Despite the important stories and insightful commentary that you've provided this week, I have to say that the Dirty Dancing to Muppet Theme video tops the charts for me. Thanks for the smile!
We watched the mayhem at North Ave. Beach from our condo and it was scary. The papers said that the kids were between 14 and 21 (all minors) and that they did search backpacks and confiscate alcohol at the beach. In the suburbs, if alcohol or drugs were found on a minor, they would be arrested for under age possession and taken to the station, parents called, and subsequent court appearances. Knowing those consequences would prevent a gathering like this to begin with. The rise in crime and mayhem that is ruining our wonderful city and causing businesses and residents to leave is the direct result of people seeing the a lack of swift consequences for their bad behavior. I realize that you are laughing at the notion that CPD has the manpower to arrest kids for under-age possession but......something has to be done to stop these "trends" and making it unpleasant for them have them to begin with is one idea.
Eric, you are correct in saying we need short-term answers, but your Pollyannaish arrest-but-don't-prosecute outlook won't cut it. There have to be consequences severe enough to prevent repeaters and deter observers from breaking laws. Tolerating current injustices does nothing to mitigate past ones. Public safety in the form of getting criminals off the streets and keeping them off is a major area where our public officials need to do a LOT better.
I've created a lot of preliminary floor plans for single-family homes. They all have what would be called a vestibule in front, and nearly all the same in back, sometimes smaller. One thing that makes them vestibules is the doors on both ends. It's an actual room unto itself. Those doors enable the climate separation between indoors and outdoors. But these rooms of my design also have the basic furniture most people want when they get inside: a place to put the stuff they're carrying, a place to hang up their outer garment (if any), and a place to sit down to remove any wet or dirty outer footwear. Whether built-in or moveable, it's called "hall furniture." I call my front and back vestibules "Entry" rooms to keep the terminology relevant - and simple.
Decades ago, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power built a house to demonstrate a number of design features to minimize use of electricity and fuel to keep it lit and comfortable. There were wall cabinets above a peninsula in the kitchen, with glass doors on both sides, to let daylight flow through. And it had a vestibule in the front entry area just like I'd build, to keep the heat or A/C indoors. After some time welcoming visitors to learn from it, this house was sold.
Which Mayor Daley? Sometimes with all the police standing and watching the mayhem but powerless to stop it because politicians won't let them, it appears that the first Mayor Daley's statement was true after all: "The policeman is not here to create disorder. The policeman is here to preserve disorder."
I agree with you about sportscasters ... mostly. I do however tend to mute Tony Romo, who offers good insights but doesn't know when to stop talking. His incessant chatter grates on me. And I love Jason Benetti and Steve Stone. They made me want to watch the Sox. BTW, it seems like all NBA play-by-play people sound like Marv Albert. Is that a requirement?
Steve Stone is the best! Eric, if it's really true that you've never let the announcers influence your decision to watch, or to turn off, a game, it seems you have a high tolerance for bad announcers. I can be attracted to any game where Al Michaels is the announcer ever since I listened to him as the Reds radio play-by-play man early in his career. Likewise, I think twice about whether a game being called by Joe Buck is important enough for me to put up with his loud, puffed-up, in-your-face shtick.
Theee Mayor Daley. The Mayor that was not concerned about losing his job and/or what consequences he would need to pay for public sentiment. Spare the rod and you spoil the child seems to work quite well in certain situations. I sincerely believe this is one of those situations.
I agree with Eric's comments on Richardson. I also think that it is perfectly reasonable for Richardson to believe that he might sustain great bodily harm. There is no reason to believe that a group that uses diversion to initiate an attack by more than one assailant has any intention of exercising restraint or limiting the injuries to bruises. This is not a description of a fistfight between two willing combatants. But Richardson should be prosecuted for carrying the concealed, illegal firearm. As should the two others that had guns on the scene. And all of the others involved should be charged with assault or mob action.
