http://www.suntimes.com/news/mitchell/5854113-417/unfortunately-for-mothers-suspects-in-flash-mob-case-will-be-made-example.html

I was in Chi-Town this week.  Seems the latest crime trend there involves so-called "flash mobs" where bands of miscreants suddenly pounce upon their victim, beat the cr@p outta them, and then jack their booty.

The mother of one of the perps is all hot and bothered because, in her view, if her son had attacked a black person instead of a white guy his bail woulda been set lower.  ::)  Indeed.  Her son is truly an unwitting victim because of who he chooses to commit violence against.  Such a pity.

Interesting line from the attached article:

"Although each of the teens arrested in last weekend’s mob attacks made a bad decision, they don’t appear to be bad teens."

I would take it a step further than Mary Mitchell.  It's poor-on-rich violence. 

If it was black-on-black violence, nobody would care.

The city would care if it was a rich black tourist who got attacked by a black "flash mob" on the Gold Coast.  There won't be much to-do as long as street crime is confined to impoverished neighborhoods among the invisible lumpen proletariat.  That's just how those people are, you know.

Chicago kept a deprived class of African-Americans ghettoized in hellish housing projects such as Cabrini-Green and the Robert Taylor Homes for decades.  The Chicago Housing Authority in league with business interests has overseen the destruction of dozens of housing projects in the past 20 years.  It's hard to promote the continuation of obvious social decay, but let's not kid ourselves.  Downtown real estate is worth big bucks.  The city destroyed the housing projects for commercial advantage, not social justice.  I'm not sure one could make a direct connection between violent mobs and the destruction of housing projects, but Chicago has a scary history when it comes to race.  When you have extreme poverty adjacent to lavish wealth, there is going to be violence.  I'm surprised the problem is not far worse in Chicago.
::)

Chicago kept a deprived class of African-Americans ghettoized in hellish housing projects such as Cabrini-Green and the Robert Taylor Homes for decades. 


Cabrini Green was not too bad.  Heck, they filmed "Good Times" there.  Home of Kid Dy-No-Mite!

As for the Robert Taylor Homes, what a wretched slum.  The residents systematically destroyed those buildings from the inside out.  I remember driving down I-94 and seeing smoke trails on almost every building where an apartment had been burned out.  Units had steel grates on the balconies so that the residents would have a harder time throwing each other to their deaths.  Fortunately the RTH was demolished.

From the days I lived in the outskirts of Chicago, I believe that it was statistically shown to be the most segregated city in the U.S. of A.  :o

Cabrini Green was not too bad.  Heck, they filmed "Good Times" there.  Home of Kid Dy-No-Mite!

As for the Robert Taylor Homes, what a wretched slum.  The residents systematically destroyed those buildings from the inside out.  I remember driving down I-94 and seeing smoke trails on almost every building where an apartment had been burned out.  Units had steel grates on the balconies so that the residents would have a harder time throwing each other to their deaths.  Fortunately the RTH was demolished.

From the days I lived in the outskirts of Chicago, I believe that it was statistically shown to be the most segregated city in the U.S. of A.  :o


Cabrini-Green was universally described as a hell hole as well.  However, like any place called home, I'm sure you can find thousands former residents with sentimental memories of the place.  "Good Times" was to housing projects what "Hogan's Heroes" was to POW camps.  RTH and Stateway Gardens were so scary the police wouldn't even go into them after a while.  The thing about Cabrini-Green was its location next to tony Chicago high rises, commercial districts, and nightlife hotspots.  I've heard you could see the flares from Cabrini-Green gunfire at night.  Suburbanites did used to venture into CG to buy drugs before they hit the clubs, which is probably why the notoriety of CG grew more quickly than other projects.  I heard of it in the eighties after reading a Newsweek article about a PCP-fueled murder:  A CG resident black gangester hopped up on angel dust gunned down a white female high school beauty queen/honors student outside a nearby shopping mall!  Same as it ever was, Chi-Town!  Anyway, I asked my classmate Kevin whose family had just moved from Chicago if he knew about the place.  He said, "Cabrini-Green, what a sh*thole!  My dad used to make us duck down when we drove past the place because cars sometimes got hit by stray bullets."

There was a lot of talk about urban housing projects in the eighties and nineties with the universal conclusion that segregating generations of poor people into giant ghettos was not a good idea.  The prescription: Demolish the projects and create mixed-income housing developments interspersed throughout the cities.  The Chicago Housing Authority was aggressive implementing the first part of the plan.  The second part of the plan...not so much.  Poor folks are still ghettoized in Chicago but the notorious symbols of the ghetto -- the high rise racially segregated housing projects are gone. 

