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Treating Violence As A Disease
There's a big article about how violence can be addressed by comparing it to a disease that was published in yesterday's New York Times magazine that was written by Chicago writer Alex Kotlowitz and features a Chicago epidemiologist (Blocking the Transmission of Violence).
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Mon May 5, 2008 at 2:02 PM
Treating Violence As A Disease
This was an outstanding attached article in the New York Times.
It shows some of the intensity and complexity of the entrenched gang problem in Chicago. It is easy for some residents of this city to minimize or dismiss the seriousness of the problem (usually those who do not have a stake in the future prospects of those less fortunate - translated: urban minorities).
It follows that if one does not have a child enrolled in a Chicago public school, or has no direct concern about the daily safety of their children, then they have no real concern as to the eventual outcome. Other than making a passing comment over dinner as to how violent the city has become, they are not likely to take any real action to change the situation. Their involvement will probabaly remain confined to reading about the increasing armed assault and homicide statistics or watching the drama unfold on cable television.
This article goes a long way toward putting a more recognizable face on the issue.
It shows some of the intensity and complexity of the entrenched gang problem in Chicago. It is easy for some residents of this city to minimize or dismiss the seriousness of the problem (usually those who do not have a stake in the future prospects of those less fortunate - translated: urban minorities).
It follows that if one does not have a child enrolled in a Chicago public school, or has no direct concern about the daily safety of their children, then they have no real concern as to the eventual outcome. Other than making a passing comment over dinner as to how violent the city has become, they are not likely to take any real action to change the situation. Their involvement will probabaly remain confined to reading about the increasing armed assault and homicide statistics or watching the drama unfold on cable television.
This article goes a long way toward putting a more recognizable face on the issue.
Mon May 5, 2008 at 4:53 PM
Treating Violence As A Disease
But if violence is a disease is the treatment gun control? Gun control seems to be the primary solution being advocated by CPS. I have heard, but I can not confirm, that cease fire violence interrupters are not allowed into high schools. I am not sure CPS rules, relating to background checks, allow these cease fire staff into buildings to do their thing.
Tue May 6, 2008 at 3:17 AM
Treating Violence As A Disease
Once the "gun" nonsense from Mayor Daley fell flat, they had to come up with something as silly, but with a professor to prattle it.
Nobody in this town wants unilateral disarmament. Ask anyone raised in Mississippl whether they wanted to grow up out there in the middle of nowhere without thatshotgun and other weapons to keep the guys in the sheets at bay. The people once represented in Springfield by Barack Oabama are one of the most serious bases for the Second Amendment, with or without the National Rifle Association.
So... All that silliness from Mayor Daley and the Patronage Preachers about "guns" has been going nowhere. And leading to a lot of jokes.
So now the problem is "violence." You know, there are bad guns and good guns.
And there are people (and folks) who are just ...
VIOLENT...
So diagnose them as VIOLENT.
And get some professorial paperwork all over it (professor patronage is just behind preacher patronage in this stuff).
If they can keep this up (with some fairy tale version of reality fed into The New York Times Magazine), maybe next it will be phases of the moon and sun spots.
Did anyone else notice how The New York Times told this story about VIOLENT PEOPLE without once mentioning Latin Kings, Latin Dragons, Gangster Disciples, Black P. Stones, MLDs, IGs, GLs, Unknowns, etc., etc., etc.
Next thing you know, they're going to tell you that the three CEOs of Illinois government (Daley in Chicago; Stroger and pere in Cook County; Rod in Springfield) haven't turned the prison system over to the Chicago drug gangs, so that every street kid going in knows whether he's riding with the fives or down with the sixes...
Lovely stuff, this narrative and all the hypocrisy it swallows to keep the War on Drugs and the other fantasy versions of USA reality going.
I was really amazed that the Times could vet an article about Chicago gang bangers (or, ex gang bangers) and not once mention any of Chicago's real gangs. Next thing you know, they'll write that more children get popped when there's a full moon and the werewolves are out.
Nobody in this town wants unilateral disarmament. Ask anyone raised in Mississippl whether they wanted to grow up out there in the middle of nowhere without thatshotgun and other weapons to keep the guys in the sheets at bay. The people once represented in Springfield by Barack Oabama are one of the most serious bases for the Second Amendment, with or without the National Rifle Association.
So... All that silliness from Mayor Daley and the Patronage Preachers about "guns" has been going nowhere. And leading to a lot of jokes.
