Printed: More Killing in Chi than Afghanistan

This article is from the summer but I just re-found it and it seemed worth posting.

Facts from this article: 
- More Chicago residents - 228 - have been killed so far this year in the city than the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan - 144 - over the same period.
- Chicago's murder rate is also currently quadruple that of New York and double Los Angeles' rate.
- The city's homicide rate is up more than 50 percent over last year.

Tio Hardiman, Illinois director of anti-violence group CeaseFire, wrote... "once you take a closer look, you will find out that the majority of conflicts stem from interpersonal conflict that escalate into a gang conflict." 
 

So sad. This reminds me of three things:
1) The importance of teaching SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL SKILLS in elementary school.  When kids don't know how to handle anger, they act out. When kids don't know how to resolve conflicts peacefully, they learn to resolve them violently.

2) In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire writes,"submerged in reality, the oppressed cannot perceive clearly the 'order' which serves the interest of the oppressors whose image they have internalized. Chafing under the restrictions of this order, they often manifest a type of horizontal violence, striking out at their own comrades for the pettiest reasons." Fanon writes, "while the settler or policeman has the right... to strike the native... you will see the native reaching for his knife at the slightest hostile glance cast on him by another native, for the last resort of the native is to defend his personality vis-a-vis his brother." In Crips and Bloods: Made in America, a former gang leader says, "part of the mechanics of oppressing people is to pervert them to the extent that they become the instruments of their own oppression." I think it's important to note that populations in all places and eras that have been oppressed develop the coping mechanism to turn their anger 'horizontally,' since that's their only option. (Ex. Gangland has featured gangs on Native American reservations). Then the oppressed are further blamed and viewed as 'inherently inferior' by their oppressors.

3) Equally as sad as these numbers is the ACCEPTANCE and even 'expectedness' of these numbers. I heard someone say once that if a bunch of rich white kids in the US started killing each other, people would clearly be alarmed and quickly help.  We should be just as alarmed by this.