Cynique

When a person voluntarily kills himself/herself, this does not generate a lot of hype because it's not violent enough;suicide is also an act that does not inspire a lot of empathy from the public at large. A lone woman of any race is apprehensive about crossing paths with a male stranger no matter what his color or ethnicity. It's a sign of the times. Yes, a certain element of black men make it bad for all the rest. and this apparently offends the sensibilities of upstanding black men. But, as long as they don't accost a women, then they shouldn't have anything to worry about. What do they care about how white women react to them, anyway, - unless they yearn for their acceptance? I'll take your word that the media reports more black crimes than it does white, undoubtedly because it doesn't think white on white crime is that important, and that blacks don't care about it, either. Exposing and revealing media racial bias identifies the problem but it doesn't solve it. Black folks have their work cut out for them. Where do they start?

Trump and Obama were at the right place at the right time and both filled the void of people wanting change and through the power of their numbers were able to bring it about. Those voting for Hillary may be thinking she is the lesser of 2 evils, but I think Trump's enthusiastic followers see him as a symbol of revolt against an America they can no longer can relate to. His support is a groundswell, and opportunistic Republican leaders are opting to go with him because his chances of winning look good! IMO

Any person who reads or watches TV does know about the high suicide rate and heroin epidemic among young whites all over the country. It does not make headlines but I see segments about this on TV programs such as Nightline and 60 minutes and read featured articles about this in the papers. These same sources also provide me with news about young black men who are not gang bangers and who are achieving and leading positives lives. Black columnists in Chicago's daily newspapers tend to keep the subject of black on black crime in Chicago alive because they are crusaders clamoring for reform. So you think there is a concerted effort on the part of the media to instill fear of blacks in the hearts of white people and doing so will help stifle black progress and enable white advancement and control. What, then, should blacks do to combat this conspiracy? Stop committing crimes??????

But what is the alternative. To keep silent and put a lid on the news in regard to black people killing each other? Does this censorship solve the problem? It's equivalent to thinking if the problem is ignored, it will go away and is counterproductive.

I think Trump is as surprised as anyone that he is faring well in this presidential race. And much of his vaunted wealth is overrated, which is why he's reluctant to invest much of his own money in this campaign. The fact that Trump is viewed with a jaundiced eye by Republican leaders and much of corporate America gives weight to the idea that he is a fluke and if it wasn't for his huge following among the discontented masses he wouldn't be where he is. IMO

So you think the ascendancy of Donald Trump is not fueled by the masses???? Are the Republic powers-that-be responsible for his presidential possibilities? They are the ones who have jumped on the grassroots bandwagon. If he wins, his chances of being re-elected will depend on whether or not his herd remains loyal.

You, Pioneer and Troy have a real grasp of the situation, as opposed to the black women are happy, confident, and carefree claim which is nothing more than a lot of superficial blather. Black women, as a whole, have never been rewarded for the strength, endurance, patience and inner beauty they have personified since day one in America. They remain in the shadow of white women who are born with their elevated status.

@TroyYour observations raise a point. If the situation was reversed and black people were in power, would they grant white people freedom, justice and equality and abolish racism? Or would they simple imitate their former oppressors? There are no heroes in the racial equation. It's all about acquiring power and oppressing others to maintain it. Yes, focus is placed on the murders in Chicago but I don't think black people in the war zone who have been victimized and live in fear have a problem with the media publicizing their plight. They'd rather have it brought to the attention of the public than have it ignored. Reporting of these murders has garnered the attention and concern of those who seek re-election and as a result action is being taken. Those who have a vested interest in playing down Chicago's bad image for their own financial gain are the ones who prefer news of the murders be muted.

YAWNNNNNN. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Poor ol sara. I took the wind out of your sails; just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, you get torpedoed by somebody who's not interested in your drivel about what's-his-name and his girlfriend, actually expecting that your ongoing campaign to besmirch my hometown would not inspire the retaliation that your are such an easy target for because you get caught in your duplicity. I told the truth about the south side and you're still crapping on yourself because you can't wrap your feeble brain around the idea that just because you live on the south side, doesn't change the fact that the highest murder rate in the country is in this area of Chicago. I told you I'm really not interested in any of your explanations so quit wasting your words, because I don't care what your reasons are for being an asshole. And I'll muck with you as much as I damn well please. What are you gonna to do about it? If you can't take it, don't dish it out, and quit trying to play the victim. You seem utterly oblivious to the idea that you are the attention seeker, the educated fool who can't spell or use proper grammar and who has mommy issues but who always wants to point out the ignorance you think thrives on the forum. Get a life. Watta ditz. (Save this post, Troy, so in case ol sara comes gunnin' for me, she can be traced and sent to Cook County jail with the rest of Chicago's low lifes.)

