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A Liberal Icon Speaks Truth – and the Left Goes Wild!
Here’s an interesting situation. Rahm Emanuel is speaking truth from power (emphasis added). To no one’s surprise, he is catching flak for this.
In this city, someone gets shot an average of about once per hour. That was the sobering reality in Chicago this weekend, when at least 58 people were shot between Friday afternoon and late Sunday night, according to the Chicago Police Major Incident Notification System…. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has already vented his frustration about the gun violence in his city. In the first weekend of August, Chicago had 66 shootings — including 12 killings.
“We as a city, in every corner, have an accountability and a responsibility. If you know who did this, be a neighbor, speak up,” Emanuel said earlier this month.
He dismissed the notion that hotter weather will lead to more violence.
“You can talk about the weather, but the weather didn’t pull the trigger. You can talk about jobs, and they count, but in parts of the city where there aren’t jobs, people did not pull the trigger,” he said.
“There are values. There are too many guns on the street, too many people with criminal records on the street, and there is a shortage of values about what is right and what is wrong.”
Also,
“This may not be politically correct, but I know the power of what faith and family can do,” the mayor said. “… Our kids need that structure. … I am asking … that we also do not shy away from full discussions about the importance of family and faith helping to develop and nurture character, self-respect, a value system and a moral compass that allows kids to know good from bad and right from wrong.”
“If we are going to solve this, we’ve got to have a real discussion,” he added, stressing a parents’ responsibility to shape their children’s character. “Parts of the conversation cannot be off-limits because it’s not politically comfortable … It plays a role. Our kids need that moral structure in their lives. And we cannot be scared to have this conversation.”
Emanuel’s comments didn’t blow over well with critics, however, who found his words to be “insensitive.”
“I cannot see the victims of racist policies and bigoted practices shamed by anyone who says they need to do better or be better in their circumstance,” said Shari Runner, former president and CEO of the Chicago Urban League. “I won’t accept it.”
Sen. Kwame Raoul, who’s running for Illinois attorney general, expressed similar views, saying, “I think for the mayor to make a generalization about a community is more than just misspoken — it’s outright wrong.”
Resident Yordome Bello told Fox News Emanuel’s comments rubbed her the wrong way.
“I’m not immoral,” she said. “My neighbors aren’t immoral. Is he going to come to my house and protect me? I’d like to see that.”
...Emanuel hasn’t responded to the recent backlash.
Who was it that defined a conservative as a liberal who has been mugged?
So why would anyone with a (D) after their name take part in an honest discussion about this topic given the certain consequences?
If leftists won’t even hear these truths from one of their own, who will they listen to?
Drew, to ask the question is to answer it.
What a shame. First the left destroys the black urban family by paying women to have children without husbands, then they act indignant when one of their own points out the inevitable chaos that this causes.
What a shame.
I don’t think Rahm Emanuel has ever been considered an icon by liberals. At best, he’s always been part of the Democratic establishment, the left’s version of Reince Priebus. Actual left-wing groups in Chicago have loathed him for quite a while now.
But of course in our binary world, if he’s not openly conservative, he must be a leftist wingnut, since there’s obviously no such thing as a moderate Democrat.
(Of note, nearly the same can be said about Rahm’s brother Ezekiel, who was one of the “architects” of Obamacare. He was roundly decried on the right as a socialist and a eugenicist to boot, but he’s actually quite a bit to the right of Obama or any of the 2020 Democrat presidential hopefuls.)
The fact that anyone would respond negatively to this suggestion is all you need to know about the progressive mindset.
Since we can try to be non political correct like Rahm let’s try this. Cities with highest murder rates. All predominately black. Why? Lack of fathers? Lots of white people do not have fathers. Poor, lots of whites are poor. Uneducated? . What is it? And don’t call me racist for asking.
There are a lot of reasons for it, @PHCheese, at least one of which is —very obviously—insufficient policing.
Resident Yordome Bello told Fox News Emanuel’s comments rubbed her the wrong way.
“I’m not immoral,” she said. “My neighbors aren’t immoral. Is he going to come to my house and protect me? I’d like to see that.”
