An OP (Obama Plan), not TT (Trump’s Troops) needed to quell Chicago violence

For years I’ve been plugging federal help in dealing with national urban gun violence. With many thousands of guns in the hands of many thousands of jobless, hopeless young people, our country has created a public health catastrophe that has no local or state solution. Neither Chicago nor Illinois can stem the flow of guns used by the dispossessed shooters, nor rebuild devastated communities with miniscule job opportunities. With pandemic the slaughter ticks upward from its usual 40 shot, 10 killed each Chicago week.

It greatly dismays that the upcoming federal response will worsen rather than alleviate epidemic gunfire. Trump’s proposal to send 150 ununiformed troopers to Chicago’s streets to bring peace may be the most cynical political ploy to salvage re-election ever. Rolled out in Portland to rave reviews from conservatives fearing electoral defeat November 3, Trumps Troopers conger up the most anti-democratic impulses in our near unraveling society.

Four years ago my vision was not TT but OP, an Obama Plan, modeled on the Marshall Plan, named for Gen. George Marshall, that rebuilt Europe after WWII. Europe then, like Chicago today, was incapable of extricating itself from its dilemma, war ravaged collapse. The Marshall Plan invested $12 billion ($120 billion in today’s dough) to rebuild 18 European countries. The dividends a U.S. led renaissance achieved were incalculable, echoing down to today.

A new federal effort, named in honor of the man who gave us hope for enlightening change 12 years ago, would be an appropriate way to honor his vision as we struggle to vanquish a federal, not a local or state problem. It’s not troops on the street that is needed. It is federal will to stem the flow of guns and rebuild America’s devastated inner cities. As I said back in 2016, “That is not reparations, not welfare, not free stuff, not paternalism. It is, in the best tradition of the Marshall Plan, American self interest rightly understood.”