I don’t need Spike Lee to stir negative perceptions of violence in Chicago and the desperate plight of people in the city.
My perceptions were formed 40 years go when a man dying of a wound stumbled into my husband’s office on 63rd Street to expire on the rug in front of his desk.
“Negative perceptions” are formed when people see these sad facts of violence reported daily in the news. If you want to change these perceptions, change the facts surround them by bringing positive change to these neighborhoods.
Stop whining about what you are afraid people think of the city and help its inhabitants to be able to lift themselves out of poverty to better lives.
Roberta Gleason, Crete
Civics programs
Re: “Teach civics in every school to make better citizens,” editorial, April 23: Since the 1930s, an Illinois American Legion state program has taught tens of thousands of Illinois high school students about the executive, legislative, judicial and electoral processes of government in one-week summer programs. It spread to other states, including Arkansas, where Bill Clinton said the experience inspired his interest in government.
John J. McGuire, Loop
Rauner lets Chicago down
Gov. Bruce Rauner just tossed the vast majority of citizens of Chicago and Northern Illinois under the bus in order to placate the mayor and gain his support on other issues by signing the bill authorizing the use of Park District property for the Obama library and Lucas museum. So much for the concept of new leadership in our state government; hopefully, the Friends of the Parks will proceed with this matter in the federal courts as the local courts suffer the same afflictions, cronyism and corruption.
John Culloton, Norwood Park
Where are the leaders?
America desperately needs outstanding leaders at all levels. Do we not have significant candidates who have honorable pasts,— free of abuses of power, blurred and violated boundaries — and who have not betrayed the people’s trust?
There must be some excellent role models without clouded, controversial histories. We have run out of time and have been permitting inadequate officials to run the United States into the muck, and lamentably showing itself to the world as the Divided States of America.
Watching our decline is not pleasant nor necessarily our destiny.
Leon J. Hoffman, Lake View