Chicago needs leaders, not elected officials looking for scapegoats
Hundreds of people swooped into Chicago’s downtown area on Sunday night into Monday morning to smash in store windows and loot, seemingly out of the nowhere, and the obvious question is whether this was premeditated and organized.
Who first tweeted — inaccurately — that police in the Englewood neighborhood had shot an unarmed 15-year-old boy in the face? What was the tweeter’s purpose? Who first urged young people, again via social media, to jump into cars and drive downtown? What was the intent? Who brought in that U-Haul truck into which looters threw stolen goods?
If there was a design behind the mayhem, let’s find out. Let’s make arrests. When a city is a tinderbox, there’s no room for people who light matches.
What we can say for sure, though, is that Chicago’s official response to the looting and property destruction, as well as to two shootings and months of escalating gun violence, has been anything but organized. There has been an utter lack of teamwork, and our city is paying the price.
Two press conferences
Why, quite simply, did Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx hold dueling press conferences on Monday? Why did they not stand side-by-side on the same stage?
The sun was barely up and storekeepers along Michigan Avenue were just beginning to sweep up the broken glass when Lightfoot held a press conference to deplore the looting, promise a tough police response — and blame Foxx.
The looters on Sunday, she and Police Supt. David Brown said, were emboldened by the failure of Foxx’s prosecutors to take earlier arrests for looting seriously.
Because looters arrested back in May and June were not “prosecuted to the fullest extent,” Brown said, looters today “act like there are no consequences of their behavior.”
At a separate press conference later, Foxx shot back that Lightfoot and Brown had their facts all wrong, having lumped together looters and peaceful protesters.
“I understand the superintendent’s and the mayor’s frustration. I share their frustration,” Foxx said. “Looters have been charged and are awaiting trial. Peaceful protesters have not had their cases pursued.”
Foxx complained about “dishonest blame games” and accused Lightfoot of seizing on an “overly simplistic answer” to a complex problem.
Leaders, not scapegoats
Chicago needs leaders, not elected officials looking for scapegoats. It’s not hard to make a case that every branch of the local criminal justice system — the police, the state’s attorney’s office, the sheriff ’s office and the courts
— is in part to blame for the city’s failure to curb violent crime rates and the kind of chaos we witnessed this weekend.
But the underlying conditions driving Chicago’s crime and unrest, from the impact of the pandemic to long-standing problems of economic and racial injustice to a palpable distrust of the police, are not about to disappear any time soon. Chicago needs leaders who are willing to sit down together, hash out their personal and philosophical differences and do a better job of working together.
For an example of how that might work for the betterment of Chicago, consider the Justice Department’s recent creation of a task force to assist the city’s police in prosecuting gun crimes. The initiative, Operation Legend, has resulted in a surge of new gun cases being filed in federal court in Chicago over the past two weeks.
The number of federal gun cases filed in June, July and early August total about the same as for January, February, March, April and May combined, the Sun-Times reported late last week, though the coronavirus pandemic slowed federal prosecutions in Chicago early on.
Try working together
When a reporter asked Lightfoot on Monday to elaborate on her point that the state’s attorney’s office and courts must do more to hold criminals accountable, she accused the reporter of trying to pit the relevant elected officials — Foxx, Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans and her — against each other. “Don’t bait us,” she said.
But nobody was baiting anybody. The reporter’s question was an excellent one.
If Lightfoot thinks Foxx and Evans could be doing better — and that was her pointed message on Monday — then she’s obligated to explain, in detail, where they’ve gone wrong and how to improve.
Better yet, Lightfoot might want to invite Foxx and Evans to her next press conference, everybody working together.
About three weeks ago, I embarked on the seven-hour drive from my parents’ suburban Chicago home to my college apartment. While this is not a new ritual for me, as a third-year college student, saying goodbye this year was immensely harder than any other year. And I am not unique in feeling this way.
Students have witnessed an unprecedented level of illness and death since last stepping on campus. In the U.S. alone, there have been over 5 million cases of COVID-19 and some 162,000 deaths. A time of year that usually calls for great celebration now also brings a silent sadness to each goodbye.
Students are leaving home knowing coronavirus cases will undoubtedly continue to rise over the fall semester. More seriously, families are parting ways with an awareness that they cannot protect each other from becoming ill. No one knows what will occur over these next few months. No one can guarantee a happy family reunion.
Students are saying goodbye to mothers who are nurses fighting daily for the lives of others, to fathers who are teachers about to return to the classroom, to sisters who have an auto-immune disorder that makes them vulnerable to COVID-19, to brothers who are struggling with their mental health amid such hopeless and uncertain times, and to grandparents who stand little chance against the virus.
Nothing about this is easy.
No student wants to receive a call saying his father is being placed on a ventilator hundreds of miles away, or that her sister relapsed into addiction, overwhelmed by the isolation and stress of a COVID-19 world. No parent wants to hear her son is sick without anyone there to nurse him, or that his daughter is having panic attacks, worried about finances at home and terrified of contracting the virus as a working student. But this is the reality.
These are the thoughts weighing on students’ minds as they return to class. These are the fears parents shield behind brave faces during that final goodbye.
I emphasize the difficulty of saying goodbye this fall to bring awareness to certain responsibilities.
To my fellow students: Know that nothing about returning to college is selfish and you should not feel guilty. However, please keep in mind that college towns are still home to people other than students. At home, you may have followed the rules of social distancing out of concern for your parents, but returning to campus is not a license to stop caring. Others’ loved ones are still at stake when you act irresponsibly.
If you immediately rush to attend a frat party, you are failing all of us and making a mockery of the immense privilege we students have been given in returning to school.
To the incoming freshmen: I am going to be blunt in saying your time of mourning a disrupted senior year has ended. Many graduation parties, private proms, and belated senior celebrations have been given a pass over these past five months.
As you start college, it goes without saying that you will miss out on many traditional freshman experiences. That is unfortunate. But you will not be able to continue those irresponsible practices. As students, we can make an immense impact. If we carry our masks the same way we carry our cellphones, we will all have a positive influence.
This semester will test all of us. Students will experience greater isolation, anxiety, hopelessness, and, with many on campus until as late as Thanksgiving or Christmas, homesickness. So colleges will need to keep mental health resources in mind as well. Saving lives goes beyond sanitizing and masks.
Government and local school officials, I implore you to step into the shoes of a college student and keep our dreams of reuniting with loved ones in mind as you make policy decisions. Weigh the risks of school reopening plans, set standards for proper pandemic practices, and push legislation that will save lives. You have the power to protect our families in ways we cannot.
No one can wish this pandemic out of existence, but we can all take steps to make it less devastating. Everyone is loved by someone, and none of us should wait until the virus personally affects us to take action.