Do you ever say anything that makes sense. I guess you are so possessed by the memories of the snuff dippin ol woman who raised you that you can't think straight. You really are addled-brained.SMH

What does any of this have to do with my personal recollections? What about the zeitgeist of my time capsule post would you correct? Where did I say that the curling iron and hot comb my mother came into possession of during the '20s were not invented by Marjorie Joyner? Puleeze. And why would you even be interested in reading my timeline? i'm certainly not interested in anything you write. LOL YAWNNNN.

@TroyYes, I met my maternal grandfather once during a visit to Nashville when I was about 6 years old. All I remember was that he looked like an old white man, blue eyes and all. I found out later that as a young man he had also been an excellent carpenter. I don't think he kept in touch with the people who once owned him. At a certain age, his half siblings moreorless disowned him and went about their lives as did he. He also reported in a slave narrative he dictated to people who went all over recording these recollections during the Depression, that after the civil war, the KKK had once descended upon Franklin, Tennessee, where he lived, and he and his posse ran them off and they never returned. My paternal grandfather lived with us for a while during World War 2. He was a dapper ol widower who liked gin and had an eye for the ladies. One thing I remember about him was that he always bragged about being able to read and write. My Dad always referred to his ex- slave grandmother as Granmammy and described her as being black as tar. Both of my grandfathers died before I reached my teens, and of course I wish now i had questioned them more about their past. My maternal grandmother, who I never knew, taught school for a while, something women could do back then if they had at least 2 years of high school. I learned that she set up a little room in our basement when she came to live with my mother and taught my older brother before he entered grade school providing him with what have been equivalent to kindergarten. Never knew my paternal grandmother either who died when she was young and my father would talk about him and his younger half-sister crying and running behind the cart carrying her wooden casket to be buried as soon as possible because she wasn't embalmed and the blood was running out of her nose and ears. Recounting this would always make him very sad. From the one picture I saw of her she looked very much like the half native American that she was. My Dad's father and mother weren't married and his father left town and went north to seek his fortune. After his mother's death, my dad went to live with an aunt who totally neglected him and when word got back to my grandfather, he came back to Kansas, and kidnapped my father, taking him back to Chicago with him. My Daddy loved "runnin on the road" which was how people referred to pullman porter work, but I understand my mother was glad when he lost this job because he was away from home so much. (This was all before my time, back during the 20s) My daddy also mentioned how on layovers he'd always go and visit the local tourist attractions in whatever town he was in and that was a great education for him who never got past 8th grade. BTW, I am named for an aunt named Consuelo who, herself, was named for Consuelo Vanderbilt, a famous rich debutante who was like the Jackie Kennedy of her day. From the way my mother described her reclusive sister, I think now that she was probably autistic but back then, they didn't have a name for her condition. (This was probably the case with many people in those days who were thought of as just being a little "off".) I don't think my mother ever met Madam C. J. Walker. She just attended the beauty college named after her. As for the meaning of the word, "toddlin", I would guess that it means fun loving and naughty. The song "Chicago" made famous by Frank Sinatra refers to Chicago as "a toddlin' town", and the line following this phrase is "the town that Billy Sunday could not shut down". Billy Sunday was a famous evangelist on a mission to reform sinners and abolish dens of iniquity.

This Smithsonian museum is an oasis in the desert of the black presence in this country. It is a living tribute to all that's good about the legacy of African Americans, and is a pristine monument to a people who have survived and achieved under the most trying of circumstances. Its stunning architecture is not only aesthetic but symbolic of how outstanding are the people of color to whom it is dedicated. Similarly, in my old hometown we have a black history museum which is a testament to its notable history. My little idyllic village of days-gone-by gets a bad rap nowadays but it still has a few assets that make its upstanding citizens proud. Check out Maywood's connection with the underground railroad, and how the magnet school affiliated with my alma mater, Proviso high school, is currently faring. There's more to this "microcosm of Chicago" than the negative crime statistics that are only a facet in a mosaic community that is struggling to turn itself around. http://www.pths209.org/PMSA-TopStateRank/ Click here to visit our blog at www.westtownmuseum.blogspot.com

