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The South Side of Chicago is a war zone. In 2023, the city recorded 617 homicides and more than 2,000 shootings, with neighborhoods like Englewood and Woodlawn hit the hardest.
Just a few weeks ago, I stood over the body of a man who had been shot dead. Hundreds of young souls will be killed by year’s end.
So I was not surprised when President Donald Trump said, “Chicago’s a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent. And we’ll straighten that one out probably next.” After all, the government’s first responsibility is to protect its citizens. When endless violence continues to plague the lives of people around me, action is needed.
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How did Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson — both Democrats — respond to Trump’s words?
“As Donald Trump attempts to create chaos that distracts from his problems, we’ll call it out for what it is,” Pritzker said, pushing back against Trump’s comments. “Crime rates are improving. Homicides are down by more than 30% in Chicago in the last year alone.” He added that Trump’s approach was a distraction from real issues: “We won’t be distracted by his authoritarian push.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson responded that Trump’s approach was “uncoordinated, uncalled for, and unsound” and that “unlawfully deploying” the National Guard to Chicago could “inflame tensions between residents and law enforcement.” He later added, “It’s not democratic. It’s unconstitutional.”
Just last week, on Aug. 25, Trump signed an executive order to prevent federal funds from going to Illinois because of its cashless bail policy.
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You would think that reducing crime, especially on the South Side, would be a bipartisan effort. After all, didn’t Black Lives Matter — a group which Pritzker and Johnson have supported — say that far too many Black lives are being lost? Why don’t the people in my neighborhood, especially the children walking to school, deserve the fullest protection that is their inherent right as American citizens?
I see the deployment of troops onto Chicago’s streets as a necessary shock-and-awe measure. The Chicago Police Department has done a good job in recent months bringing down murders and crime, but they are led by “defund the police” leadership. Imagine how much better the force would be with a law-and-order mayor.
Right now, under the current leadership in our city, gangs still control our streets, human trafficking goes unchecked and drugs flow through here like the Mississippi River. We need a reset. We need a reordering of society where our kids come first and the gangsters last.
Let’s not kid ourselves: Much of the violence we see today stems from post-1960s liberalism. We divorced far too many people from the American Dream with policies of dependency. We favored teachers’ unions over educating our children. Only 4% of the kids at the school down the street from my church can read at grade level. Far too many kids have been shot, and we need to guarantee their safe passage to and from school. We have families driving down the street who have been shot at. I’ve presided over far too many funerals and I don’t want to do any more of them.
Enough.
We don’t have any further to slide downward. We are at rock bottom. Our left-wing mayor and governor, who value virtue-signaling and diversity over real solutions, are not going to help. So I don’t have a problem with Trump sending in the troops.
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At the same time, I must say that I see the National Guard as only a temporary fix. I see it as the equivalent of getting a heroin addict into rehab. The soldiers can patrol the streets and arrest criminals. But they cannot rebuild broken families. They cannot mentor a fatherless teenager who is about to be recruited into a gang. They cannot create jobs, teach life skills or restore hope. When the soldiers leave, the same old conditions remain, and the cycle of violence resumes.
The real answer lies not in military boots but in community roots. For more than a decade, my nonprofit, Project H.O.O.D., has been working to improve our community.
We’ve trained young men in trades like construction and masonry, putting them to work on the very center we’re building.
We’ve mentored boys and girls who would otherwise be pulled into the streets. We’ve provided entrepreneurship programs, job readiness training and faith-based guidance that changes lives from the inside out.
We’ve seen results. We’ve steered countless young people onto the path of opportunity where they become responsible citizens capable of caring for their families. These are not abstract ideas — these are tangible victories, won block by block, life by life.
The National Guard may calm the streets. But it’s organizations like Project H.O.O.D. that will change the streets. That’s where Trump and America must focus if we want to win this country back, one block at a time.
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