Chicago vs. Newtown III: A Horse of a Different Color

The Blog 'Crime in Chicago' reports that 62 school age children have been murdered in Chicago this year; the site also reports that 446 school age children have been shot this year in Chicago. They didn't list any names, just numbers; no links to the stories, just numbers. 

Not cool. Always back your story with irrefutable facts and document your claims kids. 

Just a few minutes of investigating turned up this story from The Daily Beast, published on June 29 of this year [Obama Must Speak Out on Chicago Carnage That Kills Too Many Kids], detailing the death of a young black girl - seven year old Heaven Sutton - who was killed by a black gangbanger:

The 20th youngster under age 17 to join the list of people shot to death in Chicago this year was a magical little girl who loved to dress up, who always had a way of making people smile, and who proved in every way how right it was she was named Heaven. 

She was not the youngest little girl on the list. That tragic distinction belongs to 6-year-old Aliyah Shell, who also was sitting outside with her mother when gunfire erupted on her block. The mother, Diana Aguilera, was doing Aliyah’s hair in preparation for a birthday party on a sunny March afternoon and pitched forward to shield her. But Aliyah was seized by the same impulse that would grab Heaven, and she leapt up to seek the sanctuary of home. A bullet fatally struck her before she could take a step. 

A 13-year-old boy was shot to death a few days after Aliyah was killed, and another 13-year old was shot to death a few days before Heaven was killed, and there were too many other youngsters in between. But the two little girls are what should force Obama to finally break his shameful silence about the carnage in his home city.

Who is doing the living and dying in Chicago; and who pays for it

All a story like the death of Heaven Sutton does is reinforce why white people choose not to live around black people; why expose yourself to what can only be called acts of "Spontaneous Blackness" that are so common to not even elicit a reaction anymore. The Daily Beast editorialized that President Obama must do something about gun violence - really, it's just black people using guns to engage in violent acts - and no one cared. 

But the Sandy Hook Massacre in 95 percent white Newtown... that's a horse of different color. 

MSNBC caught on to this reality, the cold indifference of most people to the reality of gun crime in America (it being largely a black problem), juxtaposed with the reaction to Newtown [In Newtown’s shadow, Chicago’s bleak gun toll goes on, PoliticsNation, 12-20-12]:

Her name never made national news. There were no headlines screaming for gun control. There were no teary eyes in the White House. And no one dared utter the obligatory, ‘it’s not supposed to happen here,’ as they so often do when the young and innocent are so tragically taken.

Heaven Sutton was seven years old when she was killed last summer, struck by a stray bullet as she sold candy and snow cones in her front yard on the eve of Chicago’s hottest day of the year.

Her grief stricken mother pleaded for peace. The mayor expressed his outrage. And Chicago—where gun violence is as routine as the L train into the South Side—buried yet another of its young. Heaven joined the more than 270 school aged children to be killed in Chicago in just three years.

Few outsiders will know the names on that list.

But last Friday, on the heels of the horrific killing of 27 people in Newtown, Conn., including 20 first graders, a renewed national debate over America’s access to guns has been sparked. With it a closer look at gun control and gun violence in cities like Chicago, where young people—some of them as young as those killed at Sandy Hook Elementary—have been dying for years in steady, violent trickles with little more than local notice.

Some have died over turf. Some over the spoils of the city’s lucrative drug trade. Still others, particularly the youngest among them, are far too frequently caught in the abyss between a bullet and the lack of effective gun legislation to keep illegal weapons off the streets.

“These mass shootings get the news but they are just the tip of the iceberg, a tiny percent of the gun violence we see in America,” said David Hemenway of the Harvard School of Public Health. “The big issue is always guns. And if we can figure out a way to make it more difficult for inner city gangs to have very easy access to guns, we’ll be making a tremendous difference.”

Others blame a criminal justice system that fails to prosecute people caught with illegal weapons to the fullest extent of the law. Still others on police cutbacks.
Regardless of the roots, the cost of gun violence is astonishingly high in Chicago, calculated in both deaths and bullet- battered communities, but also dollars.

