The Violence Project

And they say hip hop can’t be positive. Here’s a little something from Chicago-area artist Kidd Russell.

Kidd Russell “Dear Shooter” from Courtney Harris & Eric Almond on Vimeo

Chicago Defender

By now, most of you have read about Mya Lyons, a 9-year-old girl found stabbed to death Monday night. There is no need rehashing the tragic details of her death. When I first heard about it, I felt a bit of deja vu, recalling the murder of 11-year-old Ryan Harris, whose death will be approaching its 10-year anniversary in August.

It is moments like these that the issue of youth violence shows itself to be more than the back and forth we have seen play out in the press this past year. There’s no fight over guns and gun-control in the death of Mya Lyons. There’s no fight over gangs. There’s no fight over after-school programs or jobs in the community. What we have here is something so brutal that it’s unanswerable. And you know what? That’s alright. Everything doesn’t have an easy answer, or what we personally think is an easy answer. Sometimes things are so complex and a shock to our system that all we can do is think. Maybe a little more thinking is a good thing for us, because we have a lot to think about in our communities. The death of this little girl is more than a problem that can be fixed with simple legislation or protest.

This is what is missed in the debate we have about guns and external problems in relation to youths who die by gun violence. Guns are only one component of the problem. Chicago has had a gun ban for more than 25 years. How far has that gotten us to stopping the violence if we see a march or rally to stop it almost every weekend?

Numbers of murders (homicides) in Chicago per year:

• 1990: 851
• 1991: 927
• 1992: 943
• 1993: 931
• 1994: 929
• 1995: 827
• 1996: 789
• 1997: 759
• 1998: 704
• 1999: 641
• 2000: 628
• 2001: 666
• 2002: 647
• 2003: 598
• 2004: 448
• 2005: 449
• 2006: 467
• 2007: 435

That is not to say there is a need for some type of gun control, but we can’t ignore the bigger picture in this story. What is that bigger picture? I don’t know, honestly. I’m still trying to figure that out. I have to admit that sometimes I wonder if it is a battle worth fighting. I’m sure some of you feel the same way at one point or another. A little voice says, “Something will happen whether or not I do anything. So, what’s the point?” But another voice soon follows, rebutting, “If not you, who?” So for those who nonetheless feel outrage or a sinking feeling over this senseless tragedy, remember you are not alone. Remember these words from the poet Aeschylus:

“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Thanks, Human Goods, for the heads up on this story.

The July/August edition of The Atlantic takes a look the recent rise in violence across the country, focusing on the movement of crime in Memphis, Tennessee. In less than 10 years, Memphis has seen a rise in crime in areas long deemed “safe” or upwardly mobile. Experts pointed to the closing of public housing complexes and migration of its residents as a possible factor, since crime in the areas that housed the complexes has declined.

Lately, though, a new and unexpected pattern has emerged, taking criminologists by surprise. While crime rates in large cities stayed flat, homicide rates in many midsize cities (with populations of between 500,000 and 1 million) began increasing, sometimes by as much as 20percent a year. In 2006, the Police Executive Research Forum, a national police group surveying cities from coast to coast, concluded in a report called “A Gathering Storm” that this might represent “the front end … of an epidemic of violence not seen for years.” The leaders of the group, which is made up of police chiefs and sheriffs, theorized about what might be spurring the latest crime wave: the spread of gangs, the masses of offenders coming out of prison, methamphetamines. But mostly they puzzled over the bleak new landscape. According to FBI data, America’s most dangerous spots are now places where Martin Scorsese would never think of staging a shoot-out—Florence, South Carolina; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Reading, Pennsylvania; Orlando, Florida; Memphis, Tennessee.

Memphis has always been associated with some amount of violence. But why has Elvis’s hometown turned into America’s new South Bronx? Barnes thinks he knows one big part of the answer, as does the city’s chief of police. A handful of local criminologists and social scientists think they can explain it, too. But it’s a dismal answer, one that city leaders have made clear they don’t want to hear. It’s an answer that offers up racial stereotypes to fearful whites in a city trying to move beyond racial tensions. Ultimately, it reaches beyond crime and implicates one of the most ambitious antipoverty programs of recent decades.

If this issue seems familiar to Chicagoans, it should. This has been a source of debate as Chicago public housing buildings are being torn down and its residents sent to neighborhoods just as violent or more violent than the ones they left behind. Medill colleague Erin Halasz recently wrote about this very issue, finding that the decline in murders this past decade has skipped a number of Chicago neighborhoods, or moved to neighborhoods that did not see such violence in the past. The following chart examines homicides in the Grand Boulevard neighborhood (which housed the notorious Robert Taylor homes) and Greater Grand Crossing and Washington Park, just two miles south of Grand Boulevard.

Erin Halasz/Medill

The next question in this murder mystery is how much of this violence has moved farther into the suburbs surrounding Chicago. While homicide numbers for the city of Chicago are easy to find, I’ve had a harder time finding something on homicides in the Chicago metropolitan area. If anybody has any leads on this, feel free to write. If not, investigation time it shall be.

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

3 teens injured in shootings

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.

While much attention was paid to Barack Obama passing the magic number of delegates for the Democratic nomination for president, another not-so-magic number was passed in Chicago: 24 to 25.   That is, sadly, another Chicago Public School student who was killed this school year.  You might have missed this story because it didn’t involve gangs or some brazen shootout.  It was an accident.