"Some 10,000 women from surrounding states are already traveling to Illinois each year to obtain abortions, and providers are reportedly predicting they’ll see an additional 14,000 such patients when almost all the Midwest bans the practice." Add that to marijuana purchases and casino growth and JB is finally accomplishing his dream of dollars coming into the state rather than leaving. ;)
Listened to Heather Mac Donald podcast yesterday about "mass mayhem'. Don't agree with everything she says, but some of her statistics were eye opening.
1. There are some laws against some of the behavior displayed by the mob: jaywalking, jumping on a car that's not yours, obstructing traffic, not obeying traffic signals (by pedestrians), etc. Many tickets could be issued for these examples of disorderly conduct (a whole separate category!).
2. Unless all the people in these mobs were dropped off by people driving cars, nearly all of them arrived by CTA. CTA has surveillance cameras on most buses, 'L' cars, and stations. CTA also has ways of recording fare payment on buses and 'L' system turnstiles. CTA probably has stats on the changing rates of passenger usage per dates and times of day. Could CTA have noticed a sharp rise in passenger use when the mob people were heading to the Loop? CTA surely could be monitoring its surveillance cameras 24/7 in real time, to be able to dispatch police to a disturbance. If there is a sharp rise in usage by people going to these mob scenes, correlations could be made between fare payments and surveillance images, to possibly collect images of potential participants, for possible law enforcement use in the future.
3. Millennium Park could conceivably be closed rather early in the evening, except for explicit events which last later, and whose entry and exit paths could be fenced and controlled, for participants only.
4. No suggestions requiring law enforcement are worth a darned thing if the enforcement won't be done. Same with the idea of having people monitor CTA's surveillance cameras to be able to quickly dispatch police to a scene: I think it's been done before, and remains technically feasible - but if CTA and law enforcement refuse to do it, I'm frankly not interested in their other ideas, such as unarmed "security guards" (who don't even have black belts).
I found the following online -- a DOJ community policing "resource" published in 2009 about "Disorderly Youth in Public Places." It's not the most impressive document -- no silver bullets, no sources cited, many anecdotes from other countries, few solutions appropriate for our problem.
For public property at night, its answers seem to be (1) make the space too inconvenient, (2) use camera surveillance, and/or (3) enforce curfews. It doesn't like simply increasing patrols, but it seems to me that would be necessary in order to do (3). The nice thing about a curfew, assuming it's legal, is that it doesn't require officers to observe and document a separate violation before taking action. (1) might make sense for beaches after hours where there are relatively few places of ingress and egress, but I, for one, don't like that Millennium Park is already surrounded by ugly temporary fencing that doesn't seem to deter anyone -- making the space inconvenient or unpleasant for unruly kids makes it inconvenient or unpleasant for everyone else too. One exception is the "mosquito" noise machine that plays an annoying high-pitched frequency only young people can hear. But even if it's effective "teenager repellant" for outside a 7-11, say, it would unfairly annoy kids with their families. Maybe it could be turned on after the park or beach is closed to everyone. If only Daley had it in '68, his cops wouldn't have had to bust quite so many heads!
By the way, I am aware of myself becoming a conservative curmudgeon -- these kids today, and so on -- but we're talking about guns, about behavior that seems about to turn into a riot, and so on. (I was always with ending the war and drugs, but for replacing it with a war on guns and violence.) It's ruining the city's image, especially as the Wall Street Journal seems to have an editorial desk devoted to blasting Lightfoot.
Progressives are overcorrecting. I always felt, as a liberal who came of intellectual age during the Clinton years, that I was on the reasonable side. Democrats then, even or especially black Democrats, had no time for soft-on-crime stuff; now you have to abjectly apologize for that stance. The Democratic position on abortion was "safe, legal, and rare." The immigration position was "path to citizenship for good guys in exchange for increased border enforcement." They accepted the conservative charge of welfare dependency and abuse to an extent and sought to help those truly in need. And all that brought the Democrats back from the wilderness at a time when, looking at presidential election maps, there had been hardly any blue states to speak of. Now the crazies are on both sides and are even crazier. Theirs are still worse, but it's disconcerting.