Roseanna Ander, executive director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, said the resulting hospital stays, court cases and law enforcement costs related to gun violence, as well as indirect costs associated with residents and businesses leaving the city because of fear of crime and violence are extraordinary.

Anders estimates the cost to be about $2.5 billion annually, or $2,500 per household.
“If you removed the homicides that involve guns, the homicide rates would look like the U.K., London, and Western Europe,” Anders said. “It’s the guns that drive the homicide problems in Chicago.”

The city’s summer death toll even drew comparisons to war zones: 144 American soldiers had been killed in Afghanistan by June of this year; 228 Chicagoans had been killed during that same time period. Many of the dead were school age or teenagers.
The morning after Friday’s killings in Newtown, a headline in the Chicago Tribune read, “10 shot, including 4 teens, Friday afternoon and night.”

The sweeping tallies of violence have become a staple in local newspapers. The names of the victims have become almost secondary to the sheer volume of the violent episodes engulfing them.

“I think a lot of times in communities where this kind of violence takes place often, a lot of us become desensitized. But I think what this incident at Sandy Hook did is show that it can happen in places that you don’t expect,” said Norman Kerr, a youth advocate and outreach director for UCAN in Chicago.  “And I think that’s the way we should look at these things when they happen in Newtown or any other city. These things should always happen where you don’t expect it.”

The author of the MSNBC article, Trymaine Lee, never discusses the racial reality of these murders, shootings, or violence in Chicago. As you've no doubt learned from reading SBPDL, "guns don't kill people, dangerous minorities do." If you remove black people - be they law-abiding or a gangbanger -from Chicago's population, the cost of gun violence would be a fraction of the purported $2.5 billion.

Seriously.

That's the wonderful reality of the cost of "Manifest Destruction" to the city of Chicago, or what is still commonly known in polite parlance as the "Great Migration" of blacks from the southern states. 

This is why people buy guns; to protect themselves from dangerous black people. This is also why people live far away from black people and move away from communities or cities that see an increase in the overall black percentage of the population; to protect themselves from dangerous black people.

On May 23, 2012, The Black Star Journal reported on the incredible number of children killed in Chicago (recall that Chicago Public Schools - 400,000+ student enrollment - is only 8 percent white) and lists the names of each young person murdered [Between March of 2011 and March of 2012, 107 children and youth were killed in Chicago]:

