Anthony Davis was 14. He was one of two teenagers shot and killed this weekend.
30 more people were shot in Chicago.
It was another weekend of growing violence in our city.
Rahm’s police superintendent Garry McCarthy says, “We have a lot of violence, but the fact is, we have to keep doing what we’re doing, because the trend is actually turning. You would never know it, but the trend is actually turning.”
Shortened library hours, no summer jobs for young folks and school closings.
The streets of Chicago are officially more dangerous than a war zone: Homicide victims in the Windy City outnumber U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan this year.
While 144 Americans have died in Afghanistan in 2012, a whopping 228 Chicago residents have been killed, and the murder rate is up a staggering 35 percent from last year. That’s a rash of homicides quadruple the rate of New York City’s, and police and crime experts fear it may only get worse.
Fred Klonsky 
Now, don’t sit out there in the land-of-milk-and-honey suburbs and tsk-tsk what’s going on here in the city. Much like our pension debacle in Springfield, this mess didn’t happen overnight and it’s not going to be remedied overnight.
I live in Chicago. I can tsk-tsk.
How about more than tsk-tsking, Fred? 🙂
Does it appear to you from this blog that I do nothing more than complain about things? You must not be from around here, Dwain.
Wrong again. As I was to inject a thought into YOUR blog. It won’t happen again.
Did someone say you couldn’t inject a thought? Not me. I just said that I lived in Chicago and that I thought there was plenty of evidence on my blog that I do more than complain. And if you notice, the blog is filled with contributions from lots of other people besides me.
To Dwain: What you need to do is to read Fred’s blog a bit more carefully, then inject your thoughts. Just as Fred stated that “there’s plenty of evidence…that I do more than complain,” there’s also “plenty of evidence” (actually, he’s outright SAID it–he talks about his alderman, etc.!) that he lives in Chicago! And–no doubt about it–Fred practices what he preaches! Last–but certainly not least-his blog is a never-ending source of important information for all of us: I would not have known the half of everything that’s going on regarding education, politics, pensions & other issues that I, too, need to DO something about. I often forward his posts to many, many people, all over the country. Diane Ravitch reads him!
-From the Shana Alexander/Jane Curtin to Fred’s James Kirkpatrick/Dan Aykroyd