I went through that document - thanks! It seems pretty thoughtful. But it all seems predicated on dealing with a "youth" population which already wasn't brought up by parents to be well-behaved. There was one part about youth concerned about being attacked by rival groups. This doesn't happen among youth brought up right. Any "rival groups" would be confined to endeavors like team sports ... the ice hockey team in the neighboring town.
No Mow is an almost perfect virtue signal. It begins by taking literally no effort - you don’t even need to put up a sign. It is backed by just-so science stories published in Home and Garden and the NYT Magazine. It allows you to passively annoy your benighted neighbors who are working to maintain their lawns AND GARDENS free of dandelions and weeds. The upside of “cultivating” dandelions is said to include making salads and tea - something almost no one does. And, the topper, like wearing essentially cosmetic cloth masks, is that the science behind the benefits of dandelions to pollinators is not “settled.” You can find just-so stories, which in fact have many more believable observations, and even some data, suggesting dandelions are unimportant at least to bees. https://www.gardenmyths.com/dandelions-important-bees/
In short, it’s a do-nothing gesture that passive-aggressively harms some of your nearest neighbors and has a good chance of being pointless.
I'm with you here. If you want to replace your lawn with something else, good, great. But it should be well-maintained and attractive, which means work. My mom was a pioneer in this regard, replacing lots of lawn decades ago with flower gardens, which are super alive with wholesome insect activity. But a merely un-mown lawn just looks like an abandoned property. I'm sorry, it's ugly. The bees can get along without dandelions, I feel confident. Make yourself a lovely wildflower garden instead! Otherwise, mow that lawn, dagnabit. And make sure to keep kids off it!
Yes, I agree, if you just stop mowing what had been a manicured lawn of alien grass, what will happen is the process of ecological succession, beginning with an abundance of even more alien invasive species. And since it's in a place where the natural fires are suppressed, it would take decades more for succession to reach the stage where native plants dominate.
I've been working hard for several years to establish a variety of native perennial forbs in a space behind my building. There were some already there, but the space, shall we say, presented a lot of opportunities. Finally this year, most of the space is occupied by native perennial forbs, most planted by me; I'm still working on seeds from more species, but I didn't start any seeds indoors. Weeding, unfortunately, always has to be done.
The very large groups of "youths" (the popular euphemism for these black teenagers out of fear of being branded racist for accurately describing what is occurring) acting belligerently and breaking laws is much the result of the Kim Foxx refusal to properly charge, prosecute and punish lawbreakers who are black in a perverted attempt at what she terms social justice.
Removing consequences for bad and criminal behavior guarantees more bad and criminal behavior. Charging a 15 year old who carjacks at gunpoint in juvenile court with misdemeanor trespass to a vehicle with very little
consequences makes it a joke and is a prime factor in the many serial repeat carjacking offenders.
In a democratic society it is said that citizens get the governance they deserve (because they voted for it). So now the good citizens of Cook County are enjoying the fruits of harvest from electing Kim Foxx.
The word "youth" as a noun is not a euphemism, really, especially since the age bracket referred to has vague limits. However, I have the impression that "youth" as a noun has been used as a mild pejorative for decades. But I have noticed that TV reports about the mobs of youths downtown never mention what I see in the videos: all of the youths doing the mayhem appear to be black.
You are very correct Jean, the media goes out of their way to refrain from identifying these large groups of teenagers as black, because in our current socio-political environment, simply stating that fact will quickly get you labeled as racist. (And now let's see if my simply stating that is sufficient to trigger allegations of racism from any other commenters.)
"Every day fistfight?" Eric Zorn seems like a very even tempered guy. Is he getting in fistfights every day? I guess if I see him on the street I will be sure to keep my distance. ;)
Violent flash mobs were a big thing around 2010 - 2011, and throwing everything from curfews to blocking wifi at points on transit did slow it down. All of these draw ire from the ACLU, but there comes a time, and we're there. Here's quite a speech from Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter about the subject at that time:
Long term solutions are a different story. We had a drop in violent crime in every major city from 1995 - 2015. Then came the Great Awokening. and the trend reversed. Criminal Justice Professor Peter Moskos has put together an excellent collection of essays from those in the know, including a few specific to the situation in Chicago, like "Let Police Police":
Thanks very much for your comment. I had to copy & paste it all into a Word doc for later study. I don't have enough time now to study everything on that website. I have to assume that most of what I've long advocated, is also advocated by some others on that collection.
