow in abandoned skyscrapers
Or the cities that keep allowing Chicago transfers to infiltrate and turn sections of their cities into shit holes. They keep electing D's to represent them and keep gaining "bad" population...
There are many small towns in Iowa who don't have Chicago transfers or whose problems have nothing to do with that. You missed the point ... as usual.
THat would be why I said "cities" and not small towns... but you missed that point, as usual.
You replied to my post about small towns and whether the same logic Bro D used can be applied to those small towns. If you want to talk about a different topic don't quote my post and try to blame me for missing the point.
learn how to use a message board or GTFO, Prime.
yes
the police have targeted the leadership of the south side gangs very aggressively leaving them leaderless.
I don't think I'm the one that needs to "Try again" - after all, I suggested we enforce the laws we have. Put people that commit crimes in jail for it. Don't let them go or let them out early. That would, by definition, keep them off the streets for a little while and it just might serve as a deterrent although I don't know for sure on that part.
I am sorry that I have expectations for everybody. That's a very unpopular view with the D's when it comes to minorities, I realize.
Start threads on those of you want. Sorry being such a partisan makes it difficult for you to understand what a national story it is when 70 people are shot in one weekend in Chicago. If 70 were shot in a mass shooting tomorrow anywhere in the country we'd have wall to wall coverage for weeks.
No problem with the enforcement approach, but a reactive-only approach won’t be enough. Chicago issues are so deeply entrenched that drastic, comprehensive, conscientious and committed approach is needed. This is why I suggest really digging in to understand Chicago’s history.
Ok, I appreciate that view, and I can at least see where you're coming from. I'm very unlikely to spend any of my time researching this, to be honest. Especially when I find much of the "foundation" to be based on an excuse / victim mentality. Let me be clear - there are many cases of racial or ethnic groups that were or are in bad situations (Irish immigrants, Asian immigrants, Italian immigrants, Hispanic immigrants) and many have figured out how to make it work. In America right now, the black man has more opportunity than ever before - preference for jobs in many companies, preference for admittance into many colleges, and a society in general that wants to see him succeed. It is up to him to do the right things - "him" being a general term for the whole culture.
^^ like reading from a script. Thanks Rush, I mean, pepperman.
So if you’re not going to research the problem, maybe don’t opine on solution(s).
Ok, well, I at least try to understand where you're coming from. This is probably the 5th time in a row that you insist you're right and nobody else can have a differing opinion. I can therefore say I'm not the problem here.
Cheers!
This isn't what Rudolph said at all. You are literally reading too much into his posts.
FTR, I agree with you on some parts. However, many R's think this is a simple issue. What many dems are trying to tell you is that it's not.
And you'd send thoughts and prayers...
And the last mass shooting only was kept in the news cycle for weeks because the victims refused to let the story drop, despite all attempts by the right to get them to shut up. Was is 70 shootings in Chicago such a major issue to Pubbers, but 500 in one night in Las Vegas is nothing but a thing?
I think I went above and beyond to explain my views. I also said I could understand where the opposing viewpoint was coming from.
For that, I was called a name and told I was reading from a script.
I'll let you choose who has the more open mind. But I really don't care.
Try? Admitting you have no interest in researching the issue(s) is trying? And please link to any instance where I insist that I am right? Good lord, man.
Chicago…
All kinds of factors. Redlining (still occurring though a little more nuanced than before). Disinvestment. On and on. Plenty of good reading easily accessible on this. This is not to promote "victim mentality"—this is simple fact.
Generational poverty has all kinds of ramifications, especially in an urban environment in which "alternatives" to "escape" poverty are often directly linked to drug sales, gangs, etc. Generational poverty exerts stresses on a community that make this idea of "anyone can overcome" pie-in-the-sky platitudinal puffery at best.
