Chicago youth violence: An indictment of the US Democratic Party
By Alexander Fangmann and Jerry White
6 June 2008
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In recent months there has been a string of violence, mostly gang-related, which has claimed the lives of dozens of youth in Chicago, Illinois. In a single weekend in April, 36 people were shot, and nine died of their injuries. Since last September, 24 Chicago public school students have been killed in such shootings.
The victims of these tragedies have been working class and minority youth, including many who were innocent bystanders.
Last March, for example, Chavez Clarke became the 20th Chicago public school student killed up to that point. Chavez was 18 years old and a student at the Simeon Career Academy. He had hoped either to attend an apprentice school for drafting and architecture or train as a truck driver. He was caught in gang crossfire as he walked down the street with his twin brother, Travez. Two students from Dunbar Career Academy, aged 17 and 19, were ultimately charged by police in Chavezâs murder.
Another youth, 16-year-old John Mendoza, was found bludgeoned to death in an alley. Although his family insisted he wasnât in a gangâand had recently changed schools to avoid gang conflictâtwo funeral homes, fearing retaliation, refused to provide arrangements suitable for the family. Another would only hold an abbreviated morning wake if an additional charge of $2,000 for security was paid. Only after Jose Mendoza, the boyâs father, contacted a friend in the funeral business was the family able to arrange a service.
The tragic loss of these young people has provoked shock and anger. Families who have lost loved ones have made sincere appeals to end the violence, while others have volunteered to escort children to school.
The political establishment in the city, however, has been unable to offer any serious solution. Instead, its only answer has been greater law-and-order repression including proposalsâbacked by Mayor Richard Daleyâto arm the entire 13,500-strong Chicago Police Department with military-style assault weapons.
At a City Hall news conference, Police Department Superintendent Jody Weis proposed flooding south and west side neighborhoods known for gang activity with SWAT and Targeted Response Units in full battle dress, with aerial support from police helicopters.
The local media have already dubbed such a show of force as a âsurge,â in reference to the troop surge in Iraq.
Chicago is not the only city in which the methods of the Iraq war are being brought home. In Washington, DC, police chief Cathy Lanier announced Wednesday that in order to stop violent crime and drugs a checkpoint would be set up in the cityâs Trinidad neighborhood to stop cars, check identifications and exclude people the police decided did not have a âlegitimate purposeâ in the area. âWelcome to Baghdad, DC,â the local head of the American Civil Liberties Union said of the so-called âNeighborhood Safety Zoneâ plan.
The conditions for implementing such antidemocratic measures in Chicago have been prepared by sensationalist media coverage. Nowhere, however, can one find any serious discussion in the media or the political establishment of the social roots of the problem.
In an oblique reference to the desperate conditions confronting the youth involved in such violence, Mayor Daley, said, âWhen the killing is done, you still donât have a job, in fact, it greatly decreases the chances that you ever ... will have a job.â
Needless to say, the mayor offered nothing to alleviate such conditions. This summer the city is only offering 18,000 summer jobs to the hundreds of thousands who will be searching for one. Last summer teen unemployment reached 34.5 percent, the worst on record since World War II, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. The situation will be worse this summer, the center says.
Youth violence cannot be separated from the miserable prospects young people face in Americaâs third largest city, and the unprecedented social polarization that has taken place there.
Like Detroit and other Midwest ârustbeltâ cities, Chicago has been decimated by decades of deindustrialization, losing hundreds of thousands of steel, trucking, railroad, meatpacking and other relatively decent-paying jobs since 1979. From 2000 to 2005 alone, the region lost 22.2 percent of its manufacturing jobs. The official jobless rate, which grossly underestimates the real situation, rose to 5.4 percent in April, up from 4.7 percent last year.
Nearly 600,000 peopleâor one out of every six residentsâlive in poverty. The poverty rate for children is one out of three. Most poor residents live in extreme poverty, according to the Heartland Alliance, with an annual income less than half the governmentâs official poverty line.
