CHICAGO, June 27, 2012 – It’s official: With more than 240 dead,
Answers that usually involve blaming dead white guys or ones that are still kicking.
But is politically correct silliness really what
Or do Chicagoans really need an unvarnished reality check from their public officials?
If it is the later,
Recently, Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy joined black political leaders and community activists in a live radio forum, hosted by Clear Channel-owned WGCI-FM, to discuss
However, when it comes to the causes of violence in
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s newly minted police chief has become a quick study to the "
The
When asked about the “gap” between law enforcement and the black community, McCarthy reached back 400 years for an answer.
“It’s a big issue. It’s a long time coming. We’ve done a lot of things wrong in policing in this country. I’m willing to admit that,” said McCarthy. “But this goes back 200-300 years to the time when Pilgrims came here and things developed from that, the African American experience in this country.”
But the Pilgrims weren’t the only people being blamed for the violence. The superintendent also laid blame at the feet of
“Who has been the people enforcing those laws that were problematic for the African American community all these years? And that’s to me where it all starts,” stated McCarthy. “It starts with the recognition of how we got here and figuring out how we are going to move forward. By first confronting the issue. Recognition is the first step towards reconciliation. So that’s what I bring to the table. It’s one of those things that a lot of police chiefs in this country are afraid to talk about. I’m not afraid to talk about it because it’s out there and we’ve got to address it.”
Then WVON host Warren Valentine chimed in, blaming the Jim Crow era.
“It takes a village to raise a child and I’m not giving the parents a pass. But we can’t just say this is all on the parents and it ain’t all on nobody else. The legal system is the new Jim Crow system in
The radio host also blamed vagrancy laws enacted during U.S. Reconstruction and the current war on drugs, a war he believes unfairly targets the African American community.
“What they did during the vagrancy time [Reconstruction] is, they locked them [Black Americans] up and rented them out to corporations and cheap labor. That is exactly what is going on today.”
“If you want to stop violence, it’s easy. You get economic empowerment into these poverty-stricken communities, give these young people a chance to work, give them jobs. Number two. The war on drugs? We need to end the war on drugs because it is the war on us. They’re locking these kids up ridiculously,” continued Valentine.
A representative for Operation Push agreed that economic empowerment is part of the solution.
“We have got to replace the level of poverty in certain neighborhoods with some reinvestment. You cannot keep saying it is just these bad kids. These are bad communities because they have no infrastructure to change the behavior. You’ve got to have some jobs. Jobs in, guns out,” said the spokeswoman.
But for decades, vast sums of money have been poured into poor communities on
Where has the money gone?
Local organizations and state-run entities have received millions of dollars in federal and state grants and aid to help their local communities. Yet no infrastructure has been built. There are no jobs or opportunities.
There is only violence and death.
Like many things in
Back in 1967, gangster Jeff Fort formed the Grassroots Independent Voters of Illinois and received a $1 million federal grant, private grants, and loans to teach job skills to gang members. He was the head of the Blackstone Rangers gang and formed a coalition of 21 gangs with 5,000 members on
By 1968, the gang, which changed its name to Black P Stone Nation, engaged in robberies, extortion, and forced recruitment. Eventually, the Feds launched an investigation into Fort’s “jobs program.” He was sentenced to five years in prison for misusing federal funds.
Fort would later form the
Now the city officials are poised to try this routine again.
This week, the city of
Chicago Police have long been suspicious of the organization.
By the end of the two-hour radio forum, it was the callers – not the "experts" - that plead for a return to family values. They weren’t blaming Jim Crow or Reconstruction. They weren’t engaging in the same politically correct gibberish.
Many more blamed parents and single-family households for the disintegration of personal responsibility.
V103 radio host Ramonski Luv called out to the live audience, “Parents, do you know where your children are?”
Well,
Maybe the Pilgrims or the El Rukns would know.
Conservative commentator and satirist William J. Kelly is also a contributor to Breitbart.com and edits the Tea Party Reports for the
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