@Troy As a matter of fact, I do have stories from my parents. Yes, they did live through all the events you mentioned. My Daddy joined the Army during world war one, but never saw combat because the America's participation in this war only lasted a year and it was over 3 months after he joined. My mother' father was born a slave in Franklin, Tennessee, and in a slave narrative he recalls how as a child while still in slavery he played with his master's children who were also his half-siblings. He later became a deputy sheriff in this town. My father's grandmother was also born a slave but that's all I know about her. His mother was half native American. Both of my parents came north in 1914 during the first wave of the Great Migration and settled in Chicago. My mother once worked as an elevator girl in a vaudeville theater in Chicago called the Rialto. My father also worked as a waiter in what is now Chicago's Auditorium theater but way back then was a hotel. My father also worked as a Pullman porter on the B&O Railroad and had very interesting stories to tell about how while he and his fellow porters were smiling and nodding and answering to the name "George" which was they were all called after George Pullman who invented railroad sleeping cars, they also were small time bootleg whiskey runners. (He and his partners-in-crime were fired when they eventually got caught.) My mother never said anything about women gaining the right to vote. (I have read that the Women's suffrage movement had nerve enough to discriminate against black women.) They both raved about Chicago indeed being a toddlin town and how much fun they would have at rent parties where they would play whist, and drink bath tub hooch, and the dance halls where they'd do the 2-step and the black bottom to Dixie land jazz. My mother also attended a 6-week course in hair dressing at Madam C. J. Walker's college. For years she used the comb and curling iron she was required to purchase for this class to do me and my sisters' hair. As for what they would think of today's world, they would probably feel pretty much the same way that I do. My daddy loved Malcom X and my mother admired Martin Luther King, and they both would be disappointed as to how the black race is back to square one and would side with young people who have little regard for the national anthem or pledge of allegiance. My Daddy was the first person i ever heard say that America was "home of the free white man and the brave black nigga". @Pioneer1 The city of Cairo, Illinois, which is at the very tip of that part of the state that extends deeper into the south than the state of West Virginia, was at one time, very southern in its culture, and could've been described as maintaining slavery. A woman I know from there swears that as child in the 1940s blacks were forced to work in cotton fields for no pay and get off the sidewalk to let white people pass.

tsk-tsk. dumb ass sara should be ashamed of herself for talking about the poor old woman who grunted her out into the gutter like that. LMAO.

We just have to agree to disagree, Pioneer. since you refuse to make a distinction between what I say and what you think it implies. I repeat I have never implied that white people are who would have to fix the crime problem in Chicago. Time and time again I have come right out and said, whether it is correct or not, that most black problems can be attributed to the breakdown of the family, and many other black people who live in the high crime area and see things first hand agree. The baby mama/baby daddy culture is not something that white people can fix. LOL Because sara has no sense of direction, she continues to try and obscure the fact that the SOUTH side of the city of Chicago is where the highest rate of crime and murder tales place and all of her data and denials are just her usual devious way of trying to conceal the truth. .

Justice is not a "given" in this world. and is not always a paragon of virtue because it can incite revenge when those who have been the victims of injustice seek to destroy their victimizers. Injustice walks hand and hand with power because power corrupts. In addition to the tangible, justice also involves the randomness of luck and the energy of hope and the force of Karma.

@Sara Does anybody but you care about how much higher crime is in Maywood as compared to other suburbs, especially since it has been acknowledged that once Maywood became predominately black in the 1980s, it was all down hill after that? Still trying to dispel the idea that Maywood was once idyllic, an obsession that fuels your irrelevant data. In referring to Chicago's high crime and murder rate, the terms "inner city" or "ghetto" have been the words of choice; not south side And it has already been noted that not all of these murders committed were by black people.

@Pioneer1 Again you are putting words in my mouth in an attempt to substantiate your belief which you label as logical, but don't back up with actual facts. I never said what you italicized and put in quotes, to wit: ..."that inner city Blacks are inherently violent and only White people in power can solve the violence problem" Also, what I cited in regard to what organizations are doing to combat the problem were not "after the fact" programs, but ones that run parallel with the ongoing violence, - alternatives made available to black youth who are looking for a different path. I did acknowledge that there was probably some validity to your contentions about lead poisoning, and it behooves you to acknowledge that other factors beside lead poisoning can contribute to the behavior of certain black males. Once you become fixated on lead poisoning being the reason for black crime, then it can become a catch-all scapegoat, just as racism has now become an excuse for every black shortcoming. Doing this is ineffective because it does not empower, all it does is place blame.

