I live here and have for the majority of my life. I grew up in the 90's when it was the wild west. Chicago has always been violent back to the Al Capone days. The problem has many layers. The gangs are different. The gang leaders are all in jail and there is no structure. So instead of it being the GD's or VL's there is fractions like the Go get boys, L town gang (I made those up for examples) now these gangs are groups of young men who are all the same age. Who is the leader? They all are. No one has to give them a green light to shoot/kill someone. They don't have to ask the leader or an OG for a gun because they have them already. They smoke drugs and drink lean all day and they are afraid of no one cause they are too high to realize that they should be.
Then you have elected leaders who ignore the violence. Let the crime that is happening on the south and west sides spill onto the north side of the city. Every black person walking down the street in those neighborhoods will be harassed and arrested. The police dont police. They show up after a crime and leave when they are done. They wait on people to step forward or try to convince people to trust them. These are the same cops who will randomly pull up, harass you, beat you, berate you and then get back in the car and speed off to the next group of young men and repeat the cycle.
There is literally nothing for them to do. There are no programs for them to attend and the neighborhood see no investment. They are treated like their lives dont matter by everyone who should show them it does. Their fathers are in jail and their mothers can not control them in most cases. They can not afford to move and even if you are getting some type of assistance (ie Section 8) you can only use it in areas that are crime ridden.
The tore the projects down all over the city which displaced a bunch of people and pushed them into neighborhoods with people they dont get along with. The city is going through gentrification and the neighborhood which were predominately black are now white and those black people are also pushed into the same neighborhoods as the people who were just displaced from them tearing down the projects. Getting a gun is easy and shooting someone is easy because they have smoked all of the common sense away.
I went and spoke to my alderman about a few issues last month. The answers that he provided me sounds like something you would say to someone with no education. Where is the invest in black neighborhoods? We are working on that. Why did they pour new concrete for basketball courts but didnt put up the rims? They ran out of money. I was amazed. Try going to the community meetings with police and local officials...answers are pretty much the same. No one cares which in turn makes the people in the community feel hopeless. One of the guys from my old neighborhood started a gofundme for the basketball rims and the park and even got Mountain Dew to come in and sponsor a tournament. He did this, on his own. No assistance from any officials and not one incident of violence occurred. There are so many layers.
because they knew they would become Swiss cheese. So they spread rumors to black gangs to instigate beef and on top of that they well killed Fred Hampton like a thief in the night. Man had Fred Hampton was sucessfull makes you think how things would have been different.
