By Fran Eaton –
As outside temperatures decline for a season, so will the number of street gang murders that plagued the streets of Chicago during one of the city's bloodiest summers. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the public the violence could be controlled, and appealed to the gangs to stop. But rather than bringing an end to the rampage, it simply faded off the headlines and away from discussion.
The killings were mainly gang-related, Chicago police admitted. The gentrification of areas in the city once controlled by gangs forced them to find other territory to control. As the territorial battles ensued, gang wars and killings followed.
The Chicago Crime Commission estimates 70 to 100 gangs in the Chicago metropolitan area with a membership of between 68,000 to over 150,000 - the most of any city in America. This summer, they terrorized the city with nearly 400 homicides, also the highest in the nation.
Gang recruiting is most dominant among some of the city's most impoverished and victimized Hispanics and blacks. In those struggling communities, jobless rates are near 22 percent and even higher among teens.
Two weeks ago, the Chicago Crime Commission urged Mayor Emanuel to hire more police and prosecute gang members with tough federal weapons and drugs charges as often as possible.
But the problem is not just how law enforcement responds to the spike in violent crimes, Chicago Policy Superintendent Garry McCarthy said, some responsibility lies with the parents.
"It's really troubling when parents are not in control of their children," McCarthy said. "The problem is much bigger than just law enforcement. We accept our responsibility, but curing it is going to take a heck of a lot more than just police work."
So, one will ask, why aren't parents in control of their children? What is the root issue why the number of gangs and gang-related crimes has risen so dramatically?
One researcher ties increase gang activity and its resulting deadly violence back to 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided to make all abortions - at any time, for any reason - legal in America.
John Lott, the author of Freedomnomics and a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, says abortion and public policy change wrought by Roe vs Wade led to an upsurge in single-parenting and an abundance of negative societal effects. In a 2008 Fox News column, Lott wrote:
But all these changes — rising out-of-wedlock births, plummeting adoption rates and the end of shotgun marriages — meant one thing: more single-parent families. With work and other demands on their time, single parents, no matter how "wanted" their child may be, tend to devote less attention to their children than do married couples; after all, it's difficult for one person to spend as much time with a child as two people can.
From the beginning of the abortion debate, those favoring abortion have pointed to the social costs of "unwanted" children who simply won't get the attention of "wanted" ones. But there is a trade-off that has long been neglected. Abortion may eliminate "unwanted" children, but it increases out-of-wedlock births and single parenthood. Unfortunately, the social consequences of illegitimacy dominated.
Children born after liberalized abortion rules have suffered a series of problems from difficulties at school to more crime. The saddest fact is that it is the most vulnerable in society, poor blacks, who have suffered the most from these changes.
Crime running wild in the streets, snuffing out young innocents, ruining the lives of those left behind, making them vulnerable to the promise of empty, short term relief from heartache with pain-numbing drugs and alcohol – are all tied to confused home settings and the travesty of abortion, the ultimate women’s “right,” Lott says.
But don’t bring up these social issues in 2012, we’re told. Even though poverty and crime are closely linked to the explosion of entitlement programs, correctional institution demands, and skyrocketing state budgets, social issues are not the motivating political hot button of this election.
That's jobs and the economy.
Maybe, though, it will turn out that fear, hopelessness and desperation that so many - young and old, black, white and brown, rich and poor - are facing that will eventually lead to a time of thoughtful contemplation of American society ills and their root causes.
Recognizing those root problems for what they are - as in most 12-step healing programs - is the beginning of correcting the problem. Repentence is next, resolution to change and eventually, in the best scenario, restoration and renewal follow.
The only hope to end Chicago’s gang war and murder spree is to work to change the hearts towards life itself and a stable home environment.
In order to accomplish such an ideal wholisitic goal, the local church must boldly step into the community and assume the task with energy and determination, backed fully by supportive media and Illinois’ legislative and judicial systems.
For the sake of those innocents, that just can't begin soon enough.