I was motivated, in part, to write this chronicle by the exchanges I would have with my kids while picking their brains about what was going out there in the mix. When I'd answer their questions about how things were back in my day, they were amused and amazed by what I would tell them; especially my millennial grand children. So the idea of putting my recollections into writing has been ruminating inside of my head for a while, my intent being that they would be what I labeled a "time capsule" for those curious about the content of the life led by some black people during a pivotal time in our history. And, fortunately, AALBC has provided me with a forum to do this. So thank you Troy, and thank you Chris and Pioneer for your positive input. Anyway, once I started composing this narrative, the memories just flooded back, and every time I thought I was done, I would remember something else. (And I'm still revising and editing my post.)Talking with a couple of the few friends I have left who are my age, also triggered my recall. This account turned out to be a little longer than I anticipated, but it's not as long as it could've been had I not realized that some of what I was describing was too recent. As to what I think the technology and modern conveniences of today have robbed people of, it is their depth. We are all manifestation of our experiences and impressions, and the more things are done for us, the less immersed we become in the ingenuity and challenge it takes to do things for ourselves. In the process, too many of us become one-dimensional. We may have more leisure time, but does it bore us, or does it inspire us to get in touch with ourselves? TV has become our window to the world, the Internet our cyber sphere, social media our alter ego, and life has become different. Better in some ways, but definitely worse in other ones because we are too controlled by and dependent on outside forces. IMO

Pioneer said "So in other words......Black folks in Chicago are just violent and crazy and there's nothing we can do about it but sit down with our faces in our hands and wait on benevolent White folks to come in with a mighty solution?That's what I'm hearing in your one sided argument that focuses strictly on the violence and "after the fact" solutions to it rather than the causes of it." Cynique responds. Well, you're hearing wrong. I didn't recommend what you accuse me of, I simply described what was going on and made no reference to expecting patronizing white people to solve black problems, and said myself that the media was hyping these murders. i'm disappointed that you would resort to the ol straw man tactic of creating a false scenario in order to craft your response - and mount your soap box! If you want to think that lead poisoning and toxins are the causes of Chicago's black male population going bonkers, you are perfectly free to believe this. I am not the one you have to convince. The black leadership in Chicago is who you should be directing your theories to. And lotsa luck on your wish list of intelligent black men coming up with the wherewithal to combat what you identify as the problem. This black think tank would also have to be convinced that unstable home lives, bad schools, lack of jobs and a flawed criminal justice system are not the root causes of the problem, and that environmental hazards that discriminate when it comes to who in the black population will be affected are, instead, the real reason for black crime. BTW, was there a high crime rate in Flint, Michigan?

