Mag Mile destruction 400 years in the making

White Europeans came to America in the 1600’s, massacred and displaced the indigenous peoples, brought in African Blacks as slaves to do the heavy lifting, creating the world’s richest nation. Five centuries on the indigenous people are consigned to reservations and people of color largely crammed into vast urban wastelands of limited jobs, hospitals, healthy food stores; just about everything people need to prosper. They do have unlimited access to guns, further enriching the capitalist power structure and further debasing these wastelands.

The extensive property damage with two shot and 13 police injured Monday morning on Chicago’s premier shopping district for the wealthy, has re-ignited the debate about bringing in the National Guard; even federal law enforcement to restore order. Almost completely missing from this debate is the need for massive federal action to redress 400 years of disinvestment which turned these areas into wastelands. We must rebuild these communities providing jobs for the residents lashing out over 400 years of grievances. Monday’s violence shows when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose. Further missing from this debate is federal action to end the endless supply of guns causing a warlike level of bloodshed.

We of privilege easily turn away from the daily death toll degrading our inner cities. But in Chicagoland, we can no longer turn away when the people living in poverty, crime and despair, built up over 400 years of institutional racism, bring their poverty, crime and despair to the Magnificent Mile. Police, National Guard, Federal Marshalls can’t solve this problem. Only a coordinated federal effort to redress the federal cause of this despair can and must if America is to fulfill its destiny.

55Di-Donna Niesman, Leanne Reis-Ong and 53 others

25 Comme