Eric, my wife and I moved back to Chicago in August of 2020( long story) after 20 years in Indiana. We missed everything this great city has to offer. I’m a 63 year old oncologist. We live on LSD and love the sunrises over the lake. We don’t fell unsafe, but the headlines and what is happening does create an underlying concern. Our biggest worry is that the perception of safety matters more than the statistics. If (when)businesses and residents leave downtown, the problem is real. Agreed that the root causes matter, but IMHO as a doctor, we must stop the bleeding before we fix the cause. I’m of the opinion that mayhem is worse than violence. This includes noise, traffic violations and acts that have no consequences. This feeds a climate of total chaos where anything goes. Violence usually occurs in a permissive environment of anarchy. That’s what I feel when I take a stroll down Michigan avenue, go to Millenium Park. We are having second thoughts about renewing our symphony hall series. Waiting for a bus in the loop at 10:30 PM? No, thank you.
Some friends of mine live in Evanston and attend concerts at Orchestra Hall fairly often. Though they live less than 2 blocks from the 'L' they drive to these events. They park in a nearby garage. So far they haven't had any crime troubles.
Despite the important stories and insightful commentary that you've provided this week, I have to say that the Dirty Dancing to Muppet Theme video tops the charts for me. Thanks for the smile!
It's the quality content like that that brings readers back week after week!
We watched the mayhem at North Ave. Beach from our condo and it was scary. The papers said that the kids were between 14 and 21 (all minors) and that they did search backpacks and confiscate alcohol at the beach. In the suburbs, if alcohol or drugs were found on a minor, they would be arrested for under age possession and taken to the station, parents called, and subsequent court appearances. Knowing those consequences would prevent a gathering like this to begin with. The rise in crime and mayhem that is ruining our wonderful city and causing businesses and residents to leave is the direct result of people seeing the a lack of swift consequences for their bad behavior. I realize that you are laughing at the notion that CPD has the manpower to arrest kids for under-age possession but......something has to be done to stop these "trends" and making it unpleasant for them have them to begin with is one idea.
Eric, you are correct in saying we need short-term answers, but your Pollyannaish arrest-but-don't-prosecute outlook won't cut it. There have to be consequences severe enough to prevent repeaters and deter observers from breaking laws. Tolerating current injustices does nothing to mitigate past ones. Public safety in the form of getting criminals off the streets and keeping them off is a major area where our public officials need to do a LOT better.
I think one of the main reasons these "trends" turn violent is youth disagreement over whether a room is a foyer or vestibule.
Knowing the difference may also be the reason no one talks to me at parties.
I've created a lot of preliminary floor plans for single-family homes. They all have what would be called a vestibule in front, and nearly all the same in back, sometimes smaller. One thing that makes them vestibules is the doors on both ends. It's an actual room unto itself. Those doors enable the climate separation between indoors and outdoors. But these rooms of my design also have the basic furniture most people want when they get inside: a place to put the stuff they're carrying, a place to hang up their outer garment (if any), and a place to sit down to remove any wet or dirty outer footwear. Whether built-in or moveable, it's called "hall furniture." I call my front and back vestibules "Entry" rooms to keep the terminology relevant - and simple.
Decades ago, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power built a house to demonstrate a number of design features to minimize use of electricity and fuel to keep it lit and comfortable. There were wall cabinets above a peninsula in the kitchen, with glass doors on both sides, to let daylight flow through. And it had a vestibule in the front entry area just like I'd build, to keep the heat or A/C indoors. After some time welcoming visitors to learn from it, this house was sold.
It's a huge problem. Esp. when the narthex people wade in.
Listen buddy, don't start up with your antechamber shit again.
I had to look up that word, new to me. I think many Americans feel like they occupy the narthex of the American political body.
I agree, swift consequences is the key. It's going to need to get ugly before it can get better.