From the point of view of an alien observer, its about time the lumpen start prying on the rich instead of each other.  Its about time they learned to follow the $$$

From the point of view of an alien observer, its about time the lumpen start prying on the rich instead of each other.  Its about time they learned to follow the $$$


If only the lumpen were aware they were lumpen they might be able to aim the rage somewhere effective.
::)

If only the lumpen were aware they were lumpen they might be able to aim the rage somewhere effective.
::)



Amen

From the point of view of an alien observer, its about time the lumpen start prying on the rich instead of each other.  Its about time they learned to follow the $$$


Yes it only makes sense. Why pull a gun on somebody who has $5 and a couple of joints in his pocket when there are people carrying $100's and little vials of Oxy?

If I'm gonna get life without parole for 2nd degree murder, may as well be for a good reason.

Carry an Uzi.  That'll learn the little f**kers some manners!
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Yes it only makes sense. Why pull a gun on somebody who has $5 and a couple of joints in his pocket when there are people carrying $100's and little vials of Oxy?

If I'm gonna get life without parole for 2nd degree murder, may as well be for a good reason.


The first acts of rebellion are probably mindless violence aimed at inappropriate targets, matters for the police.  When rebellion becomes more focused, an enemy is identified, and attacked.  The third stage is when some semblance of political understanding evolves (that nasty word).  We shall see.

Yeah, there is a lot of shyt going on in this town right now, and we're getting some of it as well.

For those that don't know, Hyde Park (where I live) is usually pretty mellow because it's a University neighborhood, but we're getting all kinds of crap.  There was a murder at the 57th Street beach over Memorial Day weekend, along with several other shootings.  There have been a crapload of assaults and robberies around here.  And I (along with my building and about six blocks of neighborhood) am dealing with some heinous little twats that think throwing the heavy railroad rocks at buildings is a cool new sport.  They've been doing it off and on for two and a half weeks now, used to be only at night, but this weekend they were doing it in the late afternoon.  They've broken quite a few windows, almost hit several others (including a mom and a baby), and they've hit me and my downstairs neighbor.  I did get into a war of words with them yesterday because I was so frustrated, but the chickenshyts hid in the bushes and trees that line the tracks.  Yes, we've been calling the cops and bugging the crap out of them, but so far, they haven't caught the jackazzes.

I know this doesn't contribute much to the conversation, but I'm tired and I needed to vent and this sort of pertains to the whole Chicago violence thing.  I'll come back tomorrow and try to make more sense. :P

"Flash mobs"?

..blame Adobe

Yeah, there is a lot of shyt going on in this town right now, and we're getting some of it as well.

For those that don't know, Hyde Park (where I live) is usually pretty mellow because it's a University neighborhood, but we're getting all kinds of crap.  There was a murder at the 57th Street beach over Memorial Day weekend, along with several other shootings.  There have been a crapload of assaults and robberies around here.  And I (along with my building and about six blocks of neighborhood) am dealing with some heinous little twats that think throwing the heavy railroad rocks at buildings is a cool new sport.  They've been doing it off and on for two and a half weeks now, used to be only at night, but this weekend they were doing it in the late afternoon.  They've broken quite a few windows, almost hit several others (including a mom and a baby), and they've hit me and my downstairs neighbor.  I did get into a war of words with them yesterday because I was so frustrated, but the chickenshyts hid in the bushes and trees that line the tracks.  Yes, we've been calling the cops and bugging the crap out of them, but so far, they haven't caught the jackazzes.


Yeah the U of C campus is an oasis amidst a sea of 24/7 criminality.  I stayed there at a dorm for a week back in '92 and all night long it was gunshots and police sirens.  Even if the cops catch those rock throwers it is really like trying to get rid of cockroaches... plenty more where they came from to jack your car, assault you, sell drugs to their neighbors, shoot their neighbors after they don't pay for the drugs, graffiti your walls, the whole bit. Illinois can't build enough prison cells.

Illinois can't build enough prison cells.


That's why Mayor Daley had all those housing projects built on the other side of the Dan Ryan Expressway.  Virtual prisons!
::)

Yeah the U of C campus is an oasis amidst a sea of 24/7 criminality.  I stayed there at a dorm for a week back in '92 and all night long it was gunshots and police sirens.  Even if the cops catch those rock throwers it is really like trying to get rid of cockroaches... plenty more where they came from to jack your car, assault you, sell drugs to their neighbors, shoot their neighbors after they don't pay for the drugs, graffiti your walls, the whole bit. Illinois can't build enough prison cells.


