I’ve written about my love for Mr. Dick Gregory before on this blog. In 1963, while protesting for school desegration, he was arrested, charged with disorderly conduct & jailed. He wrote about his experiences in Chicago’s Cook County House of Correction in JET MAGAZINE in 1963. Below are his words:

“Hey baby!

“How does it feel to see a real, big-time gangster this close up? You wanna know why I stayed in jail for something I believe in very much. I couldn’t march against segregation in Alabama and Mississippi without protesting it here. I was arrested on disorderly conduct charges because I joined hundreds of Negro parents demonstrating against those mobile units being placed all over the South Side in order to keep the city’s schools Jim Crow. The parents call them Willis Wagons because they are Supt. Benjamin Willis’ personal methods of hauling little colored folks all over the city’s Jim Crow ghetto to keep them from the white kids.

“I was actually put in a cell at the House of Correction. They call it Bridewell. Dig these baggy work pants with the four big rolls on the cuff and the army green, long sleeved shirts. I’d be the sharpest cat in my neighborhood if they let me wear these on the street.

“Man, those boots with the laces up above the ankles are real wild. I’ve been thinking about keeping mine if I get out ‘cuz I want to go to Washington, August 28 and I know there’s gonna be a lot of toes stepped on that day.

“You wanna know how I did my time. Well, some of the guards have it rougher than the prisoners. They have to punch the clock. Actually there’s only one guy in the cell with me, but plenty in the dormitory. I was thinking the other night, if we didn’t get a large Washington turnout, I know why…They got us all in jail.

“After we get up, we go to breakfast. After breakfast, I go back to my cell. The rest of them go to work. Then I had lunch. There’s a lot more baloney around this place than just between two slices of bread.

“Most prisoners are assigned to work details. The officials say race has nothing to do with it. You are assigned on the basis of your training and background and ability. It is all equal. Just like outside. You know what that means.

“I’m gonna write a book exposing this place when I get out. I’ll have a title something like The House of Corruption, That Needs Correction. It has been a real eye opener to be a prisoner and what I’ve seen will fill a book.

“I’ve seen dozens of examples of the greatest injustices of all…guys who wouldn’t even be here except they didn’t get adequate legal help during their trials. And sometimes they have to wait in the House of Correction 30 days to six months to get messed up. A lot of prisoners I’ve talked to complain of this. Most of them leave filled with bitterness and less able to face society then when they were jailed. If this can happen to me and I can afford to pay for legal help, what happens to the millions of poor souls. Guess there is some truth to the axiom ‘Justice delayed is Justice denied.’

“Then I learned about the guys who run this place. It’s a hard cold fact that Negroes with top seniority are passed over for advancement in preference for some white guy. I thought I was fighting racial prejudice and corruption on the outside, but that was nothing compared to in here.

“And they call it a model detention camp. A model for where they would like to put all of us.

“You know I was asked to entertain a bunch of the prisoners in here and I didn’t do it. You know why? Because I am not here as an entertainer, but as a Negro fighting for the rights that every Negro should be fighting for. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to visit me and some other ministers and it was great that these people knew what I was trying to do. My staff told me that the Crescendo Night Club in Los Angeles where I was booked is waiting anxiously for me to get out.

“Few people outside our race really understand the depth of our feelings. I’ve tried to relay the message through satire and comedy, but actions tell better than words and that’s why I went down to that mobile school site … to show how strongly I felt that those “Willis Wagons” should go. “When we win, just think of the news … It’ll be the first time in history that the schools are running away from the kids.”

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Chicago Public Schools (CPS) are done with releasing any information about whether their students are victims of gun violence. This should surprise no one since they also refuse to divulge how many of their students are even arrested on school grounds. The public is also loathe to access data about the number of suspensions or expulsions in the Chicago public school system. Basically, their motto to the public has been and continues to be “the less you know the better.”

How does CPS justify refusing to say whether a young person who has been shot or killed is one of their students? Confidentiality:

CPS spokeswoman Marielle Sainvilus said they’re trying to protect parents and students privacy. She said the district’s legal team advises the district not to tell reporters whether shooting victims attend public schools in the city.

Sainvilus said victim information must come from the Chicago Police Department or the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.

But when WBEZ called the Chicago Police Department Wednesday, a spokesman said police don’t have access to student records and couldn’t say where a victim went to school. He suggested calling CPS.

Does CPS’s claim of a need to “protect” students and their families under federal law stand up to scrutiny? Of course not:

Frank LaMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, said there is nothing in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) that prevents districts from providing basic information about a student. He said it’s more likely CPS is withholding information for other reasons.

