Chicago Students Face Daily Violence
CBS Evening News: 32 Public School Students Have Been Killed This School Year, As South Side Violence Rages
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Video Conference On School Violence The White House invited a panel of students and experts to a summit on school violence near Washington. Jennifer Miller reports.
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Video Rise In School Shootings Monday's school shooting in Pennsylvania was the third such incident in a week. Rene Syler speaks with school safety expert Kenneth Trump the sudden rise in school violence.
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32 Chicago public school students have been killed this school year, a new record. (CBS)
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Howard University student Alize Beal took part in an alternative spring break program that sent college students like her to Chicago's South Side to meet with high school students. Violence - particularly among young people - continues to rage on the South Side, where 32 students have been killed this school year. (CBS)
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Jakita Willimas is a sophomore at Team Englewood Community Academy on Chicago's south side. She and other students say that it's easy to buy a gun in their neighborhood, they know people who have been shot and they are wearily accustomed to the violence there that has killed 32 young people this school year. (CBS)
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Interactive Education In America Backpack ready? Learn more about education in America through fun facts, national statistics and unusual schools.
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Interactive School Shootings A look at major incidents at U.S. schools in the last decade.
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.
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See all 63 CommentsPosted 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.
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.
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.........
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.
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.
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.
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.
Posted by iDragon13 at 9:53 AM : Apr 10, 2009
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Cocaine is illegal in Chicago too.
That doesn't mean it should be legalized.
Not to worry, though. Guns won't be banned unless the 2nd Amendment is overturned, which is not going to happen.
I don't see any real options to get guns out of the hands of gangsters & other lowlifes in society, but I do know that they would become embolden by knowing that the odds of that nice family down the street having any way of defending themselves against someone with a .38 is now pretty low and would make for real easy target.
For you on the left who are rabidly anti-gun, handguns are illegal in Chicago. Do you see how your argument that guns should be banned holds no water whatsoever?
Everyone knows that the problem is no parenting, no expectations, and a culture of where the excuses of "things happened", "one thing led to another" , "in the wrong place...wrong time" "he disresepcted me" -- Are all excuses for stupid people with poor or no IMPULSE CONTROL.
BINGO!!!
If you are constantly told and constantly see that life has not meaning. You have never experienced love. You will have no appreciation for life.
Posted by jonesjep at 9:03 AM : Apr 10, 2009
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We know how effective the laws in Mexico are.
Guns are freely available to anyone who wants them, even the otherwise law abiding citizens, for not much money.
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