CNN Opinion: Treat Chicago gangs as terrorists

[formerroomate99]

www.cnn.com/2013/04/24/opinion/granderson-chicago-terror/index.html?hpt=hp_t4


An excerpt:
What's responsible for the bloodshed? Gang violence, as usual. Police estimate that of the 532 murders in 2012 -- nearly 1.5 a day -- about 80 percent were gang related. And yet, despite that rather staggering statistic, the national outcry is muted at best -- nothing, to say the least, like the kind we saw last week in Boston. What is it about the word "gang" that brings out the apathy in us? Would we view Chicago differently if we called the perpetrators something else?

In Chicago, nurses dodge bullets to provide care

I'm not saying the people of Boston do not deserve our sympathy; they do. Nor am I suggesting the apprehension of Boston terror suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was not essential. But how do we explain our habit of greeting terrorists with 24-hour news coverage and relentless wrath while overlooking the gangs that terrorize our streets daily -- as if terrorism were only an enemy state and not a concept.


What are your thoughts? 

[The Captain]

I live in the greater Chicago area and couldn't agree more.

The problem is, most of the murders are gang on gang so most people don't give a damn.  The only time there is a bit of an outcry is when an innocent (child) gets caught in the cross-fire.  Even then we are so numb to the constant barrage of violence it's difficult to get worked up.

[Savoir Faire-Demogague in NJ]

The problem is, most of the murders are gang on gang so most people don't give a damn.

I am positive the dead gang members family gives a damn.


I am curious as to why there area ny murders at all in Chicago, the city with the most restrictive gun control laws in the country.

[The Captain]

Apr 25, 2013 14:10:15 GMT -5 Savoir Faire-Demogague in NJ said:

The problem is, most of the murders are gang on gang so most people don't give a damn.

I am positive the dead gang members family gives a damn.


Absolutely.  You usually see them on the TV crying about how their innocent child was not associated with gangs, was framed for the drug bust they did time for, and was in the process of getting their life back together, enrolling in a GED class etc.  I'm not trying to be insensitive but it is truly sad how often the same "formula" plays out.

I am curious as to why there area ny murders at all in Chicago, the city with the most restrictive gun control laws in the country.

Umm, yea.  Like criminals are going to follow gun control laws....

[swamp]

Terrorist attacks are to send a "political message" and scare the general public.<br><br>Chicago's murders are about protecting drug turf. 

[djAdvocate]

utterly and completely opposed.  i would rather that the definition applied to FEWER than more.

[TonyTiger]

The article appears to be the plaintive cry of one lone CNN content-contributor, not something that the CNN news organization at-large is advocating for.

The fellow expressed his opinion and it got published.

That's nice.

Nothing will come of it.

Diddly-squat.

[The Captain]

Here's the thing, though.  The pool of Federal money to combat Terrorism is MUCH larger than the pool of Federal money available to combat Gangs.

Kinda like the whole Ebonics thing, nice way to try to get extra funding to fight a problem, but flawed in the fundamentals.

[Robert not Bobby]

My thoughts…

I love Chicago, great architecture, great water front and great food, and mostly great hard working people. The city of broad shoulders…blah, blah, blah…

Here is the thing, probably 95 percent of those 500 plus killed per year represents mostly black on black violence, the Latinos are not far behind. So let them kill each other off. Not even in the 30s when Capone had all the corrupt politicians and the judges in his pocket, was something as outrageous as this death count ever imaginable.

Honestly, I have no sympathy for sub cultures whose greatest aspiration is $500 sneakers…and they will car jack you to get them. Where is the sense in any of this…who are these morons that will kill you for twenty bucks?

I don’t really understand it.

Treating gangs as terrorists...most gang members are probably more stupid than these two dufuses involved in the Boston incidence. If it makes a difference in the rate of capture and prosecution, treat then as enemy combatants...but we have RICO, but most of these street corner degenerates would not be captured under that law.

