Chicago Students Face Daily Violence

(CBS)  Chicago police officers secure the scene of yet another slaying. The city is setting a grim record this year and many of the victims are young people, as CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds reports.

Thirty-two Chicago public school students have been killed so far this school year, according to the Chicago Police Department.

And what is almost as disconcerting is the adjustment the that city - and even the children themselves - seem to have made to this uncommon carnage.

Just listen to what the kids at the Team Englewood Community Academy on the city's South Side have to say.

How dangerous is their neighborhood?

"On a scale of one to 10, I give it an eight," said Antoine White, a Team Englewood sophomore.

And it's been that way for so long there's an almost shoulder-shrugging indifference to the danger.

It's easy to get a gun, they students remark coolly. If you wanted to get one today, you could, no problem. Most people know someone who's been shot.

The South Side is hardly a vacation destination. But it's exactly where a group of students from Howard University in Washington, D.C., have gone to spend their alternative spring break.

Alize Beal, a Howard sophomore, is part of the program that also sends students to Virginia, New Orleans, and Detroit.

"It was the amount of violence, the deaths and the fact that i think a lot of students are misunderstood," Beal said.

The Howard students have been setting up meetings, meetings where conversation is stressed over vengeance, where clubs are preferred over gangs. The idea is that the high school students will see their college counterparts as success stories.

"They really need that visual so they can see other African-Americans right now," said Peggy Kolrellis-Byrd, Team Englewood's principal. "I think that peer-to-peer, they have a lot of influence."

"We are here to show them it's not impossible," said Beal.

And not too late.

[zietzke-2009]

Thus, you have Obama and Duncan, the two people most responsible for the conditions described in this article running. Now education systems everywhere can enjoy the same violence and ineffectiveness as the Chicago Schools these two have destroyed!!
Posted by azirine .............

I am sick of everyone on these blogs taking every story and turning it into a political spin against Obama.

If you really want to know why Chicago's schools are full of violence and death.....look at BUSH / CHENEY.....No child left behind ?? Or how about the opportunities they destroyed for these school kids.

These kids are resorting to drugs and killings because they have NO OPPORTUNITIES in LIFE......Thank Bush and the REPIGS, for destroying our economy, jobs, education, Iraq, our standing in the World, and sucking over a trillion USD out of our economy to start a war based on a LIE.

[tvnupe8]

Guns may not be the problem, but they sure make it easier for people with social/mental problems to kill a bunch of innocent people.

We kill: COPS program for 8 years...
We kill: Summer Jobs programs...
We kill: Midnight Basketball funding...
We kill: vocational training in high schools
We kill: arts & music in elementary schools
We kill: afterschool programs


leaving teens with no outlets for their idle lives and developing brains and yet we seem to be clueless about why our young people are killing themselves.

[Aussie1761]

In Australia, access to firearms is limited to persons with a genuine need. This includes government and police, sporting shooters with valid membership of an approved club, recreational shooters or hunters that produce proof of permission from a landowner, primary producers, pest controllers and bona fide collectors.

This is a very straight forward law, why cant Americans do away their silly 18th19th century thinking, the citizen's right to own a gun ,and go down the same path? That is introduce laws that limit the sales of guns.........

[bigmo47]

Absolutely. There continues to be respect in Japan. Switzerland has fully automatic weapons in every home. They have a fraction of our murders. It is the culture in too many parts of our country. Mainly in Democratic run cities.

The life expectency in the US would go up 5-7 years if our culture was different.
Posted by jonesjep at 11:07 AM : Apr 10, 2009

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Switzerland does not have automatic weapons in every home. There are about 6 million citizens and about 500,000 automatic weapons. The reason that there are so many is because, they don't have a full time army and adult male citizens are required to serve in "National Guard" like status for most of their adult lives. Most of the automatic guns and ammunitiion are provided by the government and the men receive yearly training. Personnel in the U.S. military have far more access to fully automatic weapons than the average citizen but the rate of murder (not killing in combat) is much lower than the rest of the nation. It's better to compare them to the Swiss "National Guard" than ordinary American citizens.

[jt92202]

Why don't we stop blaming everyone and their brother and work together in our communities to fix these problems? Not one man or woman can fix this it will take the entire country to do so. These Children are the future of America and the way it looks like it's going America will be under control of the gangs if we all don't wake up!! It seems it is so much easier to blame everyone and expect everyone else to fix the problem instead of us getting out of our homes and really get to know our neighbors! Getting to know them and getting ourselves into the community will bring us together and in turn help get rid of some of these problems. What happened to America? TV, GREED, THE NEED OF MULTI-INCOMES, DRUGS, CRIME, ONE PARENT FAMILIES and so much more. These kids along with every other child in the world need love, discipline and a safe place to grow up. They can't give this to themselves; we have to give it to them!!

[jonesjep]

"Maybe folks are reared better in Japan. "

Absolutely. There continues to be respect in Japan. Switzerland has fully automatic weapons in every home. They have a fraction of our murders. It is the culture in too many parts of our country. Mainly in Democratic run cities.

The life expectency in the US would go up 5-7 years if our culture was different.

[jonesjep]

"it predicted the huge number of dependent predators that would emerge from social programs that fed the mouths of the non productive."

WOW!! Just watch your local news every night and you can see this.

A comparison would be feeding bears in National Parks. Give them food...give them food...they become dependent on that food. Then one day the food does not come on time and they go take it from the parking lot. Usually killing someone in the process that had nothing to do with feeding the bears in the first place.

[cdegolier]

How can Obama run this country when all the time he spent in Chicago he did nothing, but climb the ladder. Chicago needs to let go of the demmies that have done nothing for the city and get someone who will actually help.

[iDragon13]

erb0087....yes, handguns are completely illegal in Chicago. As for the cocaine comparision, that is already illegal. Handguns, in most places, are not illegal for regular citizens.

[erb0087]

Are you sure handguns are illegal in Chicago ?

Chicago doesn't have concealed carry, but I think people are allowed to have them in their homes, with proper registration.

I could be wrong.