Well, here we go again. What follows is hopefully the last time I will bore AALBC, recalling life as I knew it growing up black in a small interracial midwestern town where "negros" were a tiny minority, confined to their own little community. Bear with me while I take a different approach to revisiting my early years, focusing on the setting that was the back drop for life as I remember it beginning when I was about 5 which would have been 77 years ago. Obviously, everybody had a childhood, a way station in their life's journey which embodied the joys and woes that came with the territory of growing up. To me, what makes anybody's childhood unique is the era in which it occurred. The zeitgeist of it! My generation is an "endangered species; we are dying out and our voices will soon be stilled. Once this happens, the world will have lost the last of the Great Depression survivors who, as youngsters, did without and made do, not knowing we were poor, existing in an America that had fallen on hard times. I am aware that my early days that included doing the fun things most kids do, are not that special. What is special, however, is the era during which they took place; a richly historical chapter in the American saga when, among other extraordinary things, for over 12 years Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the only president we ever knew. First of all, in my little world, white people were just “them”. If blacks weren’t intrusive or belligerent, white townspeople were reasonably tolerant and receptive to those of us who didn’t go where we didn’t “belong”. For a long time, voluntary segregation was our subtle way of dealing with this. We attended their big, top-notch high school and patronized their public businesses and utilized their facilities and even made friends with some of them, but we never crossed racial lines, and during the course of this co-existence, our way of became like a carbon copy of theirs. Back then, life was "spartan". Things like home phones, refrigerators and stoves with pilot lights were luxuries. If you needed to make a call, you'd go to the pay phone located in the corner drug store, inserted your nickel in the slot and waited for an operator to say: "number please". If you needed to light an eye of your 4-legged enamel stove, you struck a big kitchen match, turned the gas knob and did so. Whoosh! Monday was wash day and our mothers did laundry in an a washing machine equipped with an agitator and an attachment with revolving rollers that would wring clothes out before you hung them outside on a line to dry. The many who couldn't afford one of these, used a rippled scrub board and a bar of lye soap to get the job done, squeezing the water of garments by hand. No automatic dishwashers, either, or aluminum sinks with stopper/strainers. Dishes were done in a big oval pan filled with the hot water you heated up in a teakettle on your stove. An old rag served as a wiper, and soap was sprinkled out from a box of Ivory soap chips. What we couldn't do for ourselves, there was a brigade of men who provided the services essential to our daily lives. There was the Milkman who would deposit quarts of fresh milk on your door step in the predawn hours, milk whose cream had risen to the top making it necessary to shake the bottles up to distribute it. Then there was the Ice Man who, for a small fee, would use his prongs to pick up either a 25 or 50 pound block of ice off the back of his truck, sling it over his shoulder and deliver it to your back door for deposit into the "ice box" which kept your food cold and fresh. (You got your ice "cubes" by using an ice pick to hack off chunks of this big block.) There were the Garbage Men, who drove horse drawn wagons swarming with flies, up and down alleys, picking up what was set out. There was the smudgy-faced coal man who provided fuel for the furnace that heated your home, emptying his sacks of black lumps into the coal bins that were located in the basement of every house. There was the Mail Man who delivered letters twice a day, and was permitted to ride free on the street cars that lumbered up and down the main streets. No supermarkets were around, just a Jewish grocer down the block who extended credit to your parents if they were short on cash. We’d hear about the Dog Catcher but our big mutt roamed free, barking at stray cats, and growling at other unleashed mongrels when he wasn’t gnawing on a bone or woofing down dinner table leftovers. A big treat for us was going to Saturday afternoon matinees where for the admission of 10 cents, we got to enjoy double features of the latest movies starring the likes of Clark Gable or Shirley Temple, films which are now the oldies running on the TCM cable channel. "Extra added attractions" were Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse or Popeye cartoons, newsreels, and exciting weekly serials depicting the cliff-hanging adventures of Flash Gordon and Ming the Merciless. A dime also got you a Super Man or Wonder Woman comic book. Evenings were when we listened to the radio, regularly rooting for boxer Joe Louis to knock out his latest opponent. Other nights we laughed at comedy shows like Amos 'n Andy, or were transfixed by the dramatizations of detective mysteries like Sam Spade, and spooky stories with such titles as "The Shadow". Live broadcasts of big bands appearing at famous night clubs could also be tuned in, playing the swing music we danced the "jitterbug" to at social functions. And speaking of good times, morals were stricter back then. Single couples didn't shack up together, and getting pregnant without being married was a stigma. The only people that used drugs were jazz musicians who smoked "reefer". It was during this period that a world war broke out and galvanized the country, drafting millions of our older brothers to go fight and die all over Europe, and on islands in the Pacific and the Sahara desert in Africa. Meanwhile, on the home front, shortages caused by the war were dealt with by rationing such things as meat, can goods, sugar, shoes and gas. Eager to do their part for the war effort, kids took time out from shooting marbles and cutting out paper dolls, to collect scrap metal to be hauled off and reprocessed into what it took to turn out planes and tanks in the factories staffed by a workforce of women replacing the men who'd gone off to war. It was a time when every block had an Air Raid Warden who wore a white helmet and was in charge during practice blackouts which ended when howling sirens would give the all-clear signal that permitted street lights, and house lamps to be turned back on, leaving us secure in the knowledge that enemy planes would not be dropping bombs on us. It was also common to see dug up vacant lots converted into what, for some reason, were known as “victory gardens” where vegetables were grown - presumably to help win the war. Finally, after four grueling years and tens of thousands of casualties, the Nazis and the Japs were defeated, forced into surrender by the dropping of 2 devastating atomic bombs and the threat of more. In celebration, cities and towns all over the USA welcomed their conquering heroes home with parades. Our 4-hour one proceeded down our main street, a panorama of marching bands, color guards and floats from all over the area paying tribute to the brave sons, fathers, and brothers who made it home alive. It was a stirring spectacle I've never forgotten. Once this costly war ended, the economy rebounded, creating a boom in construction and manufacturing as new products flooded the market. A synthetic called plastic began competing with metal, wood and glass, a material called polyester was as popular as cotton and linen, cleaning aids called “detergents” instantly dissolved grease and grime, medicines called “antibiotics" miraculously cured infections, frozen meat and vegetable were soon competing with fresh and canned products, ball point pens made ink ones obsolete. The war plants went back to making automobiles, and bright-hued streamlined cars began to roll off Detroit's assembly lines. Most exciting of all, TELEVISION appeared on the scene, and our world would never again be the same! (The reports of "flying saucers" later dubbed UFOs that began to mysteriously appear in the skies was another reason for this.) No longer children, as teenagers, we bid "good bye" to the preceding decades and said "hello" to the nascent 1950s that would explode into the tumultuous 1960s. The period of unrest and protest that followed brought about reform and progress and most of all a change in America’s lifestyle as the days of innocence and simplicity morphed into an era of arrogance and sophistication. Time marched on, children were born, houses bought, and middle-age set in. Before we knew it, the torch had been passed and the Baby Boomer generation came into its own. Recently, a lifelong friend and I were recalling how much history we had witnessed, during the terms of 13 different presidents, - all of the black "firsts" that had made us proud, like the one that saw Jackie Robinson become the first negro to play in major league baseball. Then there was the pall cast by the ongoing Communism threat that sustained the 20-year cold war with Russia which gave rise to the Korean conflict and later the Viet Nam fiasco. The rash of assassinations that robbed us of so many of our “best and brightest“. The monumental Civil Rights Struggle and the fatuous Women's Lib movement. The counter-revolution waged by black power militants and hippie flower children. The Cuban missile crisis that almost triggered a nuclear war. The formation of NASA and the exploration of outer space, and the advent of the computerized electronic age that eventually spawned the Internet and it spin-offs, and last but not least, the dawn of a New Millennium that brought the agony of the 911 terrorist attack, and the thrill of an African American man being elected President! During the course of discussing the many famous alumni of our high school, including people like martyred Black Panther leader, Fred Hampton, and Glenn "Doc" Rivers, former NBA star and now coach of the LA Clippers, and one of America's richest black women, Shelia (Crump) Johnson, divorced wife of BET's Robert Johnson, my friend brought up our class mate Eugene Cernan. He was who, after earning an engineering degree from Purdue University, eventually became an Astronaut. For a whole semester Gene sat near us in study hall, and little did we know that years later in 1968, this tall lanky white guy who'd stroll by with a nod, would be the last man to walk on the moon. Small world. But it was ours. Yes, my life could be considered ordinary by some but it was also different, unique unto itself. And now I am left to wonder if, in the present, I will witness yet another first in American history. A woman president. Or an election result that for the great American Empire could be the beginning of the end…

