We’ve been mourning.
Every life that is lost to gun violence ricochets and impacts the victim’s families and friends, and then every home, school and street corner in that neighborhood feels less safe, less ours. Last week several shootings took four lives in Logan Square. On Wednesday after the first three men were shot in west Logan Square, LSNA staff running after school robotics and dance classes made calls to scared parents to come bring their children home after a lockdown order was lifted late into the afternoon. It was a reminder to the rest of the city that west Logan Square is still impacted by a generational gap of safety and opportunities that shape the lives of people who live in segregated communities in our city. In the early part of the 20th Century, Chicago’s political and real estate tycoons laid out a plan of racialized housing segregation and investment that still determines the quality of life you experience today depending on your zipcode (and your race, by design). So much so that public health professionals at Rush Hospital have shown that they can predict the lifespan of a child born today depending on whether they go home to a family in Englewood or Streeterville. This apartheid should shock us all. We have the power to change this.
When the murders happen on the North side, everyone wants to know why this keeps happening. Let us make this clear, our community understands the deeper root causes of why these deaths continue to happen. LSNA grieves for the lives lost last week in west Logan Square this week and every life lost to gun violence on the West and South sides every day. In addition we grieve for those in our families who died due to COVID-19, uncontrolled diabetes, heart disease, untreated mental health conditions--all the ways that accumulated effects of oppression kills Black and Brown bodies disproportionality in our city and country. Preventable deaths of Black and Brown folks are the cost of generations of segregation.
The violence of poverty proceeds community violence. While real estate investors and wealthy folks (mostly white) have flocked to the east side of Logan Square making it completely inaccessible for most working class and poor families to afford to live, the west end of the community continues in the old Chicago pattern of racialized segregation where mostly Latinx (im)migrant families experience high unemployment rates, food insecurity, health disparities, while seeing the cost of housing continue to skyrocket, and schools that continue to have to pull off miracles to meet the needs of all children--all of which impacts folks sense of mental and emotional well being. In response, we’ve needed to help redistribute over a $1 million dollars in pandemic relief to families, with help from donations of neighbors, local restaurants, foundations and state and city funds. In addition to community care, groups here in Logan Square and across our city have been organizing for structural solutions that would protect and honor the lives of the people in our neighborhoods.
We mourn and we organize to heal. The solutions that are needed are long term, deep, and structurally aimed at reversing the impacts of segregation. Short term, and short-sided solutions like hiring more police will not heal what is broken in our city. The recent passing of the city budget is a step in the right direction so that our neighborhoods can begin to heal from decades of disinvestment and trauma. Using the money from the federal relief package, Chicago can make huge strides toward creating safe and healthy neighborhoods for everyone. The budget proposed by Mayor Lightfoot makes some of the investments that community advocates have been calling for – but it leaves out far too many residents and puts money into things that don’t ultimately create real safety such as neighborhood surveillance. Community groups, labor unions, and Alderpeople from across the city have come together to create a series of budget amendments that fix many of the problems in the budget so that more neighborhood residents get the resources they deserve, including:
Move money back into the public mental health clinics so that more residents have access to quality mental health care.
Increase funding for Single Room Occupancy (SRO) housing and eviction prevention services
Cancel the ineffective and costly shotspotter surveillance program.
Remove unfilled positions in the police department budget so that money can be used elsewhere
Replace lead pipes in neighborhoods, so more residents have access to safe water
Create more accountability and transparency to make sure all these things actually happen!
#TreatmentNotTrauma #StopShotspotter #OurChiBudget2022