[Tennesseer]

Apr 25, 2013 14:10:15 GMT -5 Savoir Faire-Demogague in NJ said:

The problem is, most of the murders are gang on gang so most people don't give a damn.

I am positive the dead gang members family gives a damn.


I am curious as to why there area ny murders at all in Chicago, the city with the most restrictive gun control laws in the country.

I believe someone in the past here has said the guns are coming from Indiana.  East Chicago Indiana is 23 miles from Chicago center (or so) via I-90. 

[formerroomate99]

Yes, the people in those neighborhoods are being terrorized.  Yes, nobody should have to live that way.  And no, the federal government hasn't done much about it. 

But if the people in a neighborhood have an adversarial relationship with law enforcement, don't give policemen the benefit of the doubt, and vote for politicians that go soft on crime, it shouldn't suprise anyone if that neighborhood has higher than average crime.  And if the majorty of children in a neighborhood are born to parents who couldn't be bothered to get thier shyt together before having children, and instead chose to have children when they were young and stupid and have nothing to offer a kid, one shouldn't be suprised if those kids end up too wild and damaged to be educated or operate in civil society, due in large part to piss poor parenting, and end up in gangs because nobody else wants anything to do with them. 

No decent person wants any child to grow up in such an environment, but you can't force people to change their mindset or priorities and choose to help themselves. 

[TonyTiger]

Don Zaluchi - Detroit - scene: The Peace Conference of the Dons - with Don Corleone - The Godfather - 1972 - Paramount Pictures



"I also don't believe in drugs. For years I paid my people extra so they wouldn't do that kind of business. Somebody comes to them and says, "I have powders; if you put up three, four thousand dollar investment -- we can make fifty thousand distributing." So they can't resist. I want to control it as a business, to keep it respectable. I don't want it near schools -- I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia. In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people -- the colored. They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls." - Giuseppe Zaluchi

====================

Generally speaking, folks didn't give a rat's ass what happens in those inner-city $hithole ghetto neighborhoods in the 1940s (reinforced by drama-fiction such as the above), and they really don't give a rat's ass what happens in those places today, either... all of our fine, well-intentioned civil rights legislation and assistance programs and the like, notwithstanding... the attitude is: It's animals killing animals, so, let 'em have at-it... the more gangsta-home-boys who kill each other off, the better - less to worry about.

And, of course, when they get too uppity and their violence threatens to spill over into Nice Folks Land, well, that's why the Governor has the National Guard on-tap, to throw a ring of steel around the City or its troublesome part(s), to go in there and bitch-slap the lot... jailing a few hundred and shooting a few dozen along the way, just for good measure.

Bottom line - when you get right down to where the bear shits in the woods - the only thing that's changed since the 1940s is that 70 years have passed on the calendar...

People have gone in there and tried playing patty-cake with some of the gangs and various tough-guy or bad-boy residents or hot-spots within such cities - and for years on-end - but it never does any lasting good... so the fostering conditions and their evolved byproducts continue to be a boil on the backside of more genteel society...

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Apr 25, 2013 13:58:17 GMT -5 formerroomate99 said:

www.cnn.com/2013/04/24/opinion/granderson-chicago-terror/index.html?hpt=hp_t4


An excerpt:
What's responsible for the bloodshed? Gang violence, as usual. Police estimate that of the 532 murders in 2012 -- nearly 1.5 a day -- about 80 percent were gang related. And yet, despite that rather staggering statistic, the national outcry is muted at best -- nothing, to say the least, like the kind we saw last week in Boston. What is it about the word "gang" that brings out the apathy in us? Would we view Chicago differently if we called the perpetrators something else?

In Chicago, nurses dodge bullets to provide care

I'm not saying the people of Boston do not deserve our sympathy; they do. Nor am I suggesting the apprehension of Boston terror suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was not essential. But how do we explain our habit of greeting terrorists with 24-hour news coverage and relentless wrath while overlooking the gangs that terrorize our streets daily -- as if terrorism were only an enemy state and not a concept.


What are your thoughts? 

