Bloody Urban Landscapes
Chicago
Driving through some of this city’s neighborhoods is like driving through an alternate, horrifying universe, a place where no one thinks it’s safe to be a child.
You follow a map in which the coordinates are laid out in blood. Over there, in front of that convenience store, is where Fred Couch, 16, was shot to death last December. The Couch boy went to the same school, Christian Fenger Academy, as Derrion Albert, an honor student who was beaten with wooden planks and kicked to death three months earlier in a broad daylight attack that was recorded on a cellphone by an onlooker.
Right there, on South Manistee Avenue, is where a 7-year-old girl riding her scooter was shot in the head and critically injured a few weeks ago.
And here, on East 92nd Street, is where a toddler, just 20 months old, was shot in the head and killed in the back seat of her father’s car.
During a meeting with about a dozen men and boys on Thursday, some of them violence outreach workers on the South Side, I asked for a show of hands. “How many of you have been shot?” I asked. Five raised their hands.
When I asked how many knew someone who had been shot and killed, they all raised their hands.
The crazed, almost apocalyptic violence that is destroying the lives of so many young men, women and children here and in other major cities across the country is a crisis crying out for national attention. But, so far, it’s been met mostly with a shrug.
Dozens of children school-aged and younger are murdered in Chicago every year. More than 150 have been shot (but not all of them killed) during the current school year.
This is occurring in a city that, in terms of its murder rate, is not even near the top of the list of most violent American cities. (In 2008, for example, Orlando, Fla., home of Disney World, had more murders per capita than Chicago.)
That we tolerate this incredible carnage, that there is not even much of a national outcry against it, is a measure of how sick our society has become.
“It’s so different now,” said Ester Stroud, a hospital worker who lives in Northwest Chicago. “When I was young, if a child was murdered, it was a big deal. Now, I’m sorry to say, it’s somewhat routine.”
Mrs. Stroud’s son, Isiah, a 16-year-old who dreamed of dancing professionally, was stabbed to death a few days before Christmas in 2008. He had just won a dance contest and was planning to use the prize money to buy presents. He never made it home from the contest.
I talked for a long time with Mrs. Stroud, 46, and her husband, Eugene, 51, in a room at the school that Isiah had attended, Prologue Early College High. Their grief, after nearly a year and a half, seemed still to be weighing on them like a cloak of lead that cannot be lifted.
Mr. Stroud, his eyes red, recalled playing chess with his son and teaching him to swim, and watching old “Godzilla” movies with him on television. “Thinking about that last day is so hard,” he said. “He gave me the most beautiful smile that last moment that I saw him, when I dropped him off.”
He fingered a picture of his son as he talked.
Mrs. Stroud said, “His classmates are graduating this year. Maybe this is just a mother talking, but I think the world is a little different without him.”
It can be tough to acknowledge just how bizarrely violent some big-city neighborhoods have become. There are places in Chicago and many other cities where the norms of civilized behavior have been driven all but completely underground.
“I would characterize parts of this city as under siege,” said the Rev. Autry Phillips, who is the point person for a number of local antiviolence efforts. “It’s sad when people are afraid to come out of their homes to walk the dog or wash the car because they feel they might get shot.
“We’ve got young people pulling out guns at 12 o’clock in the afternoon and shooting all over the place, no matter who’s around. So we’ve got to do something about that.
“These kids did not come from the suburbs. They did not get dropped off of some spaceship. These are our kids. And we’ve got to take responsibility for them. A lot of them are angry because their daddy’s not around and their mama’s on crack.
“Who was there to teach them how to behave? We have to deal with this. We have to change this behavior. This is not what we were supposed to be.”
The New York Times
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