What's keeping them from getting education, jobs, and homes? They quit school to sell drugs or pop out babies. They never try to do any better.

Nothing is keeping them from getting a education a job and the perks that come from that.. other then themselves.

It has been well over 50 years and not much has changed.. same " crutch" is being used. Same " poor me" attitude. Same " give me" attitude.

And those points being made about " how to fix the problem" sure we could do them

But did we have to do that for any ethnic group that had to sew its way into the American fabric and become self supporting, like the Chinese, Irish, Italians, Polish, Latin's, Pakistani's, Hindu's ,ect, ect, ect.... nope.

Look up how the Chinese and Irish were treated here.. didn't stop them from bettering themselves.. did it.

How about this...make a better life for your family and yourself... like all the other ethic groups had to do and stop blaming other people for your shortcomings and your life choices.

Through Aug. 5, Chicago police had recorded 327 homicides, a 20 percent decline from 411 homicides a year earlier and exactly 300 fewer shooting incidents than the 1,426 at this time last year. But that weekend, in which 74 people were shot, 12 fatally, marked the worst violence of any single weekend in the city, according to Chicago Tribune data, since 2016 when homicides reached their highest mark in two decades

But I did find some good news from Gary Slutkin, the University of Illinois at Chicago epidemiologist who founded Cure Violence, formerly known as CeaseFire, an anti-violence program that has been adopted by more than 20 other cities, including New York and Los Angeles.

Last year I wrote about how Slutkin had predicted a rise in violence when the program lost its state funding amid prolonged political gridlock. Unfortunately Slutkin turned out to be right. The only districts that didn’t experience a surge were two that found funding elsewhere.

But after funding was restored this year, Slutkin told me in a telephone interview, gun-related violence in the affected districts “dropped by 30 percent in the first six months of this year.”

Unlike more traditional programs, Cure Violence doesn’t focus on root causes of violence or saving one child at a time. Its “violence interrupters,” some of whom are ex-offenders themselves, focus on individuals who have a beef that can lead to the sort of retaliatory attacks that boil up behind most of the city’s homicide statistics.

Slutkin came up with the idea while working with the World Health Organization to fight AIDS, cholera and tuberculosis epidemics in Africa. Treat violence as if it were a virus? That’s the idea and it works, according to a 2008 Justice Department evaluation and various university studies.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/page/ct-perspec-page-ceasefire-gary-slutkin-rahm-emanuel-0812-20180810-story.html#


Kudos for programs aiming to reduce the violence

it must be so nice to be privileged and view life so simply ...

imagining that millions of people are just choosing to live in poverty and not do better, because 'all' they have to do to change it is get a better education and a job ...

folks should get together and go impart their wisdom to the millions who are just too dumb or lazy to figure out how that works ...

maybe explain to kids who are crossing over drunks and gangsters and drugs to get to school on an empty stomach and little rest with subpar buildings and teachers how to 'just get an eduacation'

maybe explain to kids who experience that environment and education and compete against kids with more white sounding names and better references and resumes with prettier credentials and more impressive sounding experiences to 'just get a job'

or, people can go on putting their heads in the sand hanging on to their sense of superiority compared to those other 'lazy' people who just dont want to get an education or a job ...