A homicide-free Chicago? Just apply Trump’s COVID-19 logic
If Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot were to follow what I call the Trump Theory of Astonishing Numerical Ignorance, the city could easily drive its homicide numbers down to zero.
It’s simple. President Donald Trump has said repeatedly, and wrote again in a tweet Thursday, that America has a world-leading number of coronavirus cases only because a large number of Americans have been tested.
He tweeted: “… the reason we show so many Cases, compared to other countries that haven’t done nearly as well as we have, is that our TESTING is much bigger and better. We have tested 40,000,000 people. If we did 20,000,000 instead, Cases would be half, etc.”
That’s a smart analysis, assuming you lack object permanence. It’s a bit like saying, “I ate four doughnuts, but I only counted half of them, so in reality, I only ate two doughnuts.”
By applying Trump’s coronavirus outbreak reasoning, Lightfoot could easily transform Chicago into the least violent city in the nation: Just stop counting all the people getting shot.
Then send a tweet that reads: “The only reason Chicago has so many homicides compared to other cities is that our COUNTING is much bigger and better. If we stopped counting, the number of homicides would be zero. So to better protect Chicagoans, we will stop counting. Everything’s fine now.”
You don’t have to squint much to see a parallel in how violence has historically been handled in Chicago and the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Endless Band-Aid-over-a-bullet-wound attempts to bring down our city’s annual body count have failed, and just as Trump has refused to create a comprehensive national strategy to halt the spread of COVID-19, city officials have never pursued a comprehensive local strategy to halt the spread of violence.
But on Thursday, I saw a tiny glimmer of hope in a report produced by the city’s COVID-19 Recovery Task Force. In studying the virus’s deadly impact on Chicago’s Black and Latino communities, the task force addressed the racial inequity that everyone inside and outside the city knows exists:
“At the root of the unequal impact of COVID-19 in our region is a history of racial inequity and injustice. COVID-19 has served as a catalyst for the consequences of the pervasive inequity that exists across Chicago’s communities and extends far beyond access to healthcare. The virus laid bare and exacerbated existing racial inequities present in Chicago in wealth, education, housing, overall access to opportunities, and more.”
We didn’t need a virus to figure this out, but it’s still encouraging to see Chicago’s racial and socioeconomic divides called out.
The report suggests scaled-up investment in the South and West sides of the city: increased job training and apprenticeship programs; expanded access to mental health care; and wider internet access for students in struggling schools (for example, 46% of West Englewood children under 18 don’t have broadband internet).
And it broadly states that the city “must tackle intergenerational poverty and widespread economic hardship that holds our city back by growing our economy inclusively rather than expecting the benefits of growth to trickle down.”
Three points under that statement are:
1) “End economic hardship, and enable economic security and mobility.”
2) “Prioritize changes that make a meaningful impact on the economic well-being of the individuals and businesses that have been most disenfranchised.”
3) “Reduce the expenses and costs of being poor, using a racial equity lens to assess how those costs manifest.”
Remember, this is from a task force report dealing with the coronavirus. But these are the exact steps the city needs to take to substantively change the circumstances that breed year-in and year-out violence.
I’m a broken record on this point: Chicago can’t police its way out of its homicide problem. If you want proof, just look at how the numbers ebb and flow but never drop to a sane level.
Change requires police, education, economic opportunity, mental health and medical care, safe places for kids to play and all the things that make up any healthy community.
The COVID-19 Recovery Task Force’s report is what it is: words on paper. It doesn’t explain how things get paid for or guarantee the ideas will do anything more than gather dust.
Nearly 20 years in Chicago have made me abundantly cynical when it comes to believing anyone actually cares enough to do anything about the hundreds of children and adults gunned down each year, as long as those children and adults aren’t wealthy or white.
But the task force nails the outlines of a path toward a safer and more equitable city. It gets right the idea that barriers put up long ago to keep lower-income people of color apart from the rest of the city have to come down for all neighborhoods to prosper.
Without big moves, without having the guts and valuing human life enough to spend money, the city might as well follow the Trump Theory of Astonishing Numerical Ignorance — stop counting homicides and proclaim victory over violence.
As the president has implied: If you don’t count ’em, they don’t count.