Let me describe it this way. Coal country. Disinvested. Victim of some made-up "clean energy cabal" or whatever. Victim mentality? Yeah, maybe a little. Globalization and politics left these communities behind. There was never a plan for what these communities should be prepared to do once coal became no longer a viable, sustainable economic foundation. We've seen the resulting issues in the first generation of this poverty of economy and opportunity. And they are made the victim, Cons the savior, and we have Trump as a result. Hillary tried to communicate an actual proactive plan to convert these communities towards a new economy—offered possible solutions toward creating new opportunities and fixing the poverty, alas one sound byte removed from context and that was that. But I digress. Point being, all of the drug abuse, depression, anxiety, etc faced by "generation one" of coal country's issues we all understand, they're "hard working folks" so the sympathy and earnestness towards throwing them a life line is immediate and shared by most.
Now multiply the issues faced by coal country by many, many generations, add in systematic and institutional discrimination—still—and mix in the very-healthy drug trade extant in urban areas, mix in disinvestment in everything from freaking sidewalks to schools to goddam fresh food—over multiple generations—then flood these hyper-stressed neighborhoods with guns… duh, not gonna be good.
I have explained several times now that I coach an all-black high school team. My alma mater. When I went to school there it was roughly a 50/50 black-to-white student population. I was the only white guy on the basketball team three out of four years. Now the ratio is more like 75/25 black & brown to white. White flight in one generation. Disinvestment is strikingly obvious. Much, much more poverty. I've had many players ask me regularly after practice if I could get them some Subway or McDonalds as they were fairly sure there would be little to nothing to eat at home. I can't imagine what that must be like, to have that stress as a kid who, supposedly, has "every opportunity" as you say. Finish my homework? Dude I'm starving. Pay attention in class? Teacher I watched my mom go hungry this morning so I can eat. Concentrate in practice? Coach, I have to get home to my little sister because mom works third shift now. I've had one kid I coached shot and killed a few months ago. Another kid a year before that shoot somebody, serving 70 to life now. The family and friends of these kids? Just another layer of stress, another wound making "opportunity" beyond whatever the neighborhood offers a myth. These kids live in neighborhoods with no grocery stores. They pass by boarded-up schools, homes virtually destroyed by property owners who don't give a damn. They're surrounded by so many messages that this world is just not for them.
And here's the deal: the gangs and drug market and all that? Who the fvck am I to tell them to stay away from this? If I've been hungry and wearing the same shit for who-knows-how-long and I can make $50 one day, then in a week after some "training" 10x that? Sign me up. If I'm a Foster kid for whom family is some dick telling me I ain't shit, clean this, do that, I'm just a source of income, and some gang or dude on the block "takes me in" and treats me better, gives me an "opportunity" to make some money? Yep, I'm sure I would be ripe as fvck for that, too.
And then here's the deal of that deal: the very same things we condemn the gang banger for doing—protecting turf, maximizing profit, exploring new markets—we either shrug our shoulders and/or praise with a wink those at the top doing the same shit, often with very dubious ethics, morality, and even legality. It's just a matter of scale. We fight real wars, financed by taxpayers, fought to a great extent by poor people for whom military is the only real "opportunity", to defend economic turf, market turf, resources turf the same damn way some drug outfit does in the streets of Chicago. We're sold this bullshit that we're fighting to spread or defend some ideal of democracy. Yeah, rrriiiiiigggghhht. While on some level this might be a tiny bit true, a more democratic wherever is fought for because we will stand to benefit in some form or another economically. Never mind that so much of our constant warmongering is now, more than ever, to the benefit of private companies. Ugh.
Going back to the silliness of your previous post, Pepperman, I haven't insisted I was right about anything. Hell, I haven't even offered any solutions. All I did was suggest ignorance—ignorance does not mean stupidity—and I was right. Given you care not to research, and appear to not really be versed in the history of Chicago as it relates to these issues, I think it's fair to say you are, in fact, ignorant on the subject. I'm ignorant on my own array of subjects, baseball being one that immediately comes to mind.
Anyways man I hold no disrespect but I do get frustrated hearing parroted bullshit from right wing (or left wing) sources. They're ever-more remarkably obvious. It bothers me as a citizen that we, as citizens, are able to think more critically about the nuances of our favorite football team's offensive strategy than we can about very real issues in this country and world. We suspend critical thinking in favor of whatever feels self-confirming. Talk about snowflakey. We project like it's our new oxygen.