“Many schools are really, really image conscious and really sensitive to the idea that the public might get the impression that this is a dangerous place to go to school,” he said.

Back in the day, CPS used to be a bit more forthcoming with data about the number of their students shot and killed. The school system would provide some stakeholders with information through FOIA requests.

Below is a chart that outlines the numbers of CPS students shot and skilled from 2007 to 2011. Since the 2011-2012 school year, CPS has clamped down on providing information to the public.

CPS Student Shootings from the ’07-’08  Through 10’-11’ School Years

	2007/08	2008/09	2009/10	2010/11*
Students Shot	345	357	323	108
Homicide/Firearm	36	44	36	15
Total (Shot & Killed)	381	401	359	123
Source: Chicago Public Schools

* 2010/11 only covers September through January months.

Time permitting, I will share a detailed list of CPS student victims in firearm related incidents in the coming days (for the 2010/2011 school year which is the most recent data publicly available). It’s a list that belies the fact that CPS collects tons of details about these matters.

WBEZ provides a list based on press accounts of the number of CPS students killed so far in 2013. The list was unconfirmed by CPS.

Outraged
by “Lim”

I woke up this morning and felt outraged because
I’m still here. Every day feels longer and longer: the
same four walls, the same routine, the same food.
I’m getting sick of it.

I’m upset, because the system says you’re innocent
until proven guilty, but I’ve been here for two and
a half months for something I didn’t do,
but the law has other plans.

I’m just tired of being incarcerated
— it’s taking away from my youth, but since I’ve been here I’ve
had a lot of time to think and look at my life and get my priorities
straight, but I’m making the best of it, and I know soon I can return.

Source: Illustrations from the Inside: The Beat Within (2007)

Willie* was standing on the corner in front of his friend’s house. His own apartment was only 5 doors down the street. It’s around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday night during the summer. He has no air conditioner at home and neither does his friend Tony*.

They were playing their music on a boombox. It was loud but no one cared. It’s summer in Little Village (LV); people are used to this. Willie and Tony live in a community beset by violence. Little Village has less green space than any other community in Chicago. A few years ago mothers from the neighborhood had to stage a hunger strike to secure a new high school for their children. Little Village is a mostly Latino community, specifically most residents have Mexican roots. Many of the young people who live in LV are “gang-affiliated.” Regular readers know that I think that this term is mostly meaningless. Writer and Chicagoan Alex Kotlowitz puts it more elegantly:

Virtually every teen and young man shot, the police tell us, belonged to a gang, as if suggesting that “what goes around, comes around.” But life in these communities is more tangled than that. You can’t grow up in certain neighborhoods and not be affiliated, because of geography or lineage. (An administrator at one South Side high school estimates that 90 percent of the boys there are identified with one clique or another.) Moreover, it’s often safer to belong than not to belong. You want someone watching your back. And honestly, as Matthews suggests, many if not most of the disputes stem not from gang conflicts but rather from seemingly petty matters like disrespecting someone’s girlfriend, or cutting in line, or simply mean-mugging. This doesn’t explain the madness. Not at all. It’s just to suggest that it’s more complicated and more profound than readings of a daily newspaper or viewings of the evening news would suggest.

“The police just rolled up on me & my vato (Tony). We wasn’t doin’ nothin’. We was just outside listening to music, talking shit, and watching girls,” Willie told me.
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They have dreamed as young men dream
Of glory, love and power; 
They have hoped as youth will hope
Of life’s sun-minted hour.

They have seen as others saw
Their bubbles burst in air,
They have learned to live it down
As though they did not care.
– “Old Black Men” by Georgia Douglas Johnson

I know a young man who won’t live to be old.

He tells me so almost every time we speak.

James (not his real name) is 21 and working his first ever job.

With his second paycheck, on Valentine’s day, he bought me flowers. “These are for you, Ms. K. I know you hate this kind of shit,” he said with a devilish smile.

James loves to make fun of me.

I took the flowers, smacked him on the arm with them, and gave him a hug. [I am not a hugger.]

“You should save your money. Don’t spend it on me,” I protested. [Inside I was struggling to hold my emotions in check.]

“Oh Ms. K, what’s the use of saving. I ain’t gonna be here but for a bit.”

