No Fun In The Summertime
CeaseFire
Where to begin? Today marks one month since the last day of school for Chicago Public School students. The last week of school saw thousands of students go to Soldier Field to hold a rally, speaking out on the gun violence that has taken too many young lives. But with one step forward of people coming together, the unity was dealt a step back when, the night before the rally, 15-year-old Ignacio Montano was shot and killed. Montano had been a student at Kelvyn Park High School.
Since that week, Chicago has seen a chilling rise in shootings that some feared might come with the warmer weather, but didn’t say publically because they already used that excuse when 37 people were shot during one weekend in April. In one month:
Violence across city leaves two teens dead, one hurt
1 killed, 1 injured in Lawndale shooting
5 people shot in front of Bellwood home
Teen shot in basement of South Side church
2 children wounded by gunfire on far South Side
Boy shot in Austin neighborhood dies of wounds
Boy, 15, wounded in drive-by shooting on Chicago’s South Side
That sampling only goes back to June 30. Just last night two more teens — 15-year-old Juan Aguilero and 17-year-old Marlow Jones — were shot and killed in separate incidents on the South Side. All that can come to mind is a lyric from an old U2 song that asks, “How long must we sing this song?”
This rash of violence comes on the heels of a report released by the Children’s Defense Fund that says 3,006 children and teens died from gun violence in 2005, the first increase since 1994. According to its press release, the eight children and teens killed by gun violence each day is the equivalent of one Northern Illinois University shooting every 15 hours and one Virginia Tech shooting every four days.
Maybe if all of these shootings happened downtown, like the one at this year’s Taste of Chicago, we might have a little more action beyond preaching to the choir about what needs to be done. Even Chicago’s own presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, offered his take on the recent violence at a June 25 press conference.
“We have to put more cops on the street. We have to trace guns that have been used. We have to have improved schools, after-school programs, and summer school programs,” Obama said. “Those are things government can do. Parents have to do their jobs. Fathers have to be home and be apart of their children’s lives”
Not quite breaking news. We have heard this remedy in one variation or another from countless officials, but with little action to back it up. It almost sounded like a repeat of his Father’s Day speech on the responsibility of fathers. Maybe it’s time we started giving speeches to those we elect on the responsibilities of being a leader.
July 14th, 2008 at 6:41 am
I sympathize with the problem of violence in your community, but it begs the question: how’s that strict gun control thing working out for you there in Chicagoland?
It’s never going to end until the culture involved in most of the violence addresses their own issues and faces their own problems. Until that happens, all the gun bans and restrictions in the world won’t help.
Chicago doesn’t have a gun problem…Chicago has a culture problem.