I've thought this for years.  When I see "Gangland" on cable, I have often wondered when they're showing these HUGE gatherings of armed thugs standing around why someone doesn't just drone their asses.  You don't have a Constitutional right to operate a paramilitary organization complete with territorial claims within the United States of America.  And before one of you decides to make an idiotic comparison between gangs in Chicago and the idiots running around wearing cammo in the woods and calling each other General and Supreme Arch Commander of the Galaxy in Michigan-- they're not the same thing.  They should be dealt with, too-- but they aren't the fire that needs putting out first.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Apr 25, 2013 17:58:16 GMT -5 TonyTiger said:

Don Zaluchi - Detroit - scene: The Peace Conference of the Dons - with Don Corleone - The Godfather - 1972 - Paramount Pictures



"I also don't believe in drugs. For years I paid my people extra so they wouldn't do that kind of business. Somebody comes to them and says, "I have powders; if you put up three, four thousand dollar investment -- we can make fifty thousand distributing." So they can't resist. I want to control it as a business, to keep it respectable. I don't want it near schools -- I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia. In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people -- the colored. They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls." - Giuseppe Zaluchi

====================

Generally speaking, folks didn't give a rat's ass what happens in those inner-city $hithole ghetto neighborhoods in the 1940s (reinforced by drama-fiction such as the above), and they really don't give a rat's ass what happens in those places today, either... all of our fine, well-intentioned civil rights legislation and assistance programs and the like, notwithstanding... the attitude is: It's animals killing animals, so, let 'em have at-it... the more gangsta-home-boys who kill each other off, the better - less to worry about.

And, of course, when they get too uppity and their violence threatens to spill over into Nice Folks Land, well, that's why the Governor has the National Guard on-tap, to throw a ring of steel around the City or its troublesome part(s), to go in there and bitch-slap the lot... jailing a few hundred and shooting a few dozen along the way, just for good measure.

Bottom line - when you get right down to where the bear shits in the woods - the only thing that's changed since the 1940s is that 70 years have passed on the calendar...

People have gone in there and tried playing patty-cake with some of the gangs and various tough-guy or bad-boy residents or hot-spots within such cities - and for years on-end - but it never does any lasting good... so the fostering conditions and their evolved byproducts continue to be a boil on the backside of more genteel society...

The liberals were supposed to have exterminated them by now.  They were supposed to be crowed into ghettos, given public aid to pacify them, and then eliminated through abortion.  That's what Margaret Sanger's eugenics-based "Planned Parenthood" was designed to do.  I have no doubt drugs were deliberately introduced into the "hood" or that we don't look the other way on gang violence in liberal strongholds because they're not a bunch of white kids in the suburbs of Newtown, CT where the respectable liberals live.

[fairlycrazy23]

So, what they want to put Chicago under martial law and go door to door busting into to people's houses?

[TonyTiger]

No, this is a non-event - all this chatter is merely the result of a lightweight op-ed piece on the CNN website - there is no widespread call for action which has any serious traction at the moment, insofar as I am aware... much ado about nothing (in a pending-action context).

[formerroomate99]

Apr 26, 2013 9:35:11 GMT -5 TonyTiger said:

No, this is a non-event - all this chatter is merely the result of a lightweight op-ed piece on the CNN website - there is no widespread call for action which has any serious traction at the moment, insofar as I am aware... much ado about nothing (in a pending-action context).

As just how would you suggest we deal with the violence?  The people in those neighborhoods won't work with police.  So are you suggesting we put tens of thousands of heavily armed policemen in those neighborhoods to keep the violence down?   Look at Iraq.  Before the war, the level of violence wans't anywhere near as high as it was after we toppled the government, mainly because the government was a brutal dictatorship.  But once we took out Sadaam, those people killed each other left and right and there wasn't much that our troops could do about it. 

And what about how these kids are being raised?  Nobody is forcing the people in those neighborhoods to have children when they are young and stupid. They are doing it all on their own, and the kids aren't being raised right as a result.  Are you suggesting we just take away all the kids born to people who can't run their own lives and either put them up for adoption or send them to boarding school? 

