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| The iconic downtown Chicago skyline at night |
While the Yanks boast one of the best records in baseball, they limped into Chicago early last Monday morning for a 3-game series against the White Sox, still licking their wounds after losing 4 straight games to their AL East rivals the Boston Red Sox.
A positive end to tough road trip after getting swept in Boston's Fenway Park.
While the Yankees arrived home early Thursday morning for a few hours rest before they beat the visiting Texas Rangers 7-3 to start a welcome eleven-game home stand up in the Bronx, the images of Chicago still linger in my mind.
As a sports fan, former TV reporter and ex-professional athlete, I appreciate good camera work, and one of the visual highlights of the past three Yankees-White Sox game broadcasts (which I watched using the Fox Sports App on my iPhone) were the various stunning evening views of the Chicago skyline with the illuminated downtown towers and streetlights of the city's vast neighborhoods stretching off into the distance on three consecutive clear nights.
My younger brother, who's in town for the weekend, was born in Chicago when my family used to live just outside the city in the suburb of Downer's Grove, Illinois in the early 70's, and I've visited the Windy City a few times since for both work and pleasure.
Most recently for a Penn State vs Notre Dame football game in South Bend, Indiana a few years ago (as a fan, not a player) when I got to spend the weekend at a friend's family's swanky high-rise condo on Chicago's famous Gold Coast on the west side next to Lake Michigan - talk about a view.
Those images, both on the screen of my iPhone and in my mind, stand in stark contrast to the shocking spate of deadly shootings that rocked some sections of Chicago last weekend.
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| 17-year-old Jahnae Patterson, one of 12 people shot and killed in Chicago between August 3rd - 5th |
That grisly death toll included 17-year-old Jahnae Patterson who was killed early last Sunday morning when two alleged gang members approached a group of people she was talking with on a sidewalk in the Lawndale section of Chicago and opened fire.
The high-school junior was shot in the face and five others, including two boys aged 11 and 14-years-old, were wounded.
As her horrified mother Tanika Humphries told reporters, "They took my baby's life for no reason."
"No reason" is about the only way to possibly sum up that volume of gun violence taking place over the course of three days - according to Chicago PD, in one three-hour period during that stretch, a person was shot every six minutes.
The devastating toll that the injuries, loss of life and psychological trauma has taken on the residents of the economically-marginalized communities where gun violence is so prevalent, is all but invisible to the radar of the current White House administration - and the majority-Republican lawmakers in Congress responsible drafting the kinds of legislation that could help curb the availability of illegal guns in America.
I mean let's be honest, of all the different guns used to shoot 74 people over three days in Chicago last weekend, how many of those firearms were legally purchased or registered?
How many came from neighboring states like Indiana with much more lax regulations on firearms?
As journalist Tony Cook reported in an Indianapolis Star article re-posted on USA Today.com back in 2015:
"A report from Chicago authorities found that nearly 60% of illegal guns recovered in the city from 2009 to 2013 were first sold in states with more lax gun laws. The largest portion came from Indiana, which accounted for 19% of the illegal guns in Chicago. The report blames Indiana's lax gun laws, which allow gun owners to sell their weapons to other people without background checks or paperwork recording the sale."
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| NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre with accused Russian spy Maria Butina in 2014 |
The NRA hasn't had much to say on that lately, or much else for that matter.
They're too busy deifying the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.
As if it were a commandment etched in stone on a mountain by God, rather than a section of the U.S. Constitution written back in 1787 just six years after occupying British Army forces under General Charles Cornwallis surrendered to the Continental Army under General George Washington at Yorktown on October 19, 1781.
The ideologically conservative, dependably self-righteous and normally preachy front for gun manufacturers has been conspicuously silent in the wake of the arrest last month of Maria Butina, the 29-year-old Russian national charged with conspiracy and acting as an agent of a foreign government.
The accused Russian spy has ties to, or met with, a long list of current and former Republican politicians including Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and many others.
Including South Dakota businessman Paul Erickson, a well-known Republican political consultant and conservative rainmaker currently under investigation for acting as a link between Russian figures working to influence the outcome of the 2016 elections and top Republican officials.
Butina's deep ties to the NRA, as well as to Aleksandr Torshin, the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia (a close ally of Russian President Vladimir with alleged ties to the Russian mafia), have made the NRA's well-known outsized influence over the Republican Party a rather prickly subject for both the GOP and Donald Trump as the latter's ties to Russia threaten to topple his chaotic presidency.
Is the President of the United States responsible for alleged gang members going on a three-day shooting spree in a major American city?
Of course not, but leadership starts at the top, and the contrast in how a sitting president uses the office to address the epidemic of gun violence in Chicago couldn't be more stark.
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| President Obama addresses the IACP in Chicago |
In an effort to shed light on some of the root causes of gun violence in the city, and bring attention to the devastating effects on local communities, Obama highlighted specific ways in which lax gun regulations in neighboring states allow illegal firearms to flow unchecked into the city - and the socioeconomic factors that contribute to the violence.
As journalist Rick Pearson reported about Obama's speech for the Chicago Tribune:
"Obama said the root of the city's gun violence rested in neighborhoods facing poverty, few job prospects, rampant drug abuse, broken families and easy availability of guns that youths can buy cheaper than books."
