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Did You Read About This?
By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
Well, here we go again. Another contrived run at
federal monies to heal or to be a balm for a social ill – an
ill that for the most part is self-inflicted.
This time the Reverend (no such Bible term exists)
Jesse Jackson wants the Obama Administration to fund $4
billion so as to intercede with the growing crime rate in
Chicago.
As you may have read, Chicago is nearing almost a mass
meltdown as it regards the horrific shootings that are
occurring at a regular and alarming rate and especially so
during week-ends in the Windy City.
If you read the Chicago papers on line and watch
national news, Chicago is getting the frightful image of
being the murder capital of the US and such an image always
tarnishes a city’s image of not being safe to travel to or
to do business in.
I mean with so many random shootings, including
innocents, who would plan a vacation in certain parts of
Chicago knowing that you could be a statistic on the evening
news?
Back to Jesse. As you know, he has headed Operation
Push and other community organizations whose mission
statement, or part thereof, is to improve the
African-American community. In turn, Jesse is able to
“convince” business corporations of the need for them to
provide seed money to Jesse’s hard working organizations.
Other books and articles have been written about how
Jesse is able to “convince” these business people to fork
over serious bucks to Jesse’s favorite non-profits and in
which non-profits, Jesse has a hand in controlling or
directing the incoming community funds.
But here is the kicker about this latest effort by
Jesse to beg the feds to send $4 billion to Chicago.
The money is purportedly to be used to stem violence in
the Windy City. This violence, known by all who live in the
Chicago, is committed overwhelmingly by black folks against
black folks.
Now, apparently Jesse’s organizations have failed to
stem the bloody shootings in
Chicago and the gangs and the other shooters are apparently
not beholden to Jesse to put down their arms and thus place
a dent in the thriving funeral parlor business.
No. These shooters know not of Jesse and his charisma
is not enough for them to
put down their automatic weapons and foreswear lucrative
drug trafficking.
What sticks in my throat is the fact that the core of the
problem will not be solved by
the feds pumping in billions of dollars to the local police
departments in the hope that
with more armored cars and surveillance cameras Chicago will
not become the urban
battlefield that will rival the current violence in Syria or
in the Gaza Strip.
What Jesse has always failed to stress or even
acknowledge is the fact that with so
much black-on-black crime, the solution will not be in fat
government checks but in
a moral solution to a moral problem.
Black people are killing other black people in Chicago at
a rate that is both alarming and breath taking because they
have no respect for themselves and thus for their victims.
If a person does not have any respect for life and has
inner rage and bitterness regarding how he views himself in
this society, the respect for life is of no import and as
such, I can blow you away since you reflect my own internal
angst of self-hate.
I know….I know. No one wants to have their dirty laundry
aired and to have people look at you with sympathy or
disdain but the facts about what “we” do to “ourselves” will
not
be glossed over by Chicago getting more federal funds.
Those federal funds can go only so far in providing
tangible goodies with more police on the street, more two
way radios, more police sub stations, more jails, more
police informants, more billboards urging people to turn in
their weapons and more street cameras.
However, that is not where the “war” on this
black-on-black crime needs to be waged in order to start
making a dent in this huge mountain of rage and self-hate.
It will start with Jesse, who purportedly is a minister
of the Gospel, acting and speaking as a minister of that
gospel of peace and reconciliation and for him and the
hundreds and hundreds of ministers in Chicago, black, white
and Latino, to export from their church buildings the
message that this chronic gunplay and killings are evil and
demonic.
If Jesse is not willing to stop the knee-jerk reaction
of asking for money to throw at a moral problem and then
stand up to the moral problem with the “ammo” that the
Gospel provides, Jesse is not living up to his profession of
faith.
You would think that with the hundreds of churches in
Chicago, including the numberless store front churches that
only boast a dozen or so members that someone, like Jesse,
could organize them as a potent force to show the affected
people of Chicago that this gun violence and killings can be
stopped but only by confronting the bigger issue which is
when people lose their moral compass and they go astray.
The spin offs of this insidious black-on-black crime
not only has as its victims people who are brutalized and
murdered and injured but also citizens placed in fear of
ever retaking their communities from the thugs and gang
members who exploit fear.
Jesse’s asking for four billion dollars is an affront
to his claim of being a minister of the Gospel because the
Gospel has had not a sufficient chance to be in play in
Jesse’s world. If released with power and authority, this
would make a difference in the killing fields
in Chicago.
Is Jesse willing to put down the microphone and begging
bowl and dust off his credentials as a “reverend” and do the
hard work of ministry and organize the clergy to fight the
good fight of faith? If not, news at eleven: Eight More
People Killed Overnight In Chicago!
Contact Lafe Tolliver at
Tolliver@Juno.com |