Let's bring Rahm Emanual back and give him the authority to do whatever is necessary to nip this nonsense in the bud. Think Mayor Daley here!!
Which Mayor Daley? Sometimes with all the police standing and watching the mayhem but powerless to stop it because politicians won't let them, it appears that the first Mayor Daley's statement was true after all: "The policeman is not here to create disorder. The policeman is here to preserve disorder."
I agree with you about sportscasters ... mostly. I do however tend to mute Tony Romo, who offers good insights but doesn't know when to stop talking. His incessant chatter grates on me. And I love Jason Benetti and Steve Stone. They made me want to watch the Sox. BTW, it seems like all NBA play-by-play people sound like Marv Albert. Is that a requirement?
Steve Stone is the best! Eric, if it's really true that you've never let the announcers influence your decision to watch, or to turn off, a game, it seems you have a high tolerance for bad announcers. I can be attracted to any game where Al Michaels is the announcer ever since I listened to him as the Reds radio play-by-play man early in his career. Likewise, I think twice about whether a game being called by Joe Buck is important enough for me to put up with his loud, puffed-up, in-your-face shtick.
Wow! I am amazed. I had not realized that people watched sporting contests on TV with the sound turned on.
Theee Mayor Daley. The Mayor that was not concerned about losing his job and/or what consequences he would need to pay for public sentiment. Spare the rod and you spoil the child seems to work quite well in certain situations. I sincerely believe this is one of those situations.
I agree with Eric's comments on Richardson. I also think that it is perfectly reasonable for Richardson to believe that he might sustain great bodily harm. There is no reason to believe that a group that uses diversion to initiate an attack by more than one assailant has any intention of exercising restraint or limiting the injuries to bruises. This is not a description of a fistfight between two willing combatants. But Richardson should be prosecuted for carrying the concealed, illegal firearm. As should the two others that had guns on the scene. And all of the others involved should be charged with assault or mob action.
"Some 10,000 women from surrounding states are already traveling to Illinois each year to obtain abortions, and providers are reportedly predicting they’ll see an additional 14,000 such patients when almost all the Midwest bans the practice." Add that to marijuana purchases and casino growth and JB is finally accomplishing his dream of dollars coming into the state rather than leaving. ;)
Listened to Heather Mac Donald podcast yesterday about "mass mayhem'. Don't agree with everything she says, but some of her statistics were eye opening.
https://wgnradio.com/wgn-plus/thechicagoway/the-chicago-way-w-john-kass-big-thinker-heather-mac-donald-tackles-the-war-on-cops/
One more song containing the word "vestibule": Oscar Brand's version of Humoresque. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyiMYI4oQTU
If you wish to pass some water,
kindly call the pullman porter,
He'll place a vessel in the vestibule.
Some short-term ideas to quell the mob mayhem.
1. There are some laws against some of the behavior displayed by the mob: jaywalking, jumping on a car that's not yours, obstructing traffic, not obeying traffic signals (by pedestrians), etc. Many tickets could be issued for these examples of disorderly conduct (a whole separate category!).
2. Unless all the people in these mobs were dropped off by people driving cars, nearly all of them arrived by CTA. CTA has surveillance cameras on most buses, 'L' cars, and stations. CTA also has ways of recording fare payment on buses and 'L' system turnstiles. CTA probably has stats on the changing rates of passenger usage per dates and times of day. Could CTA have noticed a sharp rise in passenger use when the mob people were heading to the Loop? CTA surely could be monitoring its surveillance cameras 24/7 in real time, to be able to dispatch police to a disturbance. If there is a sharp rise in usage by people going to these mob scenes, correlations could be made between fare payments and surveillance images, to possibly collect images of potential participants, for possible law enforcement use in the future.
3. Millennium Park could conceivably be closed rather early in the evening, except for explicit events which last later, and whose entry and exit paths could be fenced and controlled, for participants only.
4. No suggestions requiring law enforcement are worth a darned thing if the enforcement won't be done. Same with the idea of having people monitor CTA's surveillance cameras to be able to quickly dispatch police to a scene: I think it's been done before, and remains technically feasible - but if CTA and law enforcement refuse to do it, I'm frankly not interested in their other ideas, such as unarmed "security guards" (who don't even have black belts).