On the rare occasions that Donald Trump or his White House press secretary Sarah Sanders bother to publicly mention gun violence in Chicago, it's not about the toll it takes on the communities where it happens.
It's usually in the context of a dishonest attempt to use the firearms epidemic in the Windy City as a talking point to justify NOT passing new gun control legislation - and of course nurture Trump's warped perception of the city as some kind of violent, dystopian wasteland overrun by crime and populated by the types of "others" he regularly vilifies.
Both Trump and Sanders, dependable mouthpieces for the NRA's propaganda, are both fond of spreading the oft-repeated lie that Chicago is an example of why gun control laws are not effective.
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| White House Press Secretary Sarah Sander tears up as a student asks her about gun violence in May, 2018 |
When a reporter asked Sanders whether the Las Vegas mass shooting indicated the time had finally come for the Republican-majority Congress to act and pass gun control measures, she robotically repeated the standard Republican response to any kind of mass shooting.
Saying that it was "premature" to discuss passing stronger gun control legislation, Sanders said:
"If you look to Chicago, where you had over 4,000 victims of gun-related crimes last year, they have the strictest gun laws in the country. That certainly hasn't helped there."
As reporter Matt Dietrich reported in an article for Politifact.com, that statement was a lie.
Back in 1982 the city of Chicago did pass a ban on all handguns, so at one point it actually did have some of the most stringent firearms laws in the country.
But as Dietrich reported, two years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a ban on handguns in Washington, D.C. in the case of District of Columbia vs. Heller in 2008, the conservative-majority SCOTUS decision in McDonald vs. City of Chicago in 2010 struck down Chicago's ban on handguns.
A prime example of the NRA and firearms manufacturers actively lobbying to use the federal courts to override gun control laws passed on the state, local and municipal level based on arcane and often questionable interpretations of the U.S. Constitution.
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| A Chicago protest against gun violence |
But that hasn't stopped Trump and Sanders from repeating the NRA propaganda that Chicago has the "strictest gun laws in the country".
Even as thousands of Chicagoans have been injured or killed by the almost unrestricted proliferation of firearms that have flooded into the city.
Including the 74 victims injured or killed in Chicago last weekend.
On the Tuesday August 7th edition of the PBS Newshour, host Nick Schifrin (who filled in last week for the vacationing regular host Judy Woodruff) did an interesting segment on the recent spate of deadly shootings that rocked some sections of Chicago from last Friday evening to Sunday evening.
If you want to get a sense of how those shootings are impacting the people who live in those communities, scroll forward to the 37-minute, 20-second mark to watch the PBS segment.
Schifrin interviews local community activist Tamar Manasseh, a founder of Mothers/Men Against Senseless Killings (M.A.S.K), a grass-roots group that works to prevent violence, address food insecurity and housing issues, and also ensure that local citizens have access to city services.
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| Tamar Manasseh out on the block in one of MASK's distinctive, pink "Moms On Patrol" t-shirts |
She began coming out onto a street corner to establish a presence of caring adults by simply cooking food and feeding neighborhood kids dinner; her efforts have attached local volunteers and encouraged men and women to simply start showing up and being visible in high crime areas to deter street violence.
Her efforts have paid off as shootings have drastically dropped in the in the Lawndale section of Chicago where she lives, MASK also now has chapters and volunteers out on the streets working to make a difference in Evansville, Indiana, Memphis, Tennessee and Staten Island, New York.
PBS correspondent John Yang also interviewed Manasseh back in the summer 2016 when over 500 people had been killed - including 90 in the month of August 2016 alone.
In my view, Manasseh's efforts represent the kind of volunteer spirit and sense of giving that is the true definition of what American values are.
People stepping up to improve the lives of folks in their communities by giving of their time, energy and resources - and just being a good neighbor.
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| Susan Bro visits the spot where her daughter Heather Heyer was killed by a neo-Nazi in Charlottesville |
Rather than simmer and shake my head over the string of shootings that took place in Chicago last weekend, I just went online and donated a few bucks to MASK (you can donate here) because it's a group out on the front lines quietly making a difference in the lives of average Americans.
People who've been largely ignored by the current White House administration and Republican leaders in Congress who control the purse strings and the ability to draft legislation that could make a difference.
Republican lawmakers practically tripped over themselves passing a massive tax cut that slashed taxes on the wealthiest Americans and U.S. corporations already flush with cash - even though it's going to literally explode the same federal deficit conservatives spent 8 years whining about when Obama was in office trying to get Congress to pass critical infrastructure spending initiatives.
On a weekend when another 27 people were shot in the streets of Chicago, including one person killed, Trump is playing golf and spending taxpayer money to have Secret Service personnel protect him and his family at a Bedminster, New Jersey country club that he owns and profits off of while he tweets about spending $8 billion in taxpayer funds to build a "Space Force".
If Trump authorized just a fraction of that to someone like Tamar Manasseh to spend on providing meals to kids in marginalized neighborhoods in Chicago to help curb gun violence, just imagine the lives that could be saved and the positive impact it could have on local communities.
A small percentage of that kind of money could go a long way in counteracting the impact of unrestricted firearms in Chicago and other communities.
And it would make a helluva lot more difference in the lives of Americans than a "Space Force".
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