Emmanuel is wrong about one thing: this is very much about police staffing. What he should have said (IMHO) is that the Chicago Police Department is going to increase staffing, and that they and he will do whatever it takes to protect the citizens of those neighborhoods in which the shootings are taking place. If it needs to be the National Guard, so be it. And the answer to Ms. Bello’s question is “Yes, I will personally come out, with my security detail, and I will defend you.”
Insensitive is the wrong word. They were self-exculpating. Providing for the safety and security of Chicago’s citizens is his job, and he’s failing at it. He needs to man up and take responsibility. (I’m muttering “[CoC]” under my breath).
Kate,
This is interesting. Last week when they stuck a mic in front of Emanuel he blathered something about jobs programs. This week he has flipped and lays all of the blame on the moral order of the community. One way or the other he doesn’t talk about a rational policy by the Mayor of a major city that takes responsibility for the law & order & safety of its citizens.
Here’s an even weirder observation. The Chicago Police put a much larger force into three precincts for last weekend considering the weekend before. Yet the vast majority of the gunplay didn’t take place in those precincts like the week before. Chicago violence seems to have evolved into a police avoiding intelligence. Like some sort of science fiction movie.
I don’t know what it all means but I’d like to drop a really large rock on top of all of it. If it takes the National Guard sitting on top of Chicago until they have a weekend where nobody gets shot so be it.
Regards,
Jim
Oh, I’ll take Mayor Emmanuel to task, but for a different reason. He wants to blame poor parenting? As a middle class, white mum of two girls, I could give him an earful about how difficult it is to instill good morals and responsibility when you’re swimming against the putrid cultural tide the Left has created in the West. If I were a black single mom living in gangland Chicago with vile, misogynistic hip hop culture (sometimes literally) beating down my door? Almost impossible.
Yes, I’m parroting Andrew Klavan, but it’s been my observation for a long time, too. This crappy culture is the poisonous fruit of leftism. You and your Democrat cultural Marxist limousine leftist (not liberal — never liberal) own it, Mayor.
This is exactly what the residents, who are trying to raise their children the right way want in these neighborhoods. They can’t send their children to school without worrying, and wondering if they’re going to get home without being shot. They can’t sit on their front porches, or barbecue. They risk their lives waiting for a bus, or walking to the store.
What’s needed is a combination of community policing, and some old fashioned butt kicking. That butt kicking should also extend to the court system. If you need to build more prisons to house shooters then so be it. Prisons are just as important as bridges and freeways when you can’t take a walk, or go to the neighborhood park for fear of being shot.
This is a third world problem in a first world country. There is no excuse for this debacle in the United States.
Liberal Democrat Rahm states the obvious and is excoriated ???
Lack of leadership within the black community is why the problem of urban decay is unresolvable:
Exhibit #1
“I cannot see the victims of racist policies and bigoted practices shamed by anyone who says they need to do better or be better in their circumstance,” said Shari Runner, former president and CEO of the Chicago Urban League. “I won’t accept it.”
Exhibit #2
Sen. Kwame Raoul, who’s running for Illinois attorney general, expressed similar views, saying, “I think for the mayor to make a generalization about a community is more than just misspoken — it’s outright wrong.”
Hey, maybe it’s time for another useless Father Michael Pfleger Parade … that should do the trick!
What Emanuel didn’t mention was what is needed immediately: a police presence on the street and, most importantly, in black neighborhoods. They need to have cops walking the beat, talking to people, being seen and known by people. We know what works; we have to get past hypersensitive race pandering that prevents it from happening.
I agree with him about the personal responsibility and family values stuff. But that’s the future. People are dying now, and policing now is what’s required.
Amen, sister! (I felt the same way—like trying to hold a screen door closed against a tidal wave).
YES! (sorry. Am shrieking.)
Yes. We can work with everything except dead. Not dead is the goal.
Not sure how lecturing a community wherein one parent is in prison and the other may be hooked on drugs or involved in a gang does any good. It is a nice rallying cry for well off conservatives: “I take care of my kids and my neighborhood is fine” but it can’t solve the problem.
The kids — they pay for it when parents are not responsible. It doesn’t take a mayor to say it.
Fifty years ago, the Chicago neighborhoods which are now so dangerous were vibrant and lively. People out in the street. Small businesses flourishing.
