The trail grows colder indeed

Once again the Trib editorializes over the ongoing slaughter of innocents on Chicago's south and west sides without a single word of value in alleviating the problem. In 'Three months after Chicago's most violent weekend, the trail grows colder', all the Trib can muster is a wish that community-police relations will improve and that more of the mountain of unsolved murders and woundings can be cleared. Those obvious items are pure fantasy in the real world of societal breakdown in those areas. That breakdown has existed throughout the existence of these essentially third word swaths of poverty and despair established by institutional racism which may actually be getting worse instead of better. Only in the last decade or so has an avalanche of guns made those mean streets significantly meaner...and bloodier. Increased violence and low clearance rates have little to do with the police department which essentially functions as the clean up crew for the bodies piling up every day. A knowledgeable ten year could offer better solutions than the Trib to these intractable problems.

Instead of endless pontificating about something the Trib is not serious in solving, how about demanding a sea change in the manufacture, sale and distribution of hundreds of thousands of guns into the Chicago area. On this issue the Trib has done nothing. How about dropping support for regressive conservative principles that focus exclusively on tax cuts for the rich funded by cuts in essential services desperately needed in Chicago's poorest communities. Their residents suffered for two plus years without a state budget to meet their needs and the Trib endorsed the heartless governor who created that disaster for a second term. How about lobbying the state and federal government for massive investment in education, health care, infrastructure and new businesses on the south and west sides to bring down the staggering unemployment rates which breed crime, gang activity and hopelessness. The Trib is AWOL on these substantive solutions. You could have backed a presidential candidate in 2016 who did focus on these solutions, but chose instead to demonize her, encouraging your readers to squander their vote on an bizarre libertarian candidate.

The editorial ends with this unhelpful lament: "Another Friday night approaches. Soon police radios will crackle with reports of gunfire. More victims — many of them innocent — will fall. Chicago’s carnage, and its shame, will grow." The Trib knows very well Chicago cannot solve this slaughter. It's not just Chicago's shame, it's that of the Illinois and the federal governments as well. Indeed, by offering virtually nothing of value, it's also the shame of the Tribune.