I found the following online -- a DOJ community policing "resource" published in 2009 about "Disorderly Youth in Public Places." It's not the most impressive document -- no silver bullets, no sources cited, many anecdotes from other countries, few solutions appropriate for our problem.
For public property at night, its answers seem to be (1) make the space too inconvenient, (2) use camera surveillance, and/or (3) enforce curfews. It doesn't like simply increasing patrols, but it seems to me that would be necessary in order to do (3). The nice thing about a curfew, assuming it's legal, is that it doesn't require officers to observe and document a separate violation before taking action. (1) might make sense for beaches after hours where there are relatively few places of ingress and egress, but I, for one, don't like that Millennium Park is already surrounded by ugly temporary fencing that doesn't seem to deter anyone -- making the space inconvenient or unpleasant for unruly kids makes it inconvenient or unpleasant for everyone else too. One exception is the "mosquito" noise machine that plays an annoying high-pitched frequency only young people can hear. But even if it's effective "teenager repellant" for outside a 7-11, say, it would unfairly annoy kids with their families. Maybe it could be turned on after the park or beach is closed to everyone. If only Daley had it in '68, his cops wouldn't have had to bust quite so many heads!
By the way, I am aware of myself becoming a conservative curmudgeon -- these kids today, and so on -- but we're talking about guns, about behavior that seems about to turn into a riot, and so on. (I was always with ending the war and drugs, but for replacing it with a war on guns and violence.) It's ruining the city's image, especially as the Wall Street Journal seems to have an editorial desk devoted to blasting Lightfoot.
Progressives are overcorrecting. I always felt, as a liberal who came of intellectual age during the Clinton years, that I was on the reasonable side. Democrats then, even or especially black Democrats, had no time for soft-on-crime stuff; now you have to abjectly apologize for that stance. The Democratic position on abortion was "safe, legal, and rare." The immigration position was "path to citizenship for good guys in exchange for increased border enforcement." They accepted the conservative charge of welfare dependency and abuse to an extent and sought to help those truly in need. And all that brought the Democrats back from the wilderness at a time when, looking at presidential election maps, there had been hardly any blue states to speak of. Now the crazies are on both sides and are even crazier. Theirs are still worse, but it's disconcerting.
https://media.law.wisc.edu/m/ntkzy/disorderly_youth_in_public_places.pdf
I went through that document - thanks! It seems pretty thoughtful. But it all seems predicated on dealing with a "youth" population which already wasn't brought up by parents to be well-behaved. There was one part about youth concerned about being attacked by rival groups. This doesn't happen among youth brought up right. Any "rival groups" would be confined to endeavors like team sports ... the ice hockey team in the neighboring town.
No Mow is an almost perfect virtue signal. It begins by taking literally no effort - you don’t even need to put up a sign. It is backed by just-so science stories published in Home and Garden and the NYT Magazine. It allows you to passively annoy your benighted neighbors who are working to maintain their lawns AND GARDENS free of dandelions and weeds. The upside of “cultivating” dandelions is said to include making salads and tea - something almost no one does. And, the topper, like wearing essentially cosmetic cloth masks, is that the science behind the benefits of dandelions to pollinators is not “settled.” You can find just-so stories, which in fact have many more believable observations, and even some data, suggesting dandelions are unimportant at least to bees. https://www.gardenmyths.com/dandelions-important-bees/
In short, it’s a do-nothing gesture that passive-aggressively harms some of your nearest neighbors and has a good chance of being pointless.
I'm with you here. If you want to replace your lawn with something else, good, great. But it should be well-maintained and attractive, which means work. My mom was a pioneer in this regard, replacing lots of lawn decades ago with flower gardens, which are super alive with wholesome insect activity. But a merely un-mown lawn just looks like an abandoned property. I'm sorry, it's ugly. The bees can get along without dandelions, I feel confident. Make yourself a lovely wildflower garden instead! Otherwise, mow that lawn, dagnabit. And make sure to keep kids off it!
