City’s proposed program to change the behavior of domestic abusers is needed

The plan as described in the article “Lightfoot highlights city’s commitment to break surge in domestic violence” talks briefly about a pilot program to bring services to people who cause harm. This is critical.

For a decade, I served on a board of a non-profit that provided services to the ugly part of this interaction. I learned that helping the victims attracts donors, but the core of the problem — changing the behavior of the abuser — does not.

It is “closing the spigot,” as the leaders of the domestic abuse organization used to say, that will ultimately solve the problem for families needing assistance. I learned that the dynamics keeping the abused with their abusers are complex, and the abuser will just find another victim if his or her behavior is not altered.

Hopefully the city’s plan will provide funds for the grossly underfunded area in the domestic abuse equation.

Margaret V. Tomaszek Witry, Buena Park

CTU was political, not progressive

Jesse Sharkey claims Black residents left the city because schools on the South Side were shut down, but this statement conveniently ignores the fact that the schools were closed due to low attendance rates. Some schools were below 15% and one literally had no students.

Black families left because there is no opportunity or public safety on the South Side, and who can blame them? The city’s devotion to those neighborhoods has been pathetic.

Sharkey accomplished nothing by battling against consolidating resources so that Black students could have access to the same extracurriculars as wealthier schools on the North Side. Poor children need a good education, and a good education costs money. Spreading money thinly across many half-empty schools rather than pooling it into fewer schools at full capacity isn’t progressive, it’s political. As is turning the CTU into an activist group of government employees that demand policies Chicagoans did not vote for by holding children’s education hostage.

William Ridgeway, Palmer Square

Carvana is still a bad idea

In his letter to the Sun-Times, Skokie mayor George Van Dusen pats himself on the back for the bird-friendly “mitigations” enacted by the village in regard to Carvana, the proposed 14-level glass tower to be built next to Harms Woods. Despite these superficial fixes, this colossal car vending machine will be an avian death trap.

Birds are not the only issue. Carvana treats automobiles like big gum balls, eliminating the sales and support positions associated with traditional dealerships and moving us ever closer to a zero-job economy. And this glowing monument to mindless consumerism will be located adjacent to Skokie’s Holocaust Museum, making it a threat not only to birds, but also to culture and historical memory.

The most effective “mitigation” would have been to stop this destructive project. But the mayor and village board have chosen not to do so, despite hundreds of e-mails and thousands of petition signatures opposing it. I predict that Carvana will ultimately prove dangerous not only to birds, but also to unresponsive politicians, come election time.

Hugh Iglarsh, Skokie