I’ve heard these words (in some variation) so often that they now pour off me like water from a shower head. I should be outraged, perhaps. I should feel… something. But I don’t respond anymore. I pretend that I don’t hear the words. I am numb and to be honest I can’t guarantee that he will live to become an old man. He’s young, black, and living on the West side of Chicago. I steel myself for bad news every morning…

I saw an old black man sitting outside a Greystone building in Lawndale last month. I did a double take. I don’t see a lot of old black men in Lawndale or anywhere else in Chicago really. I see some old black women. I even work with some who are active in their local block clubs and churches. But the old black men, they are ghosts…

The President spoke in Chicago on Friday. He said a lot of things and then hours after he left the city four more people were shot (one lethally). As I predicted on Friday morning, judging from social media reaction, most people were disappointed in the speech. I still haven’t watched it. I don’t plan to. It’s not a protest. I just don’t want to.
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View more videos at: http://nbcchicago.com.

I have kept my mouth firmly shut over the past few days about President Obama’s upcoming visit to Chicago. I was taught that if you can’t say something nice, it might be a good idea to say nothing at all. I am informed through the press that the President intends to speak about gun violence and other issues while he’s here. He’ll be speaking this afternoon at Hyde Park Academy, a Southside high school.

If you know anything about Chicago, then you understand why he would speak on the Southside. First, most of the public shootings and death happening in the city are concentrated there and on the Westside. Also, one of the most recent high profile homicides to have occurred in Chicago, the killing of Hadiya Pendleton, took place on the Southside. If he is going to address gun violence, the Southside of Chicago is a good place to do so.

It wasn’t a given, however, that President Obama would come to speak in Chicago. It took local organizing to get him to come. An organization called the Black Youth Project started a petition at change.org after Hadiya’s death calling for President Obama to make a comprehensive speech about gun violence in Chicago. The petition focused on the experience of Aisha Truss-Miller, a committed young organizer who is well-known to many of us who address violence in the city. She shared the story of the killing of her cousin, Leon Truss, and then asked the President to act on his and other young people’s behalf:

“[M]y family and I are joining with the Black Youth Project to ask President Obama to come to Chicago and honestly speak on the root causes of gun violence in Black and Latino communities. This speech must be a substantive one, that includes specifics on the policies and programs his administration will initiate to save the lives and improve the futures of our young people.

We know that President Obama cannot solve the issue of gun violence alone. However, he can call the nation to consciousness about the need for a response to this specific crisis that is affecting youth in cities like mine.”

By the time the President announced his decision to speak in Chicago, the petition has garnered over 45,000 signatures. The Black Youth Project issued a statement after the President agreed to come to Chicago which read in part:

“[W]e urge the President to make his speech a substantive one that addresses the underlying factors that perpetuate violence in Black and Latino communities.

We hope his speech will detail how he will work with community groups, city and state officials to address the underlying issues leading to gun violence in the Windy City, and other cities across the country.

Namely, the illegal distribution and loose regulation of arms, the lack of living-wage jobs, the varied shortcomings of public schools, the disproportionate rate of incarceration for youth of color, the circumstances and culture that propels the cycle of violence, and yes, the misguided choices young people sometimes make.”

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As I’ve already mentioned several times, the voices of youth who are most impacted by having police in their schools have been neglected.

A group of youth in California spoke out yesterday about the proposals currently being considered around “school safety” in Congress. They held a rally outside of Senator Barbara Boxer’s office. Please, please listen to their voices and tell others that young people DO NOT want to attend militarized schools.

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Her name was Dorothy Young and she was sentenced to a reformatory for allegedly cursing at a white boy in 1969. Jet Magazine (2/27/1969) reported:

For allegedly calling a white boy a “bastard,” telling him where to kiss her and using the words “damn” and “goddamn” on a school bus, Dorothy Young, 14, of Sylvester, Ga., is confined indefinitely to a reformatory known as the Regional Youth Development Center in Sandersville, Ga. She is the first child sent there from her county in three years.

Dorothy’s sister, Yvonnne, 11, was accused of using similar profane language to a white boy a year older than she and is serving a year’s probation.

Dorothy and her sister Yvonne were among a handful of other black children who had decided to attend all white schools under the “freedom of choice plan.”

Apparently Dorothy had been reprimanded before for the use of profanity by school officials. She was also written up for “refusing to pick up pecan hulls she dropped on the floor of a school bus.”

Dorothy’s mother, Mrs. Ida Mae Young, explained that her daughter was being antagonized by the white boy:

“Last November Dorothy and Will Aultman, a 14-year-old white boy, were on a school bus and he threw a spitball at her. Dorothy jumped on him and whipped him. Nothing was done to the Aultman boy.”

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