Chicago Community Activists Ask Obama’s Help to Stop Killings of School Age Children

Doug Belkin’s WSJ article Chicago Student Killings Spark Appeals to Obama discussed the need for the President to take action regarding gang violence:

Chicago Community activists here are calling on President Barack Obama to address inner-city violence after a sharp increase in the number of killings of school-age children.

Total homicides in Chicago are down but with three weeks before the summer vacation, the city has tallied 37 killings of public-school children since fall, compared with 21 homicides during the 2007-08 school year. By contrast, 23 students have been killed this school year in Los Angeles, which enrolls nearly twice as many children in public schools. Most of the Chicago victims were black and Latino students who lived on the city’s south and west sides. None were killed in school.

Mark Allen, who helped teach Mr. Obama how to organize communities 20 years ago, is joining other activists in calling on the president to show the same passion he brought to the issue as a young man.

“He’s not the same Barack,” said Mr. Allen, a 47-year-old community activist. “He’s not doing what he said he would do when we were walking the streets together and talking about what we would do if we were in charge.”

About two-thirds of the city’s homicides this year have been drug- or gang-related, according to police. But students are getting caught in the crossfire, along with cases of mistaken identity.

Many of the community activists who worked alongside Mr. Obama in years past are calling for stricter gun control, more money for gang intervention and summer jobs programs, as well as a presidential summit.

Rev. Michael Pfleger, of all people, insisted “People are dying and [Obama] needs to use his bully pulpit to get this moving.” Pfleger pointed out that the swine flu provoked an immediate response whereas this crisis still demands attention. In response, President Obama’s senior advisor Valerie Jarrett indicated that his stimulus plan “will do more to combat the crime problem then just about anything else.”

The stimulus money contains “an unprecedented level of support” for law enforcement as well as a broad array of programs aimed at keeping children safe, she said.

I would hope so. But I am not clear how quickly this aid would get to the cities in need to help local government, nor does money for services get to the root of it either. This struck me as a rather cold response actually, and short on specifics. Further, it would seem these community leaders are asking for a more personal, hands on approach from the President in addressing this devastating problem. Gang violence plagues us in many cities, Chicago being one among them.

Frustration with the growing number of young homicides has prompted some people in Chicago to protest by displaying the U.S. flag upside down, a symbol of distress.

U.S. Army veteran and former executive director of the Cook County Department of Corrections, Spencer Leak Sr. said:

“With the metal detectors and police guards, the lobbies in the school look like the lobbies in the jails, I want to fly the flag to show the country we’re in distress. We need help.”
…
Rev. Pfleger is also encouraging congregants to wear flag pins upside down as a sign of distress

Phillip Jackson, Black Star’s executive director, has been circulating a map of the locations of where the children have died in relation to Mr. Obama’s Hyde Park home. Most of the homicides occurred within an eight-mile radius, Mr. Jackson said. His point is to draw attention to the crisis and highlight Mr. Obama’s responsibility to address it.

Reaction to the map has been mixed. “People are protective of [Mr. Obama] in the black community,” Mr. Jackson said. “They don’t want to embarrass him.”

The split tends to cleave along class lines, said Mr. Allen, who worked with Mr. Obama in a South Side neighborhood shortly after Mr. Obama moved to Chicago in 1985. Middle-class blacks in safer neighborhoods are more likely to counsel patience, he said.

“But we don’t have any more patience,” Mr. Allen said. “This is an emergency.”

I agree with Mr. Allen. Violence against our children is an all hands on deck situation. I do not pretend to have the answers. I am curious to know your thoughts as to the best solutions. Is there a way local and federal government can partner together to remove violence from the equation? I cannot even imagine how we are to get all these guns off the streets, but more than that, how to create an environment in our schools and community centers that would lead children away from gangs rather than toward them, and certainly save them and many other innocent bystanders in the process.

Are Mr. Allen and Rev. Pfleger correct? Does President Obama need to use the bully pulpit to get something done here?