But I digress. The problems in Chicago are so understandable when you look closely at the history of the city. And once the problems are understood, real solutions emerge. But the solutions are often not palatable for people, because often it means investment in a community in which the people don't look like you, don't talk like you, don't have the same taste in fashion, music, culture. And investment means both money and human capital. The human capital is already there doing whatever they can with very little resources. The money? Nobody wants to share shit these days. We've become selfish to the bone. This selfishness is just another form of defending turf, so it always surprises me when people are surprised when some 17 year-old kid shoots or gets shot. Turf.
You want this violence to be eradicated? Invest. Go in and get to know these neighborhoods, the families, broken or not. Spend some time in the neighborhood, in its school. Spend some time with those who are doing good, and those doing bad. One week and I can virtually guarantee you that your perspective will be forever changed. These are just human fvcking beings trying to figure it out, just like you and me, except not like you and me. It's a daily, sometimes hourly struggle for many, many people. Opportunity—the kind you want to believe is there for everybody—is a myth when nobody will loan you shit, no bank, when schools are under-resourced, when you're dealing with something as fundamental as hunger, or yet another family member becomes yet another victim of a dangerous micro-economy.
Trump is denied access to money because banks no longer trust him, he resorts to—as we'll find out with crystal clarity—illegal activity such as money laundering and who knows what else. I think we'll find out what many NYers have thought from the beginning—dude is selling out his own damn country to cover his debts, to get his family back into the black, to sustain their absurd lifestyle. The idea that this man gives two fvcks about the below average, average, hell, above average American is just unbelievable. I digress. Trump goes illegal to sustain, okay, shrug, whatever, greed gonna greed. Some kid on the block who needs money just the same chooses the quick and easy, he's a thug, a punk, a drain on society (never mind there are myriad private enterprises ready to profit from this kid's "missteps").
I apologize for the ramble, sort of. I type fast. I've lived a life I'm increasingly realizing is very unique, offering unique insights. Notice that unique does not mean better, smarter, whatever. Just unique with unique opportunities for perspective.
Peace.
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My first visit to Chicago occurred in Summer 1968 with some buddies to watch the Cubs - the Latin Kings were battling the Vice Lords openly on the streets. There wasn't a cop in sight. Both gangs effortlessly collected $5 from me to protect my car while I went to a day game at Wrigley, When I came out after the game I was relieved to see my car was still intact....but before I could get pulled out into traffic two other guys from yet another gang who I think were the Gangster Disciples collect a $5 toll from me for parking on their street...just before I could get going a guy with a garden rake(sawed off handle) sunk it into the skull of the same guy I had just paid and he screamed directly at me "The Latin Kings rule the Northside"...I just nodded and drove back to the cornfields of Iowa with stopping even once.
Rudolph, I read your whole post and I think you raise some valid points, but here's a few things you don't seem to want to talk about that matter greatly:
1) A culture where education is simply not valued - the opportunity is there for whoever wants to embrace it and actually try. Does this take effort? Yes.
2) A culture where women are not respected - but yet they are expected to be the "caretakers" of the youth. The culture has to fix itself in this way and needs true role models who speak out about this and encourage young men to make more responsible choices. Does this take effort? Yes.
3) Gangs - as I stated much earlier in this thread, society might have to be more reactive to this in the near-term, but if the above two points received the effort they deserve, the gang culture would lose a lot of potential members. Both because more would be stuck in jail and because more educated parents would steer their children away from that life.
The above has nothing at all to do with geographic location. Your insistence that I must learn the history of Chicago's problems is where I say "no, I don't" because the above are absolutely true and apply to more than simply the inner city of Chicago.
1) A culture where education is simply not valued - the opportunity is there for whoever wants to embrace it and actually try. Does this take effort? Yes.
2) A culture where women are not respected - but yet they are expected to be the "caretakers" of the youth. The culture has to fix itself in this way and needs true role models who speak out about this and encourage young men to make more responsible choices. Does this take effort? Yes.