Admittedly my " informants" are middle-class professionals; mostly my in-laws, one of whom is a niece by marriage and is a TV anchor on a local station. Maybe I should say that they are more concerned than caring, because crime is spreading to all the neighborhoods via robberies, home invasions, physical assaults and of course murders. Everybody is encouraged by the alternative programs and services for young people who are seeking a haven from the mean streets. White Catholic priest and Spike Lee confidant, Father Pfleiger, who is an outspoken thorn in the side of The Establishment, gets good marks for keeping Mayor Emanuel on the hot seat, along with the black columnists in the Chicago newspaper i subscribe to, all 4 of whom have good street credentials and great credibility. Jesse Jackson's Operation Push and the Urban League and particularly a group called Cease Fire do what they do, and what they do is positive and productive when it comes to steering young people on a different path, giving moral support to victims. Certain black Aldermen serving in the city council also hold the mayor's feet to the fire and he is in serious trouble if he has any plans about running for a 3rd term, although he is desperately trying to clean up his act, making all kinds of promises for reform. Those creating the Chicago's violence are an underworld of outlaws, who strike fear in the whole south side. So it's not as if the populace is apathetic, because no longer is anybody immune to what used to just happen in the poorer neighborhoods. (I don't know what happened to all the people displaced when all the projects were torn down. Guess they just gave them section 8 vouchers and told them to find their own housing.) From what I hear and see, you are definitely on the mark when it comes to the planned gentrification plotted by Chicago's movers and shakers who do have big plans for crowding out poor blacks and taking over what has become prime real estate ripe for lucrative development. Who knows what will happen? I don't.