So now the problem is "violence." You know, there are bad guns and good guns.
And there are people (and folks) who are just ...
VIOLENT...
So diagnose them as VIOLENT.
And get some professorial paperwork all over it (professor patronage is just behind preacher patronage in this stuff).
If they can keep this up (with some fairy tale version of reality fed into The New York Times Magazine), maybe next it will be phases of the moon and sun spots.
Did anyone else notice how The New York Times told this story about VIOLENT PEOPLE without once mentioning Latin Kings, Latin Dragons, Gangster Disciples, Black P. Stones, MLDs, IGs, GLs, Unknowns, etc., etc., etc.
Next thing you know, they're going to tell you that the three CEOs of Illinois government (Daley in Chicago; Stroger and pere in Cook County; Rod in Springfield) haven't turned the prison system over to the Chicago drug gangs, so that every street kid going in knows whether he's riding with the fives or down with the sixes...
Lovely stuff, this narrative and all the hypocrisy it swallows to keep the War on Drugs and the other fantasy versions of USA reality going.
I was really amazed that the Times could vet an article about Chicago gang bangers (or, ex gang bangers) and not once mention any of Chicago's real gangs. Next thing you know, they'll write that more children get popped when there's a full moon and the werewolves are out.
Wed May 7, 2008 at 3:32 AM
Treating Violence As A Disease
For several years, I used a very well written story by a student I taught at Amundsen High School with my classes. The story was written 20 years ago in response to an assignment "Write a chapter from your autobiography." The only requirement for the assignment was that the story be true.
The story was called "Buff's 19th birthday" and it was about one of my student's boy friends. He was murdered after getting off a bus while his friends, including my student, waited for him to celebrate his 19th birthday. She wrote about how she held his head briefly in her hand while be died, but had to let go because the back of his head had been shattered by the gunshots that killed him.
I'm taking a couple of days off from here after reading the opening paragraphs of the Sunday New York Times piece on how the problem in Chicago is a "disease" called VIOLENCE.
That's BS, as I've noted in these threads before. The problem is an economy that forces thousands of young people into hopelessness and where the only "entrepreneurial" options are in the drug gangs. That problem, which has made Chicago and Illinois a national scandal (since we've basically turned over our penal institutions to the drug gangs, People and Folks) has a name, a cause, and a cure.
And it's not a "disease."
This stupidity -- from blaming GUNS to blaming VIOLENCE -- is a way of avoiding accountability. The kind of accountability which should be at the very top of our political systems, here in Chicago and in Illinois.
I'll probably find that long ago story "Buff's 19th Birthday" one of these days and share a little. But for a few days I just won't be in the mood to discuss things in a town that specializes in hypocrisy and at a location where people don't have the courage to sign their own names because they know they're living in the middle of one of the uglier lies in the USA today.
The story was called "Buff's 19th birthday" and it was about one of my student's boy friends. He was murdered after getting off a bus while his friends, including my student, waited for him to celebrate his 19th birthday. She wrote about how she held his head briefly in her hand while be died, but had to let go because the back of his head had been shattered by the gunshots that killed him.
I'm taking a couple of days off from here after reading the opening paragraphs of the Sunday New York Times piece on how the problem in Chicago is a "disease" called VIOLENCE.
That's BS, as I've noted in these threads before. The problem is an economy that forces thousands of young people into hopelessness and where the only "entrepreneurial" options are in the drug gangs. That problem, which has made Chicago and Illinois a national scandal (since we've basically turned over our penal institutions to the drug gangs, People and Folks) has a name, a cause, and a cure.
And it's not a "disease."
This stupidity -- from blaming GUNS to blaming VIOLENCE -- is a way of avoiding accountability. The kind of accountability which should be at the very top of our political systems, here in Chicago and in Illinois.
I'll probably find that long ago story "Buff's 19th Birthday" one of these days and share a little. But for a few days I just won't be in the mood to discuss things in a town that specializes in hypocrisy and at a location where people don't have the courage to sign their own names because they know they're living in the middle of one of the uglier lies in the USA today.
Wed May 7, 2008 at 6:38 AM
Treating Violence As A Disease
The Chicago Police Department reported for 2007, there were 443 murder victims, 331 were Black, 81 were Hispanics and 28 were white. Of the 325 persons arrested for murder in 2007, 253 were Black, 60 were Hispanics and 12 were white. In most murders, Blacks kill Blacks, Hispanics kill Hispanics and whites kill whites!!!