Then jobs went overseas and people were left with nothing.
The Old Guard of the Republican Party tried to say that ending tariffs would mean that this happened. The steel mills and other industries that southside of Chicago folks relied on really counted for a lot more than just their paychecks. But the investors didn’t care.
Trump has vowed to do something about this. But the system is so broken. It is going on two generations of people who have never had hope and who have adapted by joining gangs and distributing drugs. Along with that end of the bargain comes the fact that eventually a person gets caught and does hard time. And then who raises the kids?
That’s part of it, but not all of it — and not, I think, the most important of it. What also happened was that, beginning about fifty years ago, the government began replacing the financial role of the man in the family without addressing any of the other functions of a father, most importantly those of role model and disciplinarian. The result (I’d argue) is that drive-by fathering exploded, and impoverished single-parent homes consisting of a mother and one or more children became the norm in those same Chicago neighborhoods that are so dangerous today.
The reality is that many of these neighborhoods are on virtual lock down. Nobody sends their kids anywhere. Not to the store, not across the street to play with friends. And the adults don’t go anywhere either.
I accidentally forgot how dangerous the southside of Chicago was in May of 2015 when back in the MidWest for a visit. I drove from Lake Michigan down 69th street and then over to 73rd and then 79th street. My target was the neighborhood of Evergreen Park.
It was a gorgeous summer day. It was 2Pm when I started out. A bit hot, but not untypical for the MidWest. Blue skies. A touch of clouds.
And not a single person was seen outside on that entire 35 minute drive. Not until I got to 95th and Ashland was the area anything like an area where people lived.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s one of the dirty little secrets of AFDC was that the checks went to white women. (Sixty seven percent of the time.) So did the food stamps and other benefits.
Reagan changed that situation by seeing to it that women could go after their children’s fathers, regardless if the guy had moved out of state or not. But that is another story.
The mom and pop efforts that put up the dry cleaners, the news stands, the barber shops, auto body shops, the cafes and diners were run by small time business people who happened to be African American. They certainly were not getting checks from the gubmint.
Granted if you tracked the people who ran the businesses of that era, as segregation ended in early 1970’s, many of these people moved off to the suburbs. But it made a huge difference to the southside of Chicago when the steel mills and other industries closed.
Like I describe in the post above, these areas are ghettos now. No storefronts except for those few buildings that are still standing and are boarded up. And no warm bodies out on the street either.
That sounds lame. I don’t think a “discussion” is going to solve anything. Too bad this Rahm fellow doesn’t have any political power in this city. Oh wait…he’s the mayor. He should take action.
When you listen to Rahm here point out the moral failings of the city and the work that needs to be done to repair decades of damage, you think. “Wow — if only the mayor of Chicago could hear this and do something about the crisis…”
Rahm’s been in power for almost two full terms now and he’s a Democratic Party mayor in a city run by Democrats since 1931. Compare that to Rudy Giuliani, and what he did as a Republican mayor in a Democrat-run city in his first 6 1/2 years in office. Emanuel can talk about values here and irk some members of his own coalition, but there’s very much a playbook to turn Chicago around, because Giuliani used it to turn New York around, and Bloomberg followed it over the next decade to keep things pointed in an upward direction.
If Rahm’s not willing to risk any of his political capital to actually make the moves to crack down on Chicago’s murder and gang problems, this is nothing but virtue signaling to some other Chicago voters who may finally be deciding things have gotten out of hand.
It is worse than that. Emanuel has been an active participant in crippling law enforcement in Chicago, unnecessarily locking it into a costly and counter-productive dissent decree crafted by the Obama administration but blocked in its implementation until Emanuel voluntarily signaled his willingness to participate in it. I’m sure the reason he doesn’t speak of policing is that he has made it impossible to police Chicago effectively.
Rahm could be borrowing the old, old playbook of Robert Wagner, who had served two terms as mayor of New York, and won re-election in 1961 by basically running against Robert Wagner — or, rather, the Robert Wagner who was put into office in 1953 as part of the last gasp of the old Tamminy Hall. Wagner somehow managed to make the (even by ’61) increasing concerns of crime and a declining quality-of-life in the city the fault of Tamminy boss Carmine DeSapio, and won a third term as the ‘reform’ candidate.
