Rioting and Looting in Chicago

Don't remember the exact year but it was the early 2000's.

I agree it does indeed leave big questions regarding morality and law, as I said I have no idea how they even did that legally. I have to assume that there was some sort of deal made with the local officials and/or local non criminal residents or something to sort of turn a blind eye to that. I mean the locals were happy with the decision and I don't recall seeing any negative press about it on the local news or in the papers and just talking to the others in the community the common sentiment was "good riddance". The only folks who had a problem with it were the family members of those arrested and charged obviously.

 

You fix the people by getting children out of places like that. There is little hope for children who grow up in those types of places.

Here is a scenario that is VERY real and common in places like that:

You're a child, likely one of many, you probably have no father because he's in prison or dead or walked out when you were young. Your mother, if you're lucky, is a good mother trying to work all day to support you and your siblings and is rarely around. Your mother, if you're unlucky, is an alcoholic/drug addict who doesn't raise you and uses you for welfare money. You're a kid, you need influence, you have to goto school on your own, go home by yourself, and basically raise yourself. You're a child who is easily influenced and you seek out mentors in older people because that's what kids do. All of the older kids around you and grown ups are drug dealers and gangsters. So you think that's what "life" is. You've grown up influenced by that way of life and it's almost EXPECTED of you to follow the same path. So when you get older you too are a drug dealer and a gangster, and you too have children with multiple women who you have no desire to stay with and build a family. If you're lucky the worse thing that will happen to you is jail or prison. If you are unlucky, like so many, you will die young having lived the fast life for as long as you can.

And the cycle continues.

That would have been me, that WAS my life before my father grabbed me by the back of the head and dragged me away kicking and screaming before I became another dead statistic in Baltimore's murder tally.

VERY FEW children grow up in places like inner city Baltimore and "make it". You have to leave places like that as long as they exist in their current state. The problem is that I actually had a father who could show up and play hero and save me. The vast majority of these kids don't have that, they have no "hero" in their lives so they are just stuck there in that endless cycle.

How do you fix it? One big step is to rebuild the family structure. Stop making "drug dealer" a career choice. And no, it's not because "there are no jobs", that's a small part of it, the overwhelming vast majority of these drug dealers and gangsters could get actual jobs even if they are minimum wage low skill labor jobs. But the problem is who wants to work 50-60 hours a week at the Baltimore Harbor making 10 bucks an hour when you could swing crack and make $1000 a day easily. That's the mentality that a lot of these folks have, it's not about lack of honest work opportunity but rather the drug trade is just so much more profitable and "everybody else" is doing it so why not?

In order to understand this you have to understand the mindset of the people involved. It sounds insane to those on the outside looking in and a rational person unaffiliated to any of this will say "Yeah I'd rather work at the harbor making 10 bucks an hour and not worry about getting murdered or arrested as a drug dealer...." Yeah, YOU would, you didn't grow up there to where your brain was reprogrammed as a child. To many of them it's the complete opposite, "Why the hell would I choose to punch an alarm clock every morning and go work for some boss making pennies when I can sling crack and make six figures in a matter on months?"

And when you have virtually everybody who you "look up to" doing that then the choice is pretty easy. If the people you looked up to told you no stupid that's a horrible idea then you'd be more inclined to listen. But for the majority of these kids they don't have anybody like that in their lives.