19-year-old Keenan Reno was shot and killed when a gun his friend was playing with accidentally fired.  The friend, 16, is in custody, and his identity has not been revealed because of his age.  Unfortunately Reno’s death has not warranted any of the outcries or press conferences we have come to expect from our leaders and officials.  Why?  I thought one of problems they thought was at heart was the proliferation of guns in our communities.  Why aren’t we asking ourselves where and how a 16 year old got a gun?  Could it be that a story such as this is just a blurb on their and the media’s radar screens — a story not juicy enough to hide behind in order to prop whatever legislation or agenda they might have to Springfield or D.C.?

Left after the headlines is a family who will have to live through the nightmare of burying a child and another family who will live through the nightmare of possibly having their child behind bars, not to mention forgotten like all of the teens who end up behind the trigger of a gun.

While Keenan’s teachers are left to console a room full of classmates and friends, students at Dixon Elementary will have to look elsewhere.

On the same weekend Keenan Reno was killed, Dixon teacher Erika Prince was shot and killed while sitting in her car — the victim of mistaken identity.  Although I did not know Erika Prince, I feel a small loss.  For a brief time I was junior high student at Dixon, and for five years I lived less than two blocks away on 82nd and Eberhart on Chicago’s South Side.  I don’t have many memories of my brief time there as a student, but I can recall the countless days seeing children, fresh out of school, either walking up and down our block or along 83rd Street.  It’s a good school that has produced many students who have completed college and found success in various careers.  Like many schools that go unnoticed, it is the epitome of a neighborhood school.

People care about it.  People have a stake in it.  People like Erika Prince, who taught special ed students and was a devoted mother to her children.  A couple of weeks ago, the Chicago Tribune ran a story on the difficult task teachers face when having to console students when one of their classmates is killed by violence.  In the case of Erika Prince, we have to ask ourselves, who will console the students when, sadly, their teacher cannot?

The week of tragedy extended itself into the west suburbs with the murder of 17-year-old Tawanna Ford, the innocent of a shooting caused by an exchange of words between her boyfriend and others.  From those interviewed, Tawanna sounded like any normal teenager: shy, good personality, hard-working, goals in life.  Her principal described her as the type student a school would want more of, instead of just a few.

But like Keenan Reno, Tawanna doesn’t get a front page, a press conference or a march to Springfield or D.C.  If we are to seriously address violence and our youth, we cannot pick and choose these deaths like fashion or houses, making one important because of the way one died, or making one less important because they happen to live in the wrong zip code or wasn’t a CPS student.  Every life is precious, and every death is a tragedy.

What are we going to do?

In this long, long soap opera that is the 2008 presidential election, we’ve yet to see a serious debate on education and curbing youth violence in communities not just in Chicago but across the country.  Nominees John McCain and Barack Obama are interested in doing a series of townhalls or  Lincoln/Douglas-style debates.  If they actually go through with it, I invite them to come to Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Newark, New Orleans, or countless other cities and have a townhall about how we can come together to help our youth.

Is that a pipe dream?  Maybe.  But I thought 2008 was about change.

The death of 15-year-old Shakelia Taylor this past Monday is another sad reminder of the problems with violence that have recently been lately gaining more attention. Taylor was a former Chicago Public Student, who had been enrolled in school in Indiana. Although her death doesn’t add to the headline of “another CPS student “killed,” it is no less important or tragic.

Equally tragic was the murder of 17-year-old Amar Aslam in England. Aslam was beaten to death in a park in West Yorkshire. It is unknown whether his death was gang related, but gang violence has been a growing problem in parts of England, some attributing it to racial tensions.

It is interesting to compare the racial element in gang violence here and in a country like England. Whereas race seems to be at the center of the gang violence in England, gang violence in the U.S. is examined by the racial makeup of the gang members and victims. For example, all of the CPS students killed by gun violence this school year were black or latino. Out of that, all but one were male. Local-area groups like CeaseFire recognize this element; the make up of their staff and outreach workers is predominately male. But this shouldn’t overlook the problem of violence and teen girls. What problem is that? More to follow…

A public service announcement from The Violence Project

Runtime: 01:17

Francis Oduro (Chicago Tribune)

A native of Ghana, Francis Oduro came to America 18 months ago to study engineering. Sadly, instead of following in his father’s footsteps, he became another victim of gun violence that has taken too many lives this year.

Oduro was shot and killed Wednesday, one block from Truman College where he had been attending for the past year. Police believe another man, who was shot at the scene, was the intended victim, calling the shooting gang related.

His parents said that Oduro wanted to find a city less violent than Chicago after finishing school. Unfortunately, he won’t get that chance. More unfortunate, one less person is gone who might have decided to stay here and help make things at least a little better in their community. The Violence Project’s thoughts and prayers go out to the Oduro family.

This week marks a week since the murder of student Marcus Greer. Why is this notable? Because that means a CPS student has died in a month. This has been something left out of the wall-to-wall coverage the rise in violence has been receiving lately. Although it is a small accomplishment, it is one worth noting. It will be small victories like this that lead us on the way to taking back communities and bringing about real change.

On that note, I wanted to spotlight more positive acts local teens doing. Joshua Pollock recently wrote about John Hope High School senior LaTreal Peterson. Peterson was recently a recognized as a Gates Millenium Scholar and plans to attend the University of Wisconsin Madison in the fall to study business. He sees providing more opportunities for young people in their schools and communities as a way of curbing violence.

Full Article

ABC 7 Chicago will host a special program entitled Stop the Violence: Conflicts & Resolution. The program is the third effort put together by the station that focuses on the violence plaguing too many young people in Chicago. I’m crossing my fingers that channel 7 does a better a job than the CBS2/WBBM violence special that left out the youth voice in its debate.

Stop the Violence will air tomorrow, May 22, at 6:30 p.m., with an encore presentation on Saturday, May 24, at 2:00 p.m.