That could be Emanuel’s goal with a speech like this — he doesn’t want to actually be the outsider, he just wants enough Chicago voters to hear comments like these and think he is the outsider when he runs for his third term, and certain other people in the Windy City are the real cause of the problems (I’m not sure if there’s anyone within the Chicago Democratic Party hierarchy who could play the DeSapio role here and be the person Emanuel pins the blame on and throws under the bus, but it wouldn’t be a shock to see him try it).
Going for a Rainbow Cone?
Then there is no answer.
The only thing that will work is if the Black community in Chicago looks in the mirror and changes.
Stop having kids out of wedlock.
Stop idolizing drug dealers.
Stop doing drugs.
Stop the “Snitches get stitches” mentality.
Stop treating getting education as a “white thing”.
Until they decide to change, nothing, no programs no amount of money is going to make a bit of difference.
People don’t change until it hurts too much not to.
Why are people remaining in a place where there are no jobs for them? Because the government pays them to do so. Why don’t they practice frugality, save up money so they can move elsewhere? Because the government strongly discourages saving up money. Why don’t they get their act together? The government rewards dysfunction. And why oh why can’t their children, who have never seen such a thing, magically re-create a culture based on committed, two-parent families and middle-class values? Every now and then, one does, and we can point to him/her and say “see?” Sort of the way proponents of “whole language learning” point to the one kid who figured out the phonetic code on his own as proof that you don’t have to actually teach kids how to read.
I see the rural, mostly-white version of impoverished welfare dependency all the time. The violence is certainly less prominent, though it’s there. Parents who simply haven’t the faintest idea how to go about creating a reasonable life for a child: cupboards full of junk food, flat-screen tv on all the time and flabby people in pyjamas and flip-flops enact the emotional dramas that constitute the entertainment and whole preoccupation of the “grown-ups.” Oh, and drugs, mindless crimes, occasional meaningless spasms of “discipline” (the kid gets berated in Wal Mart for asking too many questions or slapped for touching something , or a kid who is difficult to handle gets beaten to death by her stepfather) and a vocabulary in which the accurate trade and generic names for various prescription medications are the only three-syllable words a child will ever hear.
They aren’t stupid. Their children start out heartbreakingly bright, interested, hungry for attention and starved for conversation. This is true in inner cities too: the little kids in a housing project in Richmond, Virginia I visited in the company of a bunch of Richmond cops were eager to tell me about their lives, their neighborhood, the rules of the games they were inventing.
No. We, meaning the Rahm Emmanuels of the world—created the conditions for the continuing catastrophe in which such children live. We are setting these children up for frustrating, blunted lives where boredom, impotence and discouragement are constants and escape a miracle. And then these same politicians hamstring the police who could provide for some measure of physical security, including adequate protection for witnesses so that snitches in fact do not get stitches, and the desire for revenge can be channelled into a realistic hope for justice. Chicagoans, of whatever hue, need to elect someone who actually gives a [CoC] about the people of Chicago .
Levontay White, age 2, was murdered in a drive-by shooting. He didn’t need to look in the mirror. Rahm Emmanuel needs to have this picture glued to his mirror, so he has to look at it every morning when he shaves and every night when he brushes his teeth.
s
Kate’s comment #27 is worth hearing, repeating, and acting on.
Emanuel’s comments were totally unexpected, but the reaction was completely expected. This has been the reaction of the black activists and their white, liberal supporters since the 1960s. My experience with this began in 1968 when the then decentralized school district of Ocean Hill-Brownsville erupted in almost daily riots. The lessons weren’t learned then, and, if this most recent series of events is evidence, it hasn’t been learned yet. If people aren’t held responsible for their own communities, who should be?
That battle managed to put the parents and the Teacher’s Union on the same side, against the city officials who were attempting with the Ocean Hill-Brownsville activists to institute a quota system based on race for district school assignments. My guess is 50 years down the line, the UFT’s current leadership would willingly go along with the quotas, as long as there was some extra payoff in term of more power for the UFT leadership (with little or no benefits filtering down to the teachers negatively impacted by the quotas).