NAME	AGE	DATE DIED	NEIGHBORHOOD	HOW DIED
1) Anthony Scott	19	3/16/2012	West Ridge	Gunshot
2) Johnny Vargas	19	3/14/2012	South Lawndale	Gunshot
3) Aliyah Shell	6	3/17/2012	South Lawndale	Gunshot
4) Gustavo Reyes	19	3/14/2012	West Lawn	Gunshot
5) Joshua Williams	16	3/8/2012	Chicago Lawn	Gunshot -sidewalk
6) Chris Wormely	17	3/1/2012	South Deering	Stabbing – School
7) Abert Guyton	15	2/28/2012	Chicago Lawn	Gunshot – sidewalk
8 ) George Howard	15	2/27/2012	Washington Park	Gunshot – sidewalk
9) Damion Rolle	14	2/21/2012	Greater Grand Crossing	Gunshot – apartment
10) Jamal Harris	19	2/19/2012	South Shore	Gunshot
11) Edgar Delgado	17	2/18/2012	Avondale	Gunshot – street
12) Deshun Winfert	15	2/5/2012	Chicago Lawn	Gunshot – street
13) Anton Sanders	15	1/20/2012	Rogers Park	Gunshot-alley
14) Devonte Pippen	18	1/19/2012	Chicago Lawn	Gunshot – gas station
15) Kurtis Stanton	19	1/17/2012	Washington Heights	Gunshot – sidewalk
16) Cory Campbell	18	1/10/2012	Auburn Gresham	Gunshot – sidewalk
17) Christian Peggs	18	1/8/2012	Greater Grand Crossing	Gunshot
18) Valentin Bahena	17	1/8/2012	Belmont Cragin	Gunshot-apartment
19) Mark Watts	15	1/4/2012	West Englewood	Gunshot-porch/hallway
20) Christina Thomas	6 mo.	1/2/2012	Englewood	Child abuse
21) Nicholas Camacho	19	1/2/2012	Albany Park	Gunshot – alley
22) Name Unknown	18	12/31/2011	Englewood	Gunshot – vehicle
23) Jewels Selvie	19	12/28/2011	New City	Gunshot – porch/hallway
24) Deontae Malone	15	12/28/2011	Chicago Lawn	Gunshot – street
25) Jawan Ross	16	12/27/2011	Englewood	Gunshot – restaurant
26) Dantril Brown	17	12/27/2011	Englewood	Gunshot – restaurant
27) Onay Lundy	18	12/12/2011	West Garfield Park	Gunshot – streeet
28) Leon Deaknye	17	12/12/2011	Albany Park	Gunshot – sidewalk
29) Kevin Branch	17	12/4/2011	Morgan Park	Gunshot – residential yard
30) Dale Fisher	16	12/3/2011	Woodlawn	Gunshot – sidewalk
31) Javon Saffore	17	11/28/2011	Austin	Gunshot – street
32) Christopher Valdez	4	11/25/2011	Gage Park	Child abuse – residence
33) Carlton Archer	17	11/10/2011	Woodlawn	Gunshot – alley
34) Tarik Mandie	18	11/10/2011	Chatham	Gunshot – street
35) Juan Sanchez	19	11/5/2011	West Town	Gunshot – street
36) Alex Spikes	17	11/2/2011	Riverdale	Gunshot – small retail store
37) Ravon Martin	18	11/1/2011	South Shore	Gunshot – sidewalk
38) Marcus Nunn	17	10/28/2011	Chicago Lawn	Gunshot – sidewalk
39) Delvonta Porter	18	10/24/2011	South Shore	Gunshot – widewalk
40) August Ayala	19	10/22/2011	North Lawndale	Assault – street
41) Andre Vasquez	16	10/18/2011	Avondale	Gunshot – residence
42) Marqwell Seaborn	17	10/17/2011	West Pullman	Gunshot – sidewalk
43) Jayden Tufele	3 mo.	10/10/2011	Jefferson Park	Child Abuse – residence
44) Ray Gibson	17	10/6/2011	Woodlawn	Gunshot – street
45) Antonio Johnson	15	9/25/2011	Humboldt Park	Gunshot – porch/alley
46) Omaria Beckon	2 mo.	9/22/2011	South Shore	Child abuse – apartment
47) Steve McGee	17	9/19/2011	Washington Park	Gunshot – sidewalk
48) Marvis Brown, Jr.	17	9/18/2011	Chicago Lawn	Gunshot – porch/alley
49) Devon Varner	18	9/13/2011	Washington Park	Gunshot – sidewalk
50) Sadarius Sims	18	9/5/2011	North Lawndale	Gunshot – sidewalk
51) Deandre Boatman	18	9/3/2011	East Garfield Park	Gunshot – sidewalk
52) Rodney Kyles Jr.	19	9/3/2011	Lincoln Park	Stabbing – sidewalk
53) Jaivon Sandifer	3	9/2/2011	Austin	Stabbing – apartment
54) Davares Robinson	17	8/31/2011	East Garfield Park	Gunshot – sidewalk
55) Joseph Price	14	8/21/2011	Austin	Gunshot – sidewalk
56) Charinez Jefferson	17	8/16/2011	Chicago Lawn	Gunshot – sidewalk
