What the faith community requires of Chicago’s mayor
The last day of February marks a critical election in our city. While Election Day at the polls is likely to end in a runoff and not a winner, now is the time Chicago’s citizens should be making informed choices about candidates.
Now is also the time that candidates should make informed choices about Chicago’s citizens. This is why faith communities from across our city recently convened for a town hall to discuss the most urgent issues our members and communities see in our city. The most obvious symptom of Chicago’s struggles is violence. We know behind that violence stands a century of broken promises, unfulfilled plans and failed systems.
In response to our city’s shortcomings, together we ratified the following expectations our communities of faith have of our mayor.
The creation of an Office of Gun Violence Prevention:
To counter gun violence, our city needs the same steering body: an ordinance-created Office of Gun Violence Prevention. A single office, charged with this important task and equipped with a direct line of accountability to the mayor, is what we need to stop the rising tide of bloodshed in our city. Current offices of public safety exist at the whim and fancy of each mayor; in addition to suffering from revolving doors of leadership, they possess no accountability or reporting requirements. We in the community have no idea what is happening to coordinate a city response to public safety.
An ordinance to establish an Office of Neighborhood Safety, introduced in June by Ald. Roderick Sawyer, 6th, includes a more than $100 million investment to fund the new office, ensuring that it is adequately staffed with the necessary resources to build community-based solutions to gun violence. We have asked every mayoral candidate to endorse the adoption of this ordinance and to build this office collaboratively with the community as their first order of business in the upcoming mayoral term. As of today, only candidates Sawyer, state Rep. Kambium “Kam” Buckner and Ald. Sophia King, 4th, have assured us they will support the creation of this essential office.
Stronger oversight of our police:
The Chicago Police Department has failed to present a cohesive plan to counter violence. Furthermore, there are few plans — beyond a vaguely stated intention to invest in neighborhood policing — to build relationships between police and community. The budget includes, however and as always, $82 million to pay for the costs of officer misconduct. These funds are planned without any regard to improving the rates of either officer misconduct or clearing crimes. The city continues to maintain its disparity in investing far less for prevention than response. We have witnessed an increased CPD reliance on reaction, restriction and retribution.
Chicago allocates more than a billion of our tax dollars to public safety, the preponderance of which pays for staff, mostly police. When we consider the rippling cost of violence on our city, when we tabulate what one single gunshot actually costs a community and us all, Chicago’s mayor must demand a far higher level of performance and achievement from those paid to protect us. Our massive funding of public safety must be accountable to changing the material living conditions of all of Chicago’s
communities.
Deeper investment in public health: The COVID-19 crisis laid bare inequities in health care in Chicago, from prenatal support all the way through to the death gap. The pandemic also has heightened mental health difficulties in every neighborhood of our city. If the immediacy of COVID-19 has passed, Chicago’s legacy of health inequity and current epidemic of mental health troubles remain. Chicago’s mayor needs to continue and deepen investments in public health, especially for those in disadvantaged and marginalized communities.
Restorative justice for our schools:
This past year, our city began to shift away from bringing policing and incarceration into school toward far superior programs of prevention and restorative justice. Yet Chicago Public Schools has failed to in invest in a citywide restorative justice program that might help every student in Chicago overcome the traumas of living in our city, remain in school through graduation and stay out of our system of mass incarceration. We have seen successful beta tests of these practices in certain schools that involve parents, administrators, teachers, trained experts and more. This is why we believe Chicago’s mayor must establish a citywide CPS program of restorative justice.
Redress of historical economic wrongs:
Mayor Lori Lightfoot has brought needed attention to the long-standing economic neglect of the South and West sides through her promotion of the INVEST South/ West program, even if there isn’t much evidence that these promised projects are becoming reality. While we applaud the focus on this compelling need to redress more than a century of intentional disinvestment, we also see that this focused investment nonetheless needs to grow. Greater city funding and participation from the business and philanthropic community should be paired with a higher level of transparency on these investments and their tangible results. Our mayor must remain a champion of investing new resources and energy into the South and West sides.
Chicago’s mayor must be accountable to our communities. We have asked every mayoral candidate to commit to meeting with our
Unify our divided city:
wide-ranging, highly representative group of faith leaders regularly to ensure that the concerns of common citizens, especially those most in contact with legacies of violence and neglect, receive continual and serious response. Accountability matters, and we know Chicago’s mayor must be accountable to us all.
And, like faith leaders, Chicago’s mayor also answers to a kind of higher calling. Our mayor is tasked with unifying this divided city. That goal might be even more difficult to accomplish than all of the above. However, when our elected leader truly wants to unite people by working with them to bring together the rich tapestry of Chicago’s humanity, not only will we and others be there as allies, but also the entire city just might come together to carry us into the future on our shared, broad, shoulders.
Chicago faith leaders Rabbi Seth Limmer and the Revs. Michael Pfleger, Ciera Bates-Chamberlain and Otis Moss III joined the Tribune’s opinion section last summer for a series of columns on potential solutions to Chicago’s chronic gun violence problem. The column continues on an occasional basis.