Yes, I agree, if you just stop mowing what had been a manicured lawn of alien grass, what will happen is the process of ecological succession, beginning with an abundance of even more alien invasive species. And since it's in a place where the natural fires are suppressed, it would take decades more for succession to reach the stage where native plants dominate.
I've been working hard for several years to establish a variety of native perennial forbs in a space behind my building. There were some already there, but the space, shall we say, presented a lot of opportunities. Finally this year, most of the space is occupied by native perennial forbs, most planted by me; I'm still working on seeds from more species, but I didn't start any seeds indoors. Weeding, unfortunately, always has to be done.
The very large groups of "youths" (the popular euphemism for these black teenagers out of fear of being branded racist for accurately describing what is occurring) acting belligerently and breaking laws is much the result of the Kim Foxx refusal to properly charge, prosecute and punish lawbreakers who are black in a perverted attempt at what she terms social justice.
Removing consequences for bad and criminal behavior guarantees more bad and criminal behavior. Charging a 15 year old who carjacks at gunpoint in juvenile court with misdemeanor trespass to a vehicle with very little
consequences makes it a joke and is a prime factor in the many serial repeat carjacking offenders.
In a democratic society it is said that citizens get the governance they deserve (because they voted for it). So now the good citizens of Cook County are enjoying the fruits of harvest from electing Kim Foxx.
The word "youth" as a noun is not a euphemism, really, especially since the age bracket referred to has vague limits. However, I have the impression that "youth" as a noun has been used as a mild pejorative for decades. But I have noticed that TV reports about the mobs of youths downtown never mention what I see in the videos: all of the youths doing the mayhem appear to be black.
You are very correct Jean, the media goes out of their way to refrain from identifying these large groups of teenagers as black, because in our current socio-political environment, simply stating that fact will quickly get you labeled as racist. (And now let's see if my simply stating that is sufficient to trigger allegations of racism from any other commenters.)
"Every day fistfight?" Eric Zorn seems like a very even tempered guy. Is he getting in fistfights every day? I guess if I see him on the street I will be sure to keep my distance. ;)
I would not say EVERY day. Like, Christmas, for instance, usually not.
Violent flash mobs were a big thing around 2010 - 2011, and throwing everything from curfews to blocking wifi at points on transit did slow it down. All of these draw ire from the ACLU, but there comes a time, and we're there. Here's quite a speech from Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter about the subject at that time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL0QFZBLca4
Long term solutions are a different story. We had a drop in violent crime in every major city from 1995 - 2015. Then came the Great Awokening. and the trend reversed. Criminal Justice Professor Peter Moskos has put together an excellent collection of essays from those in the know, including a few specific to the situation in Chicago, like "Let Police Police":
https://qualitypolicing.com/violencereduction/
Thanks very much for your comment. I had to copy & paste it all into a Word doc for later study. I don't have enough time now to study everything on that website. I have to assume that most of what I've long advocated, is also advocated by some others on that collection.
Eric, my wife and I moved back to Chicago in August of 2020( long story) after 20 years in Indiana. We missed everything this great city has to offer. I’m a 63 year old oncologist. We live on LSD and love the sunrises over the lake. We don’t fell unsafe, but the headlines and what is happening does create an underlying concern. Our biggest worry is that the perception of safety matters more than the statistics. If (when)businesses and residents leave downtown, the problem is real. Agreed that the root causes matter, but IMHO as a doctor, we must stop the bleeding before we fix the cause. I’m of the opinion that mayhem is worse than violence. This includes noise, traffic violations and acts that have no consequences. This feeds a climate of total chaos where anything goes. Violence usually occurs in a permissive environment of anarchy. That’s what I feel when I take a stroll down Michigan avenue, go to Millenium Park. We are having second thoughts about renewing our symphony hall series. Waiting for a bus in the loop at 10:30 PM? No, thank you.
Some friends of mine live in Evanston and attend concerts at Orchestra Hall fairly often. Though they live less than 2 blocks from the 'L' they drive to these events. They park in a nearby garage. So far they haven't had any crime troubles.