Chicago. One of America’s greatest cities. Home of big steaks, Chicago dogs, deep-dish pizza, great blues music, the Cubbies, corrupt Democratic politicians…. Good stuff.
And what else? Crime.
Violent crimes in Chicago grew to its highest level in a decade last year, jumping 11 percent. Robbery and vehicle theft both rose by over 30%; carjackings are more than double pre-pandemic levels. Overall, there are concerning spikes in robberies and assaults — and only about 10 percent of crimes resulting in an arrest.
There is a website called www.Heyjackass.com that reports on shootings in Chicago. To date this year, 1985 people have been shot, 340 of those people died from their wounds. I’m not great at math, but the site says that’s a person shot every 2 hours and 48 minutes.
At that rate, we should give Chicago the new name of North Columbia. Or Little Bogota. Or “Democrats Can Fuck up a Great Cityville” although that last one is just funny and not at all flattering.
Nearly 3 in 4 Chicago voters want more police officers, but who cares what the people want!? Generally not me; I know what’s best. We need reimagined police, right?!
Oh, yeah, also black folks — I’m black so this should concern me — black Chicagoans represent 77% of the city’s homicide victims while making up just 29% of the overall population. Ugh. Even I can see that math is not great.
But how about education? According to a study from UChicago’s Consortium, damn that’s a weird word, Chicago’s public schools are a disaster — half of the district’s high schools ranked in the bottom 1 percent nationwide; nearly half of the students dropped out before graduating.
I think there is a shortage of teachers, a shortage of money, a shortage of classrooms — and maybe politicians who love to spend money on wasteful shit. Yeah and over $400 million in past two years on housing for “migrants” or on companies that said they were helping migrants… something like that.
What was the point of this diary entry? I get lost sometimes in my own ramblings. Oh yeah, Chicago. It’s a great city. Can’t wait to get to the DNC.
Fingers crossed that they will let me talk! Where did that fucking staffer put my water bottle full of wine anyway?