Yes, there are things those of us on the outside can do to end the violence, but they aren't the kind of things that will happen in democracy. 

[TonyTiger]

Apr 26, 2013 10:17:13 GMT -5 formerroomate99 said:

Apr 26, 2013 9:35:11 GMT -5 TonyTiger said:

...  

I have no answers and do not pretend (nor say) otherwise. I merely stated that this is a non-event - that we were chatting about an isolated recent op-ed piece... there is nothing new and major in-the-works for this purpose that would register on the national scope. Oh, and I also said that - nationwide - most folks just don't care about this - it's not even happening in the same universe that they live in.

[formerroomate99]

Oh, and I also said that - nationwide - most folks just don't care about this - it's not even happening in the same universe that they live in.

I disagree with you Tony.  A lot of people do care about this.  This is why many people can't bear to watch the news.  It's all just too heartbreaking. 

But since you can't help someone who refuses to help themselves, when you're dealing with someone who consistantly makes self destructive decisions, the most logical course of action is to make damn sure that you and yours don't get sucked into the vortex caused by their actions. 
  
There are plenty of things that can be done to combat the violence, but most of them are incredibly intrusive and would be fought tooth and nail by the very people you're tying to help. 

And may I also add, that for many years, anyone who suggested a solution to this problem that didn't fit the 'tax and spend limousine liberal' status quo was routinely accused of racism, wanting people to starve and many other ugly things in order to shut down any rational discussion.  If people are apathetic, it isn't because they are racists, it is because they are sick and tired of being falsely accused of racism for not supporting policies that clearly don't work.   

[shelby]

Apr 26, 2013 8:21:32 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

Apr 25, 2013 17:58:16 GMT -5 TonyTiger said:

Don Zaluchi - Detroit - scene: The Peace Conference of the Dons - with Don Corleone - The Godfather - 1972 - Paramount Pictures



"I also don't believe in drugs. For years I paid my people extra so they wouldn't do that kind of business. Somebody comes to them and says, "I have powders; if you put up three, four thousand dollar investment -- we can make fifty thousand distributing." So they can't resist. I want to control it as a business, to keep it respectable. I don't want it near schools -- I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia. In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people -- the colored. They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls." - Giuseppe Zaluchi

====================

Generally speaking, folks didn't give a rat's ass what happens in those inner-city $hithole ghetto neighborhoods in the 1940s (reinforced by drama-fiction such as the above), and they really don't give a rat's ass what happens in those places today, either... all of our fine, well-intentioned civil rights legislation and assistance programs and the like, notwithstanding... the attitude is: It's animals killing animals, so, let 'em have at-it... the more gangsta-home-boys who kill each other off, the better - less to worry about.

And, of course, when they get too uppity and their violence threatens to spill over into Nice Folks Land, well, that's why the Governor has the National Guard on-tap, to throw a ring of steel around the City or its troublesome part(s), to go in there and bitch-slap the lot... jailing a few hundred and shooting a few dozen along the way, just for good measure.

Bottom line - when you get right down to where the bear shits in the woods - the only thing that's changed since the 1940s is that 70 years have passed on the calendar...

People have gone in there and tried playing patty-cake with some of the gangs and various tough-guy or bad-boy residents or hot-spots within such cities - and for years on-end - but it never does any lasting good... so the fostering conditions and their evolved byproducts continue to be a boil on the backside of more genteel society...

The liberals were supposed to have exterminated them by now.  They were supposed to be crowed into ghettos, given public aid to pacify them, and then eliminated through abortion.  That's what Margaret Sanger's eugenics-based "Planned Parenthood" was designed to do.  I have no doubt drugs were deliberately introduced into the "hood" or that we don't look the other way on gang violence in liberal strongholds because they're not a bunch of white kids in the suburbs of Newtown, CT where the respectable liberals live.

you still got it Paul.....the paranoids I mean.

