After a weeklong strike that
has grabbed national attention
, red-shirted Chicago teachers could be back in their classrooms on Monday.
The strike of the nation’s third-largest school district could be voted on Sunday afternoon,
according to the Chicago Tribune.
That would be welcome news to some parents in Chicago’s 20th Ward, represented by
The ward is home to the 6300 and 6400 blocks of South Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, the two blocks in the city that have seen the most non-fatal gun crime between January 1, 2010 and August 23, 2012.
We went to the neighborhood Wednesday afternoon to talk with parents and hear their thoughts about the strike in light of their ongoing concerns about violence in the neighborhood.
The increase in this year’s Chicago murder numbers has drawn
and
attention.
Far from registering the double digit percentage drops his department oversaw in Newark-a story
and
chronicled in the award-winning first season of
-top cop
and the
have seemed unable to stop the steady flow of blood on Chicago’s streets.
If trends continue, the number of people killed in the city could top 500 this year.
But we decided to look at the reported crime data available on the
to dig into non-homicide gun crimes.
These included assaults, batteries, robberies and weapons violations, among others.
Download the non-fatal gun crime and homicide data.
Since January 1, 2010, there have been more than
33,000
of them.
That’s an average of
34
reported gun crimes per day.
We looked at the totals by ward and compared those with the homicide totals for those areas.
Unsurprisingly, there was a near perfect correlation between the number of gun crimes increasing and the murder totals in the wards.
Which brings us to the two blocks in question.
Those two blocks had
42
and
39
reported gun crimes, respectively.
Those were the highest total in the city, our analysis found.
In fact, the total number of gun crimes in those two blocks on the street named for one of the 20th century’s greatest advocates of nonviolence was close to double the number,
42
, of the same type of crimes, in the entire 41st Ward during the same period.
See a map of non-fatal gun crime by police district.
The 20th Ward had the highest number of homicides,
78
, in the city in the same period as the non-fatal gun crime.
The line between 63rd and King Drive is just one of several boundaries of comparatively smaller and younger gang factions, according to Cochran. He described a process where foreclosures have lead to cheap houses and indiscriminate rentals and the gradual infusion of new people who are not familiar with, or invested in, the neighborhood. Combine that with the all-too-easy access to handguns, and you’ve got the ingredients for a lot of armed conflict,he said.
“You’ve also got 13-year-old gunslingers there,” he said.
For some parents, the strike added an additional level of concern to their worries about violence.
Sandra Walker, the mother of two boys at
, 6059 S. Wabash, maintained that the teachers could have postponed the strike while continuing to negotiate.
“The kids are outside and fighting,” said Walker, who sent her boys to a nearby park district facility. “They ain’t got nothing else to do. In our neighborhood, you don’t when things are going to jump off.”
Renita King, who lives several blocks south on the 6500 block of South St. Lawrence, shares Walker’s concern about violence’s threat of the children. Sitting on her front porch on Wednesday afternoon, she said gun crime is not limited to the 6300 and 6400 blocks of King Drive. She cited 67
th
Street and Cottage Grove Avenue as other hot spots.
“It’s not safe, period,” she said. “They need to be in a school where they feel safe.”
She said that she did not allow her children attend the
Emmett Till Math and Science Academy
around the corner in part because of safety concerns. Her boys attend the
Andrew Carnegie Elementary School
, where they have a parent or teacher at each block from the school on 61
st
Place to the bus stop on 63
rd
Street.
Joseph Burrell, 12, King’s older son, calls his mother when he and his younger brother Dontrell Reed, 9, board the bus. She then walks from her apartment to pick them up and walk them home.
King was a fourth grade student in the South Shore neighborhood during the last teachers strike in 1987. She remembered the negative impact the 19-day work stoppage had on some of her classmates who had to repeat the same grade the next year.
She does not want her children to go through the same experience.
“I have two straight A students right here,” she pointing to her children seated on the steps beneath her. “Honor roll. Honor roll. Right here. Ain’t no way they should be out of school.”
She wonders how they will perform when they return to school after the strike is resolved:
“So now I’m looking at, when he go back to school, is he going to be a straight A student?
“What’s going to happen? What’s they average going to be? I’m very concerned. I want them to grow to be somebody. I don’t want them to be out here on the streets, or wind up dead. None of that.”
Cochran talked about short, medium and long-term methods to combat the ills the community faces. He described the creation of a
in Woodlawn. Modeled on Geoffrey Canada’s
, the area seeks to meet children’s needs from the moment they are born through college and entry into the job market. He discussed G.E.D. programs and a partnership with Kennedy-King College and cracking down on wayward business owners, among other items.
But he also acknowledged that turf difficulties can thwart some of the programs’ positive intent.
“When I start talking about the center and these educational pograms, the challenges that these factions [present] is barriers to getting to them,” Cochran said, adding that the area need more programs specifically for youth.
For her part, Walker said she plan to move to Texas by semester’s end regardless of the strike’s resolution.
“I’m going to Dallas, which is an independent school district and one of the top in the country,” she said. “They have no union. They’re doing fine.”