57) Ricardo Vasquez	17	8/13/2011	New City	Gunshot – street
58) William Sturgeon	19	8/10/2011	North Lawndale	Gunshot – sidewalk
59) Arianna Gibson	6	8/7/2011	Englewood	Gunshot – residence
60) Marshaun Taylor	16	8/7/2011	Chicago Lawn	Gunshot – street
61) Jose Serrano	17	8/4/2011	West Pullman	Gunshot – alley
62) Ianah Sherrod	3 mo.	8/3/2011	Roseland	Child abuse – apartment
63) Jermaine Smith	18	8/3/2011	South Shore	Gunshot – sidewalk
64) Darius Brown	13	8/3/2011	Grand Boulevard	Gunshot – park property
65) Ewonte Butler	18	7/29/2011	Austin	Gunshot – sidewalk
66) Dazaray Brunt	17	7/26/2011	Englewood	Gunshot – sidewalk
67) Sergio Torrez	15	7/22/2011	West Ridge	Gunshot – sidewalk
68) Theodore Thomas	18	7/19/2011	Englewood	Gunshot – street
69) Marcus London	19	7/17/2011	Washington Park	Gunshot – sidewalk
70) Aiki Muhammad	17	7/16/2011	Englewood	Gunshot – sidewalk
71) Cordre Hayes	18	7/12/2011	West Pullman	Gunshot – street
72) Deonre Douglas	19	7/9/2011	North Lawndale	Gunshot – sidewalk
73) Jeffrey Butler	19	7/9/2011	Englewood	Gunshot – residential yard
74) Devonte Childress	18	7/6/2011	Englewood	Gunshot – sidewalk
75) Martel Field	17	7/4/2011	Roseland	Gunshot – alley
76) Ricardo Hall	19	7/3/2011	West Englewood	Gunshot – street
77) Juan Baustista	16	6/29/2011	Brighton Park	Gunshot – alley
78) Aaron Leonard	19	6/28/2011	Roseland	Gunshot – street
79) Christopher Clark	17	6/27/2011	New City	Gunshot – street
80) Adonis Bright	1	6/26/2011	Grand Boulevard	Child abuse – apartment
81) Tony Morgan	19	6/23/2011	West Englewood	Gunshot – street
82) Richard Gutierrez	13	6/22/2011	Chicago Lawn	Gunshot – sidewalk
83) Niko Santiago	17	6/16/2011	Lower West Side	Gunshot – sidewalk
84) James Thomas	19	6/14/2011	West Garfield Park	Gunshot – retail store
85) Jovany Diaz	15	6/13/2011	Humboldt Park	Gunshot – residential yard
86) Estavion Green	18	6/13/2011	New City	Gunshot – sidewalk
87) Jonathon Banks	19	6/10/2011	North Lawndale	Gunshot – sidewalk
88) Dante Smallwood	18	6/8/2011	Ashburn	Gunshot – sidewalk
89) Lamont Gogins	19	6/5/2011	Chicago Lawn	Gunshot – gas station
90) Karla Allen	16	5/30/2011	New City	Gunshot – street
91) Larry Parks	16	5/26/2011	Roseland	Gunshot – sidewalk
92) Christian Pichardo	18	5/23/2011	South Chicago	Gunshot – sidewalk
93) Terrance Boyd	16	5/21/2011	Austin	Gunshot – sidewalk
94) Markell Stribling	16	5/20/2011	Loop	Gunshot – sidewalk
95) Omar Estrada	18	5/19/2011	Rogers Park	Gunshot – park
96) Timothy Wordlow	19	5/11/2011	Oakland	Gunshot – street
97) Kabiru Adewunmi	18	4/26/2011	Chatham	Gunshot – alley
98) Kingquintav Davis-Ringold	1	4/17/2011	Roseland	Child abuse – residence
99) Luis Cordova	19	4/15/2011	Brighton Park	Gunshot – alley
100) Omar Mendez	16	4/14/2011	South Lawndale	Gunshot – sidewalk
101) Arturio Santana	16	4/13/2011	South Lawndale	Stabbing – residential yard
103) Timothy Collins	19	4/12/2011	Ashburn	Gunshot – street
104) Christopher Young	18	4/10/2012	Greater Grand Crossing	Gunshot – sidewalk
105) Quintin Turner	18	4/8/2011	Kenwood	Gunshot – street
106) Thurman Williams	18	3/28/2011	Hermosa	Gunshot – sidewalk
107) Mokece Brown	17	3/27/2011	Austin	Gunshot – alley

All these names are a reminder of why the Chicago Public School system is only 8 percent white; why white parents spend incredible sums of money to insulate their children from the real dangers of diversity; and why white people chose to commute two-hours everyday to work and back home instead of living near... diversity.

Do you understand what Chicago represents now?