3) Gangs - as I stated much earlier in this thread, society might have to be more reactive to this in the near-term, but if the above two points received the effort they deserve, the gang culture would lose a lot of potential members. Both because more would be stuck in jail and because more educated parents would steer their children away from that life.
The above has nothing at all to do with geographic location. Your insistence that I must learn the history of Chicago's problems is where I say "no, I don't" because the above are absolutely true and apply to more than simply the inner city of Chicago.
Sooo now you're going to sink to regurgitating stupid talking points... that's useful.
All three are valid. But to suggest these cultural factors are unique to certain communities such as Chicago's is a bit unfair. And Chicago's history is unrelated to geography—it just so happens that Chicago's history uniquely predisposes itself to the issues it faces today, which is why it is important and relevant. It's as though you're looking for an excuse or an out, while accusing me (projecting) of doing the same.
We're not enemies, not in opposition. I address your initial post in such a way to provoke this discussion, and we're discussing which is nice, but there is always a defensive reaction coming from you, and then an attack on me that reeks of projection. Your last paragraph above—did I insist you do anything? I am merely opining that Chicago's history is relevant, relevant towards understanding the problem and possible solutions, and I don't see why this would even be an argument. Chicago's unique circumstances over many decades does not necessarily eliminate or dismiss these cultural issues you offer.
Look, man, you're not going to educate me on issues facing poor, and more specifically poor black communities, and enter cultural factors into the discussion without recognizing how institutional and systemic factors exacerbate cultural "failings". These "failings" you list are common to all people, all communities who face generational poverty, discrimination, disinvestment, etc. Now, is it partly up to the community itself to recognize how it allows environmental/circumstantial forces to effect itself, and intervene? Absolutely. But there are "little" things that make a tremendous impact—things you don't really understand without having lived it. Pretty much every block has a kid or two with a real chance of overcoming all the odds stacked against him or her in these communities of poverty/disinvestment/discrimination. Often, that kid with the real chance loses that chance because with so many of these kids it just takes one more hit—that straw that broke the camel's back—and things spiral bad real quick. Again, it's a matter of stress. So much stress on these kids, these families—some of it, as you are likely thinking, self-inflicted to be sure, some of the self-inflicted stress is a result of poor decisions borne out of stress factors.
And then there is the fact that some of this cultural stuff exists in communities of advantage.
Start with valuing education: Difference is, a family that doesn't value education, but has money, is relatively not stressed about eating on a daily basis, on rent being due versus the lights being on, and so on—their kids will still manage okay, will graduate high school, have some college available to them, manage to get through, work in sales, make a nice living, cycle repeats. The inverse of that situation is equally true, and requires serious intervention—both within communities and also as it relates to policy and environmental factors affecting communities of disadvantage.
Respecting women: The way women are treated here in HROT says everything. Trump is a fvcking embarrassment. But he's rich (sort of) and white. His paternal "culture" would rival the worst dude on the block. And Trump is hardly an anomaly. Men treat women like disposable objects everywhere and on all points of the socio-economic spectrum. The shit in the rap lyrics is no different than the talk heard in locker rooms and at card tables at the country club.
Gangs: Jail all you want. You'll simply have more fatherless children, children who then fill the empty spots vacated by their jailed fathers. To change the power and appeal of gangs, real, legit counter-alternatives need to be just as apparent, real, available, and proportionate. Meaning, gangs are able to pay good $$. If they didn't, nobody would take on the associated risks. Somehow the counter-alternative needs to be commensurate, both short- and long-term. This is why the preternaturally talented basketball player or whatever who gets cash, like, as early as 6th or 7th grade, avoids the gangs—because he's getting paid and thus doesn't need the gang. Hell, sometimes it's an OG in the gang paying the kid because the OG wants someone from the block to get out.
Anyways, your thoughts are proactive but I think a little naive in the sense that you're attributing things to certain communities as some sort of avoidance of how environmental factors exacerbate cultural "weaknesses" arguably inherent in all of us under stressful circumstances. It's like saying certain communities would be healthier, have less diabetes or whatever, if they just ate better, without any willingness to acknowledge that food deserts are a factor.