[swamp]

I have no doubt drugs were deliberately introduced into the "hood" or that we don't look the other way on gang violence in liberal strongholds because they're not a bunch of white kids in the suburbs of Newtown, CT where the respectable liberals live.

Drug use is not a racial issue.   Plenty of middle and upper class people use, it's taht they're seen as "needing treatment" not prison. 

Rush Limbaugh, anyone?  If Rush was poor and from the ghetto and did what he did, he would have gone to prison.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Apr 26, 2013 14:41:06 GMT -5 swamp said:

I have no doubt drugs were deliberately introduced into the "hood" or that we don't look the other way on gang violence in liberal strongholds because they're not a bunch of white kids in the suburbs of Newtown, CT where the respectable liberals live.

Drug use is not a racial issue.   Plenty of middle and upper class people use, it's taht they're seen as "needing treatment" not prison. 

Rush Limbaugh, anyone?  If Rush was poor and from the ghetto and did what he did, he would have gone to prison.

Fair point.  And no doubt.

[The Captain]

I agree that drugs are not a racial issue.

You have pockets of poverty everywhere.  Everyone loves to spout the statistic that more whites are on welfare than minorities (true in numbers, but not as a percentage of the total population).  However, gangs are a racial issue and we are just to PC to confront it.  It's not related just to poverty, as some would like to claim, there are larger social issues at play.

75-85% of all gang members are minority, despite the fact that minorities represent only 24% of the total population.  It's become ingrained and far too acceptable in their culture.

www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Survey-Analysis/Demographics#anchorregmat

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Apr 26, 2013 16:35:21 GMT -5 The Captain said:

I agree that drugs are not a racial issue.

You have pockets of poverty everywhere.  Everyone loves to spout the statistic that more whites are on welfare than minorities (true in numbers, but not as a percentage of the total population).  However, gangs are a racial issue and we are just to PC to confront it.  It's not related just to poverty, as some would like to claim, there are larger social issues at play.

75-85% of all gang members are minority, despite the fact that minorities represent only 24% of the total population.  It's become ingrained and far too acceptable in their culture.

www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Survey-Analysis/Demographics#anchorregmat

Are you saying I couldn't join the Latin Kings?

[Value Buy]

Apr 25, 2013 16:54:27 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Apr 25, 2013 14:10:15 GMT -5 Savoir Faire-Demogague in NJ said:

The problem is, most of the murders are gang on gang so most people don't give a damn.

I am positive the dead gang members family gives a damn.


I am curious as to why there area ny murders at all in Chicago, the city with the most restrictive gun control laws in the country.

I believe someone in the past here has said the guns are coming from Indiana.  East Chicago Indiana is 23 miles from Chicago center (or so) via I-90. 

I-90 is the long route to Chi-town. I-90 Actually goes around Chicago.
Take old state road 41 or route 20 and it is less than 10 miles from downtown.
Yes, many of the guns are bought in Indiana.
Not necessarily, illegally, mind you.
Through straw purchases by their girlfriends, cousins, etc, with no criminal record purchasing them, or out of the back of a Cadillac trunk for $500 cash, illegally where they have stole them from opposing gang members, or house burglaries, etc. 
Incidentally, the Chicago police happily announced how shootings and murders were way down from a year ago the other day.
Then we had the first 80 degree day.
They had 30 plus shootings that day alone, one in front of a police station.....

[TonyTiger]

So, do we revise the Second Amendment to specify that any American can have guns except for Inner City Black Folk? 

[EVT1]

Hard to get tough on gangs with the Constitution-  right to assemble and bear arms and all.  Another point I would add is that gang members are availing themselves of carry permits- and in case after case are avoiding jail due to stand your ground laws- that being the unintended consequences of that law.

Terrorists- nope.  I get the sentiment- but we have RICO, public nuisance, and other options.

Want a real fix- legalize the drugs, prostitution, and other vice bullshit that only serves to hand them a payday.  You cut off that income stream then they have nothing left to do other than turn into a roving band of petty thieves.  Can't buy all of that hardware without cocaine sales.