Message to mayor and aldermen: Grow up, quit squabbling and tackle Chicago’s real problems

Instead of aggressively addressing the real and overwhelming problems facing Chicago, the mayor and City Council argue over parliamentary procedures. The constant stand-offs about who’s in charge are getting to be a pain. It is shameful.

The mayor wants everything to go her way, and she and the council argue about things like the renaming of Lake Shore Drive. Meanwhile, babies, teens and adults are being shot and killed in the streets of Chicago.

We do not have a City Council of concerned adults, working on the issues of the most importance to our city’s future.

Let’s work on cleaning up neighborhoods, for one. The garbage and litter on the streets and in vacant lots is awful. Overgrown trees need to be cut back or cut down. Viaducts are rotting, bricks falling off. You feel like they could fall down as you pass underneath.

South Side aldermen should be making sure that police officers are patrolling our neighborhoods, not being reassigned to the North Side or downtown to protect the businesses and people there. Living on the South Side, the aldermen know just bad the situation can be, with some people afraid to come outside and sit on their porches, or to put out the garbage in the alley or to just walk down the street.

The mayor and the aldermen need to grow up. They need to really look at what’s going on in the wards and take care of the overwhelming needs. They should be walking the wards, actually talking to people, actually listening to what people have to say.

Talk to the children especially, because they are our future.

Clifola Coleman, Park Manor/Grand Crossing

Point a gun and give up control

Filled with road rage after a traffic altercation in the Lawndale neighborhood, Keshawn Jackson allegedly told Patrick Earl that he “needed to be taught a lesson.” Jackson then, in front of his own two children, allegedly shot and killed Earl.

If that, indeed, is what happened, then Jackson was right. Someone did need to be taught a lesson. He was that person. And he will be taught that lesson every day for the rest of his life.

When you point a gun at someone, you hand control of the rest of your life over to them. Their heartbeat controls your fate.

Don Anderson, Oak Park

DuSable was no Columbus

In his essay in Friday’s Sun-Times, Professor Theodore J. Karamanski’s attempt to conflate Jean Baptiste Point DuSable with Christopher Columbus, the invader and enslaver, is disingenuous, at best. DuSable’s relations with Indians living in the area was nothing like those of Columbus’ with the peoples he and his forces encountered.

Loyola University should censure him for bad scholarship.

Muriel Balla, Hyde Park

Endless tug of war on guns and drugs

Does anyone hold any hope that the Justice Department’s launch of “five cross-jurisdictional firearms trafficking strike forces” will make any difference in Chicago gun violence? With 400 million guns in private hands in the United States, I doubt it. The horses are out of the barn.

In America, we see an ongoing tug-of-war between a so-called “War on Drugs” that puts guns into the hands of Second Amendment-loving Americans and a federal and state talk-fest about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. It’s a sad commentary on ineffective government policy choices. The tug-of-war goes nowhere as so many are killed.

James E. Gierach, Palos Park

Fake outrage over Critical Race Theory

It is a term of derision now to describe somebody as “woke.” Perhaps that’s because it’s easier to manipulate people who are slumbering and clueless than those who are informed and aware.

For example, many Americans should have experienced a “woke” moment when former Trump strategist Steve Bannon recently revealed the true motivation for the right-wing media-generated “outrage” over the teaching of Critical Race Theory. In a homage to the despicable tactics of the McCarthy Era, Bannon expressed the belief that if Republican politicians continue to demonize CRT, the party could gain up to 50 House seats in the 2022 elections.

Regardless of whether parents support or oppose the teaching of CRT, there is something extremely abhorrent about politicians who feign concern about something so essential to America’s future as a child’s education, when their true goal is nothing more than crass, demagogic and self-serving political gain.

David R. Hoffman, South Bend