Only a republican would think that more prisons is the answer to this sort of incoherent, undirected, pre-conscious outpouring of rage.  This is  one of the precursors of a potential social revolution.  Ignore it at your peril 

Only a republican would think that more prisons is the answer to this sort of incoherent, undirected, pre-conscious outpouring of rage.  This is  one of the precursors of a potential social revolution.  Ignore it at your peril 


Prison is the most expensive and least effective social program of all.

Prison is the most expensive and least effective social program of all.


If you call a school for felons a social program

If you call a school for felons a social program


With the way CORI laws are used for even a job at McDonald's, the ex-con's got no choice but to go back into the rackets!
::)

With the way CORI laws are used for even a job at McDonald's, the ex-con's got no choice but to go back into the rackets!
::)


I'm not sure what CORI laws are, but I do know that it is extremely difficult for ex-cons to get jobs.  That could easily be remedied with a "government program" but that ain't gonna happen, and Atlas shrugged

Just a minor update to the original post: flash mobs are still happening.  The Guardian Angels have been patrolling a lot of the CTA stops during the evening hours.

Some woman was also almost kidnapped from the bloody bike path along the lake.  Kind of freaks me out since I do a lot of walking out there, but I'm huge, and fat people are harder to kidnap. ;)

I'm not sure what CORI laws are, but I do know that it is extremely difficult for ex-cons to get jobs.  That could easily be remedied with a "government program" but that ain't gonna happen, and Atlas shrugged


Ah, sorry, I'm a bit provincial here.  In Massachusetts CORI stand for Criminal Offender Record Information.  And it's not laws, so much as regulations imposed by business or agency.  I don't know what they call background checks in other states.  In Massachusetts a CORI can help keep Mr. Pedophile from working in a daycare center.  On the other hand, a CORI can also keep Ms. DUI from getting a job as a records clerk in a hospital.  It's up to the discretion of the employer.  It is acceptable -- even encouraged -- to discriminate against ex-cons.  Thus, if you're out of prison and you learned your lesson and you paid your debt to society...guess what?  You might as well go right back to crime because the straight world doesn't want you!
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Ah, sorry, I'm a bit provincial here.  In Massachusetts CORI stand for Criminal Offender Record Information.  And it's not laws, so much as regulations imposed by business or agency.  I don't know what they call background checks in other states.  In Massachusetts a CORI can help keep Mr. Pedophile from working in a daycare center.  On the other hand, a CORI can also keep Ms. DUI from getting a job as a records clerk in a hospital.  It's up to the discretion of the employer.  It is acceptable -- even encouraged -- to discriminate against ex-cons.  Thus, if you're out of prison and you learned your lesson and you paid your debt to society...guess what?  You might as well go right back to crime because the straight world doesn't want you!

Sounds like SCMODS in Illinois (State County Municipal Offender Data System).

Sure if we know an offender has indeed "learned his lesson" no problem.  But that's the rub, how do you know.  If I am hiring an accountant and I have two otherwise-equal contestants, who am I gonna hire? The guy with a clean record, or the guy who was chief bookkeeper for Bernie Madoff? ???

Just a minor update to the original post: flash mobs are still happening.  The Guardian Angels have been patrolling a lot of the CTA stops during the evening hours.


Those guardian angels kick butt.  8)

I wonder if I could start a chapter in my town? ???

Sounds like SCMODS in Illinois (State County Municipal Offender Data System).

Sure if we know an offender has indeed "learned his lesson" no problem.  But that's the rub, how do you know.  If I am hiring an accountant and I have two otherwise-equal contestants, who am I gonna hire? The guy with a clean record, or the guy who was chief bookkeeper for Bernie Madoff? ???




But the options you list are not realistic.  How about your guy 1 and a guy with a teenage record for criminal vandalism?  Or any other minor criminal offense, six months, all suspended, but still a record?

Those guardian angels kick butt.   8)

I wonder if I could start a chapter in my town? ???


If I'm your local drug lord and I see a crew of good-goody tuffs in red berets vowing to clean up the streets, you know what I see?  A new crew of stealth drug pushers.  Cops never bother us, we're the Guardian Angels.  Okay, most of